Augustine of Hippo

The prosperity gospel says God will heal you if your faith is strong enough. Many ordinary churches teach a quieter version of the same idea. But Paul prayed three times for his thorn to be removed, and three times the answer was no. This plan is for Christians whose bodies, minds, or families are not getting better — and who suspect Scripture has something more honest to say to them than they have been hearing.

Christians have been arguing about other Christians since the day after Pentecost. Some splits have been faithful; many have been petty; most have been a mix. This plan walks through the New Testament's hard-won wisdom about church conflict, the long history of division and reform, and the practical question many believers wrestle with privately: when do you stay, when do you leave, and how do you tell the difference?

Roughly a third of the Psalms are laments. The book of Lamentations exists. The cross itself is wrapped in a psalm of complaint. Yet many modern churches sing only happy songs and treat sorrow as a problem to be solved on the way to victory. This plan recovers the biblical discipline of lament — not as despair, not as venting, but as a peculiarly Christian act of faith addressed to a God who can take it.

From the Crusades to chaplains in modern wars, Christians have argued for centuries about whether and when followers of Jesus may take up arms. The arguments are not academic. They shaped the cross on every flag, the Anabaptist refusal to fight, Bonhoeffer's involvement in a plot against Hitler, and the questions Christians today ask about Ukraine, Gaza, drone strikes, and Christian nationalism. This plan walks through the biblical and historical arguments seriously, refusing to let one tradition silence the others.

Acts 17:26 says God made every nation 'from one blood.' That truth is essential, but it is not enough. The American church has had a long, ugly relationship with race — slavery, segregation, the silence of evangelical leaders during the civil rights movement, and the more recent fracturing over critical theory and 'wokeness.' This plan picks up where the basic biblical case for unity ends and walks into the harder territory: history, repentance, the limits of color-blindness, and what reconciliation actually requires when the wound is generational.

Jesus warned his disciples that false prophets would do real signs. Paul said even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. The most concerning thing Scripture says about counterfeit spirituality is that it can be impressive — convincing, even to the elect. This plan walks through the New Testament's tools for evaluating Christian leaders, viral movements, healing claims, and the long, painful list of teachers who started faithful and ended elsewhere.

Not every 'spiritual experience' is the Holy Spirit. Scripture is emphatic about that — and yet contemporary Christianity often swings between two errors: charismatic excess that calls every emotional surge a move of God, and cessationist over-correction that treats most spiritual experience as suspect by default. This plan walks the harder middle path Scripture itself walks: open to the Spirit's real work, jealous to discern what is actually him.

The fastest-growing religion among young Americans is not Christianity, atheism, or Islam — it is something fuzzier: tarot, astrology, crystals, manifestation, 'energy work,' and a soft New Age spirituality that has migrated, in the last decade, from secular wellness culture into the church. This plan walks through what Scripture actually says — and does not say — about the spiritual world, why these practices are forbidden, and how to talk about them with friends and family who are sliding in without realizing it.

Most Christian teaching on conflict skips straight to forgiveness. But Scripture takes the wound seriously first — and the New Testament knows that not every relationship can or should be repaired. This plan walks through personal conflict the way Jesus and the apostles actually did: honest about hurt, slow to escalate, willing to name sin, and clear-eyed about when reconciliation is not yet safe.

If God is good and God is all-powerful, why is there cancer? Why was there the Holocaust? Why did the child die? This is the oldest objection in the world, and it is more than a debating point — for many it is the moment faith breaks. This plan walks slowly through Scripture's strange refusal to give the kind of answer modern philosophy demands, and through the answer it does give: a God who, on the cross, takes the question into himself.

The debate over abortion has been reduced to slogans on both sides. This plan refuses slogans. It examines what Scripture teaches about the unborn, the ethics of life and death, real reasons women seek abortions, the church's obligation to both mother and child, and extends to a consistent ethic of life including euthanasia and capital punishment.

Genesis is the book modern people stumble over first — and the one Christians most often hand-wave through. This plan reads Genesis with eyes open to the hard questions: creation and evolution, the image of God, gender and the body, the historicity of Adam, the Fall as the only honest account of human nature, and why Genesis still matters when the rest of the Bible quotes it.

Trace the dramatic story of the first Christians living under the shadow of the Roman Empire — from persecution under Nero to the Council of Nicaea. Discover how faith survived and shaped the world.

The question of gender, sexuality, and marriage is splitting churches, ending friendships, and forcing every Christian to take a position. This 10-day plan refuses easy answers. It traces what Scripture actually teaches about the body, gender, desire, marriage, and love — and honestly confronts the failures of both traditional and progressive positions.

The American church is one of the most racially segregated institutions in the country. This plan examines what Scripture teaches about ethnicity, justice, reconciliation, and the church's complicity in racial sin — while honestly assessing contemporary frameworks like CRT.

Is America a 'Christian nation'? The rise of Christian nationalism has forced believers to reckon with the relationship between faith and country. This plan examines what Scripture teaches about the dangers of fusing religion with political power — and the equal danger of privatizing faith into irrelevance.

America is the most heavily armed and most churchgoing Western nation. This plan examines what Scripture teaches about violence, self-defense, protecting the innocent, and the radical nonviolence of Jesus — asking whether Christians have confused constitutional rights with biblical commands.

Critics call the Bible irredeemably patriarchal. Some Christians defend it by ignoring the parts that make them uneasy. This plan does neither. It walks through the actual stories of women in Scripture — including the violent and uncomfortable ones — and asks what kind of revolution Jesus and the New Testament writers were actually starting in a deeply patriarchal world.

Journey through Augustine's masterwork exploring sin, grace, and the restless heart that finds rest in God. Pair one of history's greatest spiritual autobiographies with the Scriptures that shaped it.