Tangible First

22 September 2026

In our local ministry, we invest heavily in high-concept praxis. High-concept thoughts are interesting, to be sure, but not as an end in themselves. The interesting thought is a tool for challenging what we think we know, reworking things from first principles. That has a way of opening up fertile fields of application, and the application is the point. None of it really matters until it manifests in something tangible.

Take my years of work with homeless folks. It all starts with tangible presence in ways that matter in their world: a cup of coffee, a hug or a handshake, a bowl of chili, a gentle touch dressing a wound, a not-so-gentle touch to move someone away from starting a fight. Those tangible things are also symbols of larger possibilities: a caring conversation, a well-timed joke that diffuses tension, relaxed dominant awareness that holds the space and keeps it safe for everyone. But those are extensions of the immediate and tangible things. Without the tangible things at the center, the extensions all become hollow.

In bodywork, the same tangibility applies: touch is the center. Touch between humans can be a sacrament of general revelation: the image of God present to the image of God. When I quiet myself to be extensively present to another person in the contact, I know things I “shouldn’t” know, and my hands know what to do at a level that doesn’t make cognitive sense. That place of extensive presence is where all the techniques come from, and if you can find your way there, you don’t need a book full of techniques. The client’s body will tell you what to do. Sometimes, you’ll later find a technique you “made up” written down in a book. The point of entry for this is not a bunch of woo-woo meditations; it’s contact. (Fun side note: when we find that place the techniques come from, that place of intensive presence and attention, we also find that we are not alone there. There are other beings who notice that sort of thing, not all of them friendly–a discussion for another time.) 

In martial arts teaching, the same again: contact is the core. I could spend all day talking, but I can use my body to show a student a concept, an opening, a way of moving. Moments of movement are worth hours of words. After the movement, the words mean something and can be helpful (even essential, sometimes). Beforehand, less so.

I know that I speak very easily of this world as magical in ways many people have been catechized not to see, even if it is where they actually live. It wasn’t easy for me to get to this point, and (on my good days) I don’t expect it to be easy for anybody else, either. But at this stage of my life, I find that I simply have no time for a theology that refuses to deal in the full spectrum of reality.

I understand that some people have their doubts. I don’t know their history; perhaps they are within their epistemic rights to doubt my account of my experience; that’s something they’ll have to sort out with the Lord. I have to deal with what I’m responsible for. When Thomas rejoined the other 10 disciples after Jesus had appeared to them, even if he were within his epistemic rights to doubt, they were certainly responsible not to join him. They knew better. Of course that makes for some tension, but so what? I am proclaiming that which I have seen with my own eyes, which I have heard, which I have looked upon, and my hands have handled. I no longer have the luxury (if you could call it that) of doubt.

I insist on a theology that addresses the factors I have to address and that allows me a way to defer unsolved questions while still moving forward at the pace of real life. I’m a geek’s geek; of course I want to know all the answers to all the unresolved questions about how everything works all the time. But the reality is that the weddings, the funerals, the addictions, the week’s counseling appointments, the suddenly detonating crises that should have been last year’s counseling appointments—a day’s worth (at least!) of those things arrive every single day, whether we have our questions answered or not. We have to keep moving. We rely on what we know is real, and trust that the explanations will get better in time. Everything else, we can argue about over a pint. The physicists still don’t know how the four fundamental forces relate to each other, but in the meantime, engineers keep building bridges that work, and we all keep driving on them.

On the intellectual side, I’m about recovering a more robust doctrine of creation and anthropology. The entire creation is magical from end to end—I mean that in the most literal possible sense—and the human being is the signature on the work, the crown of creation. All of it was spoken into existence, is upheld by the word of Christ’s power, and we, above all, are magical, a divinely inspired meeting of dust and breath. We have no business refusing to engage the world as we know God actually made it.

That doesn’t justify every new age folly we could possibly get into. As the Christian experimental scientists of the Royal Society argued a few centuries ago, you can’t sit in a chair and deduce it all from first principles; you gotta go look and see what God actually did. He is nothing if not surprising. That was the foundation from which such luminaries as Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, and Lord Kelvin worked; it will suit us as well. So it won’t do to just decide that we can (say) treat a migraine in Sacramento from a coffee shop in Denver, on the grounds that humans are magic, there’s a quantum field, whatever blah blah.

…but what would make us sure that we couldn’t? No, we’re just going to have to try it and see. 

And in fact, I’ve done that exact thing. The client reported a debilitating migraine coming on, and 30 minutes later, after treatment, reported that it had simply vanished. I’ve treated two colleagues who were too far away to meet in person, one for digestive (and spiritual) issues, and the other for a sprained shoulder, the latter while she was sleeping. These sessions are always conducted in an attitude of prayer on my part (as any medical treatment should be, cf. James 5:14-15). In only one of the three cases could the client actually hear what I was praying. All of them were successful. 

Other people can theologize about whether such things are possible; for me, that is no longer an open question. My job is to keep doing the work God gave me to do. Along the way, I’d love to work out how such things are possible: what sort of world is it, where such things can happen?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

More Than a Symbol

28 July 2026

If you want to understand what the Bible teaches about baptism, the first thing is to notice that the Bible uses baptismal language in a bunch of ways that we wouldn’t. We’ll come back to that. The second thing is to get a thicker understanding of symbols. Baptism is a symbol, but modern people hear that statement and don’t really understand what it means. We are trained to think “symbol” is a floating signifier arbitrarily related to the thing it’s pointing to, in the same way that there’s no necessary correspondence between a sheet of green metal and a city. A roadside sign that says “I-70 W Denver” is just pointing the direction to Denver. If you pull off on the shoulder next to that sign and say “We’re here!” to the kids in the back, you have kinda missed the point.

Thus far the modern grasp of symbols, which is accurate as far as it goes, but there’s more to it than that. The roadside sign at the municipal border that says “Denver Welcomes You” is related to the city in a different way. Both signs point to the same city, but the latter sign also means that you’ve arrived; it both indicates and accomplishes the welcome. At this point “We’re here!” is the right thing to say.

Similarly, placing a ring on my bride’s finger with the words “With this ring I thee wed” was a symbol that accomplished what it signified. Now, that ring had been on her finger before (to test the fit), and we did not suddenly become married right there at the jewelry counter. It required the proper context; we had to mean to be marrying. But in the proper context, the symbol both signified and accomplished a marriage, and responding with a loud snort and “It’s just a symbol!” would be…how shall I put it?…unwise.

Baptism is a symbol, but it also accomplishes a great deal of what it signifies. In the symbolic lexicon of the Bible, passing through water means a very particular thing: just as there is a “scarlet thread of redemption” that runs through the whole Bible, there is a blue thread of water and baptism that runs through the whole Bible, from the primordial waters over which the Spirit once brooded to the river of the water of life that flows from under the throne in the New Jerusalem. Being washed signifies priesthood; passing through water separates you from the wicked world and marks you as part of the new people of God. Christian baptism specifically follows Jesus’ example; in Jesus’ prototypical baptism, the water was applied, the Spirit descended and the Father spoke from heaven. At Cornelius’ home, Peter preached the blood of Jesus, the Father sent the Spirit…what was left but to apply the water? They did, at once, “and the three agree as one.” The fact that the water is administered by Christ’s visible representatives on earth means that there’s an earthly expression of the Body that is recognizing and accepting the baptized. Peter baptizing Cornelius not only signifies Cornelius’ full acceptance into the Body, it accomplished it: afterwards, Peter stayed and ate with them. (My essay “Washed” has all this in more detail and with biblical support.)

Our modern baptismal theology doesn’t exactly contradict any direct statement of Scripture, in the sense that we have a set of half-decent work-arounds for the passages that are a tough fit for our theology. However, it clearly remains the case that the New Testament readily uses baptismal language in ways a modern evangelical wouldn’t dare. That’s telling. When you find the Bible saying things you wouldn’t, one of you has wandered off the range, and I don’t think it’s the Holy Spirit! If we were writing Romans 6, we would feel a desperate need to clarify, hedge, pile up paragraphs of explanation about what baptism doesn’t do, and anyway it’s a metaphorical use here, etc. We can argue about the proper interpretation of the passage, but the one unassailable fact is that Paul, seeing no need for all the qualifications we would pile up, clearly does not see things the way we do.

Paul reminds them of the day they came to Christ, the day they were baptized. (Remember that the NT knows nothing of delaying baptism: converts are baptized immediately.) From the beginning, the act of baptism is communal; even Jesus didn’t baptize Himself. We are baptized by someone, into a Body, in the presence of the Father and under the ministry of the Spirit. We may get baptized by ones, but in baptism we are never alone. The Body put them in the water – that’s death; you can’t live down there – and brought them out again, initiated by resurrection into the Body and henceforth considered members. They come up out of the water and into something: fellowship with the believer that baptized them. On that day, Paul says, they were united with Christ in His death and resurrection, and therefore they should live like it. We should not be embarrassed to speak the same way. And we wouldn’t be, if we understood the this-worldly reality of fellowship in the Body.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Philosopher with Dirt under his Nails

16 July 2026

Once upon a time, a college kid sat rapt, listening as an “old” missionary philosopher — I think he was younger than I am now — sat in his living room and spun a vision of a mystical Christianity that revels in the physicality of the Creation: of the kind of Christian that could chase a sunset, caress a stream, focus meditatively on a single bite of a strawberry, and be guided by the Spirit of God in it all.

I was that kid, and I’ve carried that vision in my heart for some 30 years. It’s guided my spirituality, my studies, my career choices, how I spend my free time, the sort of father I am, and so much more.

Bob Hitching was that philosopher, the only kind of philosopher I’ve ever cared about as an adult — the kind with dirt under his fingernails, elbow-deep in serving those around him. That conversation in his living room prepared me well for resisting the gnostic-lite temptations of evangelical Protestantism, and forging a lush spirituality that is biblical enough to stand up to the unapologetic physicality of resurgent neopaganism. I am who I am for my pagan friends today because of the challenge Bob tossed in my lap three decades ago.

Bob had a way of issuing life-altering challenges…and yet, it was singularly difficult to resist a challenge from Bob, partly because he was such a crazy man himself. He embodied what he preached, and he preached the holistic, culture-transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Bob was the sort of missionary that didn’t just want to see a handful of believers huddling in a basement somewhere. He wanted to see desperate children fed, educated, and happy — so he was as willing to build houses and literacy programs as to preach. He wanted to see kids with no prospects get through trade school and launched into careers — so he was as willing to start scholarship programs as to preach. He wanted them all to have the Bible in their own language, and if they didn’t read their own language, he was willing to write comic books to give them something to read so they’d be ready for the Bible when the translation was finally done. And all along the way, he preached the gospel. Bob was passionate, tenacious, imaginative. God could give him anything to do, because he’d do absolutely anything.

That conversation in his living room wasn’t the only time Bob touched my life. He wrote a couple of books that altered the way I see the world, taught a course on modernity that did the same, inspired the creation of the ministry that took me to Russia, preached a sermon on Romans 3:24 that forever changed my understanding of preaching, and once used me (without naming me) as a sermon illustration to point out specific weaknesses in the way our church discipled its youth (and he was right, too!). I served on his board at Roma Bible Union for a couple of years, and in the last few years before his repose, he challenged me to find new vehicles for helping people grasp the goodness of the Creation. I’m still in the middle of that assignment — we’ll see where it goes. Bob has challenged me, infuriated me, inspired me, and been a model for me.

Reminiscing to my wife Kimberly about him, I found myself saying that Bob had a high-impact touch. It’s not like we talked every week or anything — sometimes we went years between interactions — but when he showed up in my life again, he had a way of facilitating major course corrections. I love him dearly, and I’ll be grateful to him forever.

Two years ago today, Bob suddenly met the Creator face to face. I’ve every confidence that perfectly stripped of his sins and fears, he now enjoys sunsets with a ferocity that I’ll never match in this life.

Won’t stop me from trying, though.

See you soon, old friend.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Perfection of Character

24 March 2026

Martial arts training, especially for children, is often touted as a tool for character development. You can see this claim on the brochures—half the time, right on the front window—of nearly any storefront martial arts school in your town. It’s not obvious, on the face of it, that learning to kick, punch, and throw your fellow humans would be the sort of thing that makes one a better person.

And yet, there’s a long history of these claims in martial arts. In fact, a number of the arts practiced today (judo, karate-do, kendo, taekwondo, and so on) were explicitly formulated for “perfection of character.” In order to understand that, we have to reflect on the massive disruption that firearms brought to the world of combat. When cold weapons (spears, swords, etc.) were king and their fighting methods were regularly used on the battlefield, in civilian fights with bandits, and so on, those fighting skills were like growing vegetables or shoeing a horse—just part of the life skills toolbox. Nobody thought a guy was a paragon just because he could fight, any more than they’d think a good farmer or blacksmith or cobbler was automatically a saint. The skills are not obviously related to good character, and anyway, there are too many counterexamples. Lots of guys could fight that were not model citizens.

The same is true today, if you look at the predominant fighting technology of today: firearms. Nobody thinks that their pistol instructor is automatically a good role model or financial advisor or life coach. Nobody thinks of their local Marine barracks as the obvious place to go look for direction in how to be a good person. And yet somehow, an aura of good character clings to someone who’s mastered the skills of fighting with empty hands or swords—why is that?

It didn’t happen by accident. When cold weapons took a back seat to firearms, the old skills became far less important, for the same reason that 15-year-olds don’t learn how to take care of a horse in Drivers’ Ed. Many of those older skills were simply lost, because they weren’t that useful anymore. But in Japan in particular, some of the old skills were recycled into martial ways. So kenjutsu, “sword technique” became kendo, “sword way” iaijutsu, “the technique of drawing the sword” became iaido, “the way of drawing the sword,” thus also for kyudo, judo, aikido, karate-do, and so on. That -do suffix means “way” and denotes a way of life, with overtones of introspection, character development, and spirituality, as opposed to the older -jutsu suffix which simply implies a pragmatic method of doing something. An older -jutsu art would render a practitioner competent in a year or so of assiduous practice, good in three years, excellent in five. The -do forms, the martial ways, were intended to be lifelong pursuits, explicitly repurposing old-style combat training methods toward the goal of “perfection of character.” Why this became such a big trend in Japan in particular is a longer discussion than we have time for, but feel free to dig into it if you’re curious; the decline of the samurai class in the late shogunate and the Meiji Restoration is an interesting study.

For our purposes it’s sufficient to notice that the shift from a -jutsu, a practical skill, to a -do, a way of life, is a really substantial change, with something gained and something lost. What’s lost is the sense of immediately practical skill accessible to relatively short-term study. What’s gained is a host of opportunities for personal development. Martial arts training gives you all the opportunities that any athletic endeavor would give for developing focus, precision, discipline in working toward a goal, etc., and adds conflict management and emotional control on top of it. In a number of ways, martial skills really do create an ideal venue for learning larger life lessons. But there are two problems:

  1. While becoming good at a physical discipline certainly will give you opportunities to grow your character, it doesn’t automatically mean you will make the most of the opportunities. Plenty of guys are NFL/NBA-level athletes and terrible human beings. Plenty more are good at karate or judo or whatever and are equally terrible human beings.
  2. What “perfection of character” means is highly variable. A martial way is a potent tool to shape character in a particular direction, but what direction? The “perfection of character” fostered by judo, karate-do, kendo and the other early 20th-century Japanese martial ways gave us the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the “Three Alls” policy, the Changjiao Massacre, the Rape of Manila…I could go on. It’s not for nothing that cults have a long history of using these sorts of physical disciplines to mold their followers. Lots of groups do, because they’re a potent tool.

In a contemporary, Western context, though…consider your basic storefront dojo with “Lose Weight! Build Character! Better Grades!” in the window. The suburban soccer mom who signs her kids up for lessons there has a very particular meaning of “character” in mind: courteous, kind to others, able to resist bullying, diligent, hardworking, fair, honest…you know the drill. When an art specifically says (in that context) that it’s about character development, people expect a black belt or instructor credential to indicate a role model, a person worth emulating. And there are organizations that do that, and do a good job of it. Jason Wilson’s Cave of Adullam Transformational Training Academy comes to mind as a particularly notable current example.

But not every organization works that way, no matter what’s on the front window. One way to gauge what the black belt or instructor rating means in a particular art is to look at who does, and who doesn’t, get the credential. If you don’t disqualify a man for, say, taking a couple friends to go catch a professional rival alone for a three-to-one beat-down that culminates in beating him with an iron bar…well, there ya go. Maybe don’t look to that organization’s instructors as life coaches. There’s a lot of distance between a Jason Wilson and an Helio Gracie.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Holy Anger?

16 December 2025

Where does the concept of righteous indignation come from? Is it even biblical?

My friend Drew interviewed Brant Hansen a while back, and on his recommendation, I watched the video. Hansen proposes that righteous human anger simply doesn’t exist. We see God’s anger in the Scriptures, and obviously it’s righteous when He does it, but Hansen says humans simply cannot be righteously angry, and the only thing to do with anger is get rid of it.

There are problems with this proposal, which we’ll get to, but I want to commend the interview to you anyway. There’s a lot of pastoral horse sense on display there. Hansen very effectively skewers a number of the sins we commit around anger, and shows up our shabby excuses for what they are. It really is true that we want our anger to be righteous far more often than it really is, and Hansen has a lot to contribute here. I particularly liked his dissection of outrage at people you know well: “You really can’t believe your mom would say something like that? She’s been saying those things for 78 years! I think it’s time to believe it!”

So watch the interview for the pastoral wisdom and sharp observation, but don’t adopt his theology. Hansen’s proposal has three major problems, one exegetical, one theological, one physiological.

The exegetical problem: Hansen observes, correctly, that a lot of people seem to have the first half of Eph. 4:26 memorized (“Be angry and do not sin”), but neglect the last half (“Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”) That really is a problem. Anger goes rotten quickly, and God requires us to deal with it quickly. He’s not wrong about that. However, he tries to rectify the problem by attending to the second half and neglecting the first, which still says what it says (and is quoting Psalm 4, so there’s more Scripture to work through there as well.) Based on the command “Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Hansen argues that anger is sinful and the only thing to do is get rid of it. This is a bit like claiming that because we need to wash our clothes, it’s wrong to wear them to start with. The same author who said “put your anger away” in v. 26b and 31 also said to have it and not sin in v. 26a. In neglecting half the revelation on the topic, Hansen is just like the people he’s criticizing.

If the command is “Be angry and do not sin,” then by God’s grace there’s a way to do it. That means that there is such a thing as human anger that’s not sin, even if only temporarily. Psalm 4, which Paul is quoting, walks us through how to think and pray through the anger righteously and ultimately let it go.

Hansen will go on to build the rest of his whole case on the claim that there’s no *biblical* argument for human righteous anger—but the biblical case for it is staring him right in the face in Eph. 4:26 and Psalm 4:4.

The theological problem is that Hansen dismisses the biblical discussions of Jesus’ anger with the old “He’s God; you’re not” excuse. This is the practical version of a serious christological heresy. Jesus didn’t show us a life that’s unattainable for us because He’s God and we’re not; we can’t appeal to Jesus’ divinity to beg off following His example. He laid aside His divine prerogatives and showed us what a fully submitted human life actually looks like. If Jesus handled His anger without sin, then it’s my job to handle my anger without sin, too.

The physiological problem is with Hansen’s claim that “anything you can do angry you can do better not angry.” (Which he got from Dallas Willard, if I’m recalling correctly.) They’re just wrong about this. Susceptibility to this error is a function of class. If you live your life behind a keyboard, anger doesn’t do much for you: it clouds your higher critical faculties and fine motor coordination in a way that’s not helpful when you’re trying to use your words. Talking or typing, anger isn’t a big help, and calm goes a lot further.

But all of life is not talking and typing. Anger gives an instant shot of raw physical strength that isn’t easily come by another way (especially for men; the effect is different for women—less pronounced, but lasts a lot longer). People who don’t understand how that could be valuable are blessed to have never needed it. As a trauma therapist and self-defense instructor, I regularly work with people who have needed it, and for some of them, it’s saved their lives.

Hansen is an acute observer of the human condition, and his errors in this area have made him an especially unsparing critic of our sins around anger. In this, he is performing a valuable service to the Body, and I would encourage you to listen to the interview and absorb what is useful in it. We really do sin with anger often.

That said, God made human anger. Anger is a reflection of the divine nature in us; it is a potent gift as language and sexuality are potent gifts. Like them, anger hurts us when we don’t attend to the instructions God gave about how to handle it. That’s no excuse for dismissing it entirely.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

When Protocols Fail

9 December 2025

A friend of a friend recently asked me to explain a little about what I do. This seems to be what came out…

Greetings X,

Our mutual friend tells me that you don’t quite know what questions to ask. I sympathize; I have the same problem a lot of the time. Let me see if I can help get the conversation started.  I believe she told you her experience with my work. What I can tell you about that experience, from my side, is that humans are used to being looked at, but we are not accustomed to being seen. When I make myself entirely present to another person, I often know more than I “should” know about the problem, and my hands seem to find their way to helpful places. 

In the same way you can get someone to wash their own face by putting them in front of a mirror, sometimes the human body fixes itself when it’s invited to notice itself. It is very often the case that when I lay on hands and make myself truly present, without doing much of anything, my client’s system responds by reorganizing itself in more healthy ways. There are certainly techniques and disciplines and lots of practice time involved, but how much is human ability and how much divine intervention I couldn’t really say. But then, God never intended us to exercise our abilities without Him, did He?

As to how I might be able to help you, or what your session would look like, I’m afraid I don’t know for certain. Here’s what I can tell you: I will be present. You will of course be present. God will be present. You will be involved, and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I am not a mechanic and you are not a car; this is not something I can do to you; this is something we will do together with God’s help.

The value of direct obedience to biblical teaching is hard to overestimate; I expect to pray, lay on hands, anoint with oil. I usually work general to specific, so I’ll likely begin by establishing contact with your system at your shoulders or your feet, noticing the pulses and rhythms in your body, looking for unusual tensions or movements in your visceral cavity or anything out of balance or that draws my attention for some reason. 

From there, we will proceed as seems best to us and the Spirit.

I know that’s not a particularly satisfying answer. It would be nice to give you a definite protocol, some kind of road map for what comes next. But the people with protocols are telling you they can’t find anything wrong. I’m the guy you call when you’re off the edge of the map, and still have to navigate the territory. I don’t have a map either, but I live here, so that’s something.

I didn’t set out to be this person. When God called me into ministry as a junior in high school, I had a picture in my head of what that would entail: an expository preaching ministry in a suburban Bible church. To that end I earned a bachelor’s in Bible, then a Th.M in New Testament. During seminary, I interned in a suburban Bible church in eastern Washington, training in exactly the kind of expository ministry I expected to pursue for the rest of my life. Upon graduation, I worked as a pastor and seminary instructor.

Then Jesus mugged me, and not for the first time. The first time was when He gave me to faithful Christian parents. I came to know Him early, and hardly remember a time when I did not know Jesus as my Savior. The second time was when, as a very angry 16-year-old, I found my life unlivable, and God taught me to forgive. I came to know Him then as a worker of miracles, the one who made me able to forgive when I simply didn’t have the ability.

This time around, the mugging took the form of a surprise: the small suburban Bible church I thought I was planting turned out to be an exit ministry for people leaving a cult. By the time I realized what I had gotten into, I had bonded to the people and didn’t want to quit. Getting the people out of the cult was hard, but doable. Getting the cult out of the people…well, that was another matter. Fast-forward several years, and this teaching pastor and professor had become, of necessity, a pastoral counselor, worship leader, liturgist, and church history teacher. God was just getting started. 

He brought me next to Englewood, and over a period of years and a series of gigs in youth and city ministry, He taught me to obey some verses that, although I’d known them all my life, I’d never quite seen, if you know what I mean. I learned to sing the Psalms. I learned to pray in the manner of the Lord’s Prayer. I learned to tangibly love my literal neighbors. I learned to rejoice, for real, when people slandered me. 

And then God began drawing my attention to a series of passages that talk about laying hands on the sick, praying for healing, anointing with oil. I’m sure you know the passages as well as I do, but for me suddenly the question bubbled up: why don’t we do these things? What would happen if we did? 

Not too long after that, He led me to enroll in massage therapy school. The entire endeavor was ridiculous; I couldn’t afford the money or the time for even the shortest, cheapest program. I told Him “If we’re doing this, then You’re paying for it, and since I know You can afford anything, I’m going to the best school in Denver.” And you know what? He made it happen. 

Massage therapy led to Trauma Touch Therapy, Craniosacral Therapy, and an assortment of other modalities, and along the way I learned a few very important things. 

  1. Human attention heals. When one person–the whole person, body and spirit–sets all distractions aside and rests the full weight of their attention on another person, it is amazing how people can heal, even before anyone does anything. It seems that our systems adjust spontaneously in response to being really seen. 
  2. God shows up. His priorities are not mine; He doesn’t always do what I want Him to. But He always shows up, and He always works.  
  3. American Christians need a radical worldview revision. 

That last one was a real kick in the teeth. Most of us live like the world is what the materialists say it is — matter in motion — and then we add an overlay of heaven, hell, biblical miracles, resurrection, and so on. We’re basically materialists with a whitelist of exceptions that allow us to be meaningfully Christian. But no. The world was spoken into existence and is upheld by the Word of God’s power. Even matter isn’t what the materialists think it is; still less the human person. 

Genesis 2 says God made us out of dust and breath; we are a divinely forged union of body and spirit. When I lay my hands on another person, I’m never just touching a body. That fact raises an interesting question. If you have a sore back, obviously my body can work on your body for your benefit. Can my spirit work on your spirit? The materialists think it’s a nonsense question, but it isn’t, is it? 

I pray. I lay on hands. I anoint with oil. God shows up. This is either the church’s first and worst attempt at healing, a primitive medicine long since overshadowed by modern science, or it is a healing ministry God gave to the church, something we should never have stopped doing. 

I think it’s the latter. I invite you to come and find out for yourself.

Blessings, 

Tim

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Introducing Humans

31 July 2025

I don’t usually announce our church podcast episodes here, but this past week’s episode focused on Genesis 2:4-7, and is right on point for our focus on physicality.

You can find it here, or wherever you procure fine podcasts.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Guest Essay: School of Play

7 June 2025

The essay below is a guest post by a young friend of mine. In our reflections on Christian physicality, we frequently forget to think specifically about the implications of the fact that schoolchildren have bodies. Owen weighs in with a message we’d do well to reflect on.

School of Play

by Owen Coffman

Angela Browning, founder of Recess for All Florida Students, said her kids started coming home from school in tears a few years ago, complaining that the day had been too long and that they’d had no time to play with friends. At the time, they were getting 10 minutes of recess twice a week, she said. This year, with 20 minutes of recess each day, their response has been different. Health organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that children should be given at least 60 minutes of recess per day. Why do kids get such a minimal amount of time to do what they want? Nobody questions the fact that adults need breaks during a work day. Kids have far more energy, less developed brains, and haven’t yet built the social skills they will need to thrive as adults. It is intuitive that they would need free time to move, think, play, and interact with their peers. School is very structured. Kids have to sit quietly, take notes, and keep their bodies still. In most classes, they are spending their time listening, not contributing. Interacting with friends is discouraged. Obviously these rules are in place for a reason, intending to help students learn. Teachers are urged to give their students all the information needed to pass their standardized tests, keep their schools open, and measure up to students in other countries academically. This in turn puts pressure on students to keep their grades up, remember everything, and ultimately succeed. However, kids are only able to keep these difficult behaviors up for a time before they need a break to move their bodies, interact with friends, or even just sit alone and think. Many school officials and administrators downplay the importance of recess for kids because they assume it is a waste of time and kids would be better employed studying. They often feel that a few extra minutes spent teaching a subject will improve academic outcomes more than the same amount of time spent in unstructured play. However, this is not actually what the research has shown. Children get higher grades, solve personal problems better, improve their fitness, and develop confidence and independence, all as direct benefits of longer recess.   

Maybe the most obvious to spot are the physical benefits of recess. According to US News and World Report, “The average (American) child sits for 8.5 hours a day. Combine that with high-calorie foods, and weight gain is inevitable, researchers say. But studies show that at least 20 minutes of recess daily, along with 150 minutes of physical education a week, make a measurable difference in children’s weight.” In a country where children’s obesity rates are growing, implementing recess could have a big impact. In the same article, author Kate Rix points out “Letting kids run fast will help them develop coordination. Running up the slide may not be as unsafe as it looks. And even falling… is something kids need to practice to avoid getting badly hurt.” Challenging their physical abilities makes kids stronger, faster, more coordinated, and improves stamina. Recess isn’t the only way to reap all of these benefits, but it is a good place to start. Students will feel motivated to improve in an environment with friends. Most boys and many girls are naturally competitive with each other and physical activities are a better place for kids to compete than on video game scores, social media followers, or test results. Pull up competitions, jump rope high score, or a game of capture the flag are all appropriate outlets for competitive spirit. Aside from being a channel for kids to burn energy and compete, games at recess are an opportunity to try out new things. Children often lack space, time, or friends after school which leaves  recess as their only time to be introduced to new things and expand what they are able to do. A child who throws a frisbee with a friend for 20 minutes will find he can throw more accurately and catch more consistently than when he began. A kid who sets herself a goal of getting across the monkey bars without dropping will get stronger arms and be able to complete the monkey bars, climb a rope swing, or in my brother’s case, climb up the underside of the stairs using only his arms. When kids get home from school, without motivation, they may just pick up a screen. Many parents don’t require or encourage their children to be active when they get home from school, which means it is often up to schools to provide them with a place to be active and grow in physical ability.  

“Quality physical education along with daily recess are necessary components of the school curriculum that enable students to develop physical competence, health-related fitness, self responsibility, and enjoyment of physical activity so that they can be physically active for a lifetime,” the groups wrote in a position paper about elementary school recess in 2001.(Time Magazine) Not only do schools enforce activity in PE class, they can be the place where kids find movement fun during recess. There is something inherently more exciting about playing and competing with people your age. Classmates can build each other up, have friendly competition, and enable games that can’t be played at home due to lack of space, equipment, or teammates. 

Learning a skill at a young age and enjoying it will build a foundation for wanting to do it for the rest of life. A young kid whose dad takes him golfing will be more likely to golf as an older adult to stay in shape and have fun. Kids who play tennis in middle school might as a fifty year old pick up pickleball. 

The physical benefits of recess are all pretty obvious, but what about the social upshots of a longer unstructured time for children during a normal school day? Everything about school is precisely structured. Kids aren’t able to interact with each other except for during recess. Children will grow in independence and toughness, learn how to regulate themselves emotionally, solve conflicts with peers, socialize, and develop teamwork skills during recess. Knowing how to socialize is important for all kids and it is impossible to learn in a class.  

Recess helps kids develop independence and toughness. Inevitably, kids get minor injuries like scrapes and bruises playing outside during recess and have to learn how to get back up. Kids don’t want to miss recess and most will want to keep playing even if they are in pain, so they have an incentive to get back up and keep playing. Kids often encourage each other to push through minor pain so they can finish a game. During recess, children are supervised but less closely than indoors. They usually get to make choices about what to play and are allowed to devise their own rules for a game. This might be the only time in a weekday that kids get to choose what they want to do, and practicing these skills at recess leads to greater confidence and independence. Kids will also gain confidence when they discover that they are growing in a particular skill. A kid who doubled the length of his frisbee throw can feel elated and proud of his accomplishment. The girl who jumps ropes at recess and learns how to touch the ground between jumps and retain her balance will feel more confident to try other tricks with her rope. 

Independence and toughness are not the only social benefits of longer recess. Students also learn how to interact with their peers, practice getting along, and regulate their own emotions during recess. This is the time that kids are free to choose something they want to do in their time. Without a teacher hovering over them to make sure everyone follows the rules, they have the chance to learn to cooperate and compromise. There is an incentive to do so because very few kids would have fun spending time sitting alone. When you want someone to play with you or do something with you, you normally try to find common ground that suits both. Kids might try to be nice to someone to encourage them to play. For all these same reasons, kids have a motivation to learn to control their temper. It’s not fun to play with someone who will blow up at the slightest problem. Kids instinctively understand that and will try to maintain calm in order to have fun with their classmates or finish a game. 

“Asking other kids to play, explaining the rules of a complex game and hashing out disputes are all important life lessons that kids can only learn if they’re given time to play. Recess also offers the chance for children to strengthen their leadership and negotiation skills, and it can prevent bullying. Kids love playing—and when a conflict arises, it pushes children to practice these vital social skills so they can get back to having fun.” (Rasmussen University) Teamwork is a vital part of adult life and it is a skill best learned at a young age. According to Robert Murray, the former chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health “Recess is the only place in school, maybe the only place in their social life, where kids have the opportunity to develop social skills with their peers,” These social skills are of utmost importance at every stage of life from getting along at work, making new friends, and being part of a community. “When you think about adults, we value and treasure those social skills in our coworkers – things like negotiation and the ability to communicate and have peer-to-peer interaction as a team member,” he also said. “All of those things are really worked out on the playground peer-to-peer, not teacher-to-child, not parent-to-child, but child-to-child.” Loosely supervised play time might be the only time for kids to develop lifelong skills relevant throughout their entire adult lives. In other words, you hope your coworkers had recess growing up. 

When kids get to move their bodies, another result is better attention in the classroom. “After recess for children, or after a corresponding break time for adolescents, students are more attentive and better able to perform cognitively,” says the American Academy of Pediatrics. When students get a break from staring at a textbook or listening to a teacher, they will come back to the subject with improved attention. This actually allows them to accomplish more than if they had studied the whole time. The AAP policy statement goes on to state “The science shows pretty clearly that taking those breaks in the day makes students better able to encode memory and learn and perform academically.” Students will not only be able to focus better in the classroom, but will be able to remember and recall what they have learned. If encoding memory, learning, and academic performance are the fundamental goals of education in America, recess is a critical tool to help educators achieve their purpose. The strange thing is, one of the reasons recess is getting cut from many schools across America is because of government regulations. Recess times across the country began to decline rapidly after the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to help American kids keep up academically with those of other nations. In this policy, the government installed achievement goals in standardized tests. If a school’s test scores were poor, they would be subject to a series of penalties, including loss of funding. It is no wonder that schools began to question whether recess was a waste of time. Yet, research shows that kids who get more recess perform at a higher level in school. Statistics aside, be honest, would you feel mentally refreshed if you spent hours sitting in a classroom without a break? American kids simply do not get enough time for recess, which is critical for their  improvement in fitness and coordination, development of social skills, and success in school. The physical benefits of recess are immense. Kids will gain endurance, strength, and coordination while learning to enjoy new activities. While socializing and developing teamwork, they will build independence and toughness. Kids need a mental break, and when they don’t get it, they lose their attention span, forget their lessons, have difficulty concentrating resulting in lower grades. By giving students the opportunity to use their bodies and change their focus, teachers actually improve memory, recall, and attention in the classroom. Following the recommendations for recess will improve student outcomes and allow schools to meet the standards necessary to succeed. Perhaps most importantly, recess is vital for kids because they will learn skills that they are not learning anywhere else. In short, recess is the necessary preparation for successful life as an adult. It helps people grow into all the skills needed to live a productive, happy life later on. Teamwork, cooperation, and compromise are necessary skills for working with others. Enjoyment of a variety of physical activities will develop hobbies and fitness for later in life. And intellectual achievement will lay the groundwork for success in college, on-the-job training, and the continued education needed to make an enjoyable career. So come on you all, give ‘em some RECESS. 

Works Cited

Reilly, Katie “Is Recess Important for Kids or a Waste of Time? Here’s What the  Research Says” Time Magazine  23 October 2017 time.com/4982061/recess-benefits-research-debate Date Accessed 13 April 2025

Rix, Kate. “How Much Recess Should Kids Get?” US News World Report  14 October 2022. www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/how-much-recess-should-kids-get Date Accessed 15 April 2025

“10 Reasons Kids Should Have Longer Recess at School” Recess Guardians 25 March 2022 www.recessguardians.org/post/design-a-stunning-blog Date Accessed 15 April 2025

Potts, Monica “Recess is Good for Kids. Why Don’t More States Require It?” Five Thirty Eight 23 March 2023 fivethirtyeight.com/features/recess-is-good-for-kids-why-dont-more-states-require-it Date Accessed 16 April 2025 

Thompson, Hannah R. and London, Rebecca A. “Not All Fun and Games: Disparities in School Recess Persist, and Must Be Addressed” National Library of Medicine pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10319329 Date Accessed 9 April 2025

Murray, Robert et All. “The Crucial Role of Recess in School” American Academy of Pediatrics Volume 131, Issue 1. 1 January 2013. publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/131/1/183/30893/The-Crucial-Role-of-Recess-in-School? Date Accessed 13 April 2025

Brooks, Ashley. “The Importance of Recess: Why Schools Need More Playtime” Rasmussen University  20 June 2022 www..rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/importance-of-recess Date Accessed 14 April 2025

“Recess Helps Kids Learn Better in School” American Heart Association 29 January 2016 www.heart.org/en/news/2018/05/01/recess-helps-kids-learn-better-in-school Date Accessed 12 April 2025

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Got That List From Demons

9 July 2024

I recently found myself once again in a conversation about yoga. We’ve discussed that (and yoga’s history) here before, but in this case, the question specifically centered on the postures involved in modern yoga practice. “Isn’t it true,” the questioner wanted to know, “that certain postures are worshipping a particular Hindu god (i.e., a demon)?”

It’s a good question to raise, and the answer is no. Some Hindus say that particular poses mean you’re worshipping some specific god. Silly Christians believe the false prophets of the demons rather than their own Scriptures, which tell us that “the earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness” and “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” I can’t believe I need to say this, but I heartily recommend believing the Bible, not the demons!*

Certainly some demon — let’s take Hanuman for example — might proclaim dominion over some posture or another. As it happens there is a posture in yoga called “Hanuman’s posture” (Sanskrit hanumanasana). It’s essentially a front split with the arms reaching straight up. Is it the case that every gymnast who’s ever done a front split is unknowingly worshipping Hanuman? Don’t be ridiculous.

“But it’s not just a front split,” says the suspicious Christian. “See the arms reaching up? Is that praying hands I see?”

Let me tell you why the arms are reaching up: the fascial network. Specifically, in this case, reaching up helps open the superficial and deep front lines. Better yet, let me show you. You don’t even need to do a split for this. Get into a deep lunge, with the right leg back. As deep as you can reasonably manage. Now, look straight up, and reach straight up (or maybe even slightly back) with both arms. Feel that additional stretch and opening through your right front ribs, abdominals, hip, and quads? That’s why.

Now, can someone use this posture to worship Hanuman? Of course! Might it even be standard practice among Hanuman-worshippers? I suppose it could. Is it therefore true that everyone who adopts this posture into their exercise is worshipping Hanuman? Of course not. Hanuman might claim that is the case, of course, but Hanuman is a liar just like all the other demons. There’s no reason why we–indwelt by the Holy Spirit as we are–ought to take them seriously. Certainly you can sin with your body (stealing, committing adultery, and the like), but we know those things are sins because God told us so. You will search the Scriptures in vain for some divinely sanctioned list of postures that irrevocably belong to demons and are off-limits to Christians. Yoga’s Christian despisers claim to have such a list, but they got that list from demons. The truth is that if it’s healthy for your body, it’s fair game, to the glory of God. “Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

*This recommendation would fuel a variety of inflammatory statements if I cared to make them. Can you imagine if I took to Twitter to say, “The problem with Dave Hunt is that he trafficks in demonic revelation rather than Scripture”??? But in this case, it’s true, isn’t it?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Seven Laws of (Magical) Reality

22 June 2024

One of the major projects before us as a church in the 21st-century WEIRD (Western, Educated, Individualistic, Rich, Democratic) world is repenting of our concessions to modernism, and returning to the worldview of the Bible. I know you’re thinking “We’ve been on top of this Christian worldview thing since Francis Schaeffer,” but no, we haven’t. Schaeffer made a great start. Ministries like Summit have done wonders for us. But we have a long way to go yet to recover a truly biblical grasp of the world and our place in it. I have something that will help: a “sort-of-manifesto” for Bnonn and Smokey Tennant’s podcast True Magic, laying out their founding principles, which (spoiler alert) are as follows:

  1. Physical things participate in spiritual patterns.
  2. Physical things therefore have meaning.
  3. We participate in the same spiritual patterns at different levels.
  4. There is an order of being that flows down from God.
  5. Heaven and earth participate together in Man.
  6. Therefore, Man must live liturgically.
  7. To live liturgically, we must study both Man and Scripture.

I’ll let you read their elaboration on each of the principles for yourself. Suffice to say, this is the kind of thinking we need to be doing more of.

Comments Off on Seven Laws of (Magical) Reality | Physicality, Reviews | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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