Big News on a New Year's Day
Some Updates on Work and Writing
Greetings, everyone, and Happy Year of Our Lord, 2026! The twenty-first century is now officially one quarter complete, and it’s been a minute since I published anything on this here blog-like thing. Apologies for the unscheduled hiatus.
Let me explain with a bit of backstory and two big pieces of news.
It’s been a busy season at my day job at Biola. Around Fall semester midterms, I began talking with the Dean of Talbot, Ed Stetzer, about taking a newly designed job in the academic administration of Talbot, Biola’s school of theology. As some of you may know, a few years ago I served as Interim Dean of Talbot during the interregnum between Clint Arnold’s fifteen years in the office and Ed’s coming on board. Further, some of our long-standing administrators—who we affectionately call The Deanlings—are approaching the end of their service, and Ed himself is a different kind of Dean for Talbot, prominently focused outside the school, working to let people know what we’re doing and why they should consider becoming a student or supporting our mission. There is, therefore, a lot of work to do inside the house, and few people in our school have both the skills and desire to take that work on.
When the conversations began, I too lacked the desire. My year as Interim Dean was, shall we say, not a great experience. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I was turned off to life as an administrator.
That year did, however, make me love Talbot even more, as I got to know parts of the school of which I had only a vague sense. Talbot is truly a remarkable place in higher education, one that has a unique combination of scholarly excellence, excitement about teaching and ministering to students, direct concern for local churches, and a spirit of kindness and humility and joviality that is unusual among large groups of academics.
Anyway, what Ed has asked that I do is shepherd Talbot’s faculty and programs, both undergraduate and graduate, in a new role we’re calling the Academic Dean. My initial answer was no. But as I processed with my wife, Jamie, we realized that Talbot is in a state of transition and change—we’re growing rapidly, expanding our footprint all over the US over the coming decade with the help of a $10m grant from the Lily Foundation, adding faculty and reshaping programs—and I don’t want to wake up in ten years to realize that Talbot has lost its soul.
I want Talbot to remain Talbot, and I want to be excited about this place for the next thirty years and more.
Weirdly—if you know me, you know this is not the sort of thing I often think—Jamie and I became persuaded that for at least the next handful of years, somehow I was the person for this job. That it would be worth it for me to take it on.
Slowly, my no became yes.
So I’m shifting my day-to-day role rather considerably, starting now-but-really-a-month-ago-and-only-sorta-halfway-lol. By summer’s end, I’ll be full bore.
That’s the first piece of news: I’m becoming Academic Dean of Talbot School of Theology, Biola University.
A second piece of news is an implication of the first piece: I’m moving away from regular publishing here at Becoming Human. The last couple years of work on this project has been so profoundly helpful and encouraging. That so many of you have expressed interest in reading and sharing and supporting my writing means the world to me. Really. I’m so, so grateful.
The Academic Dean role is going to present new challenges and opportunities that I need to be able to give myself to completely. Maybe more importantly, I have multiple book projects I need to work on—I think there are six at this point!—and I find myself unable to make progress on those when I feel the need to push something out here. So in all truth I had been thinking about slowing down here anyway, if only to make space for book-writing. The new job made this decision necessary.
In other words, the rhythms of Substack writing, including the self-imposed deadlines, have been helpful for a season, but they need to fade away to make space for other priorities.
I will still publish occasionally—please don’t unsubscribe! I just don’t know how often.
Because of the slowing down and the likely irregularity, I’ve paused paid subscriptions and removed the paywall. A few posts that I originally sent to paid subscribers only are still restricted, so far as I can tell. But over the next few weeks I will repost them to ensure everyone has access to the entire Becoming Human archive.
A Third Piece of Smaller But Exciting News
The piece I published back in May with Christianity Today called “AI Porn is Covetousness” was evidently one of the ten most read things CT published in 2025. That’s pretty cool! The germ of that idea began with a different piece, “Porn Use as Covetousness,” that I wrote here on Becoming Human. That’s also pretty cool!
Organizing the Archive, and a Guide for Those Who are New to These Parts
One of the major thinking-and-writing projects I set myself to when I started Becoming Human was tracing a series of significant shifts in intellectual culture over the last four centuries that culminated in a particular picture of the world and humans in it. The goal is to understand why we find it so difficult to find meaning and purpose, why a kind of practical nihilism feels so inevitable. The posts that tackle this project remain among those I’m most proud of, and one of the aforementioned book projects is taking the work I’ve started here, expanding it, and tying it together into a coherent manuscript.
The posts tracing this story are also among the earlier ones I published, and so I would encourage newer subscribers to check them out. Here they are in order of publication, which still seems to me a fairly decent order to approach them:
“Longevity Escape Velocity” (originally here, then reposted here)
“Masters and Possessors” (originally here, then reposted with a “reprise” here)
“Fun Facts about the Human Body, Plus a Wild But Serious Idea”
There are other themes, of course, including some work on emotions that tie in to the above, as well as reflections on Scripture and academia. In the coming months, I plan to build out some designated “sections” of Becoming Human, to make it easier to discern the threads that tie various pieces together. When that happens, I’ll let you know!
Also in the archive are the pieces that people read most this past year:
“Magic Doesn’t Matter,” on why Harry Potter isn’t really about magic
“When Humeans Practice the Way,” a reflection on how my students read John Mark Comer
“Shame and the Gaze of Jesus,” a meditation on a story from Luke 8
“History, Mission, and Ideology,” on the story of Biola and discerning the heart of Christian institutions
“Two Views of Feeling: Hume and Augustine,” some thoughts on modern views of emotion, and why they might cause trouble
Perhaps, if you’ve not had a chance to read those, you’ll do so now. I hope they are helpful.
Again, thank you all so much for your support, and stay tuned for continued if less frequent posts from Becoming Human!
Tim, I am thrilled you are taking on this role and hope you find it far more life-giving than your last stint. :) I’ll never forget a conversation about Biola’s future that we had in the stairway of the Hope parking garage…a conversation that gives me great hope about the direction you’ll shepherd Biola towards!
Congrats Tim!