Fasting, a story by Timothy Seitz-Brown

April 6, 2011 By scotmcknight 5 Comments

From Timothy Seitz-Brown and here’s Timothy’s blog:

Fourth of July weekend, 2000… hot dogs, hamburgers, and BBQ chicken on the grill. Over by the pool, my oldest son, CJ, undergoes a metamorphosis, turning into a deathly pale ghost. We take his temperature, and it is in the triple digits–105 degrees. And now, pardon the image, he becomes a vomit factory in addition to a ghost.

Ann, my wife, calls the doctor. We get an emergency on-call appointment with the physician. Unfortunately, the doctor struggles with the diagnosis until—it hits us—it might be malaria. Sure enough, the doctor runs the blood tests and CJ tests positive for the Big M. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Fasting 5 Comments

Exploring Love Wins 3

April 6, 2011 By scotmcknight 69 Comments

I will begin each post in this series on Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, with this prayer. I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:
Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,
which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,
without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.
Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and for ever. Amen.†

People ask questions about the faith for a variety of reasons and I want to sketch four — there are of course other reasons. Some ask questions because they want to know. This sort of person asks a good question and then sifts through the Bible and sorts out theological history and intellectual options in an attempt to find the truth. Some people ask questions in a more careless fashion — they ask questions, some of them quite good — like How can God be all powerful and all good and have a world like this? — but don’t seem to want to find answers. They just don’t work hard enough. They are proud of having good questions. Some ask good and middling questions but the questions are a cloak for doubt. They don’t ask to find an answer but they soften their overt doubts or unbelief by expressing them in a question. Others ask questions to befuddle and to bewilder — all with a desire to confuse in order to lead to other questions that are behind those questions in order to find deeper answers. I think Rob is trying the last approach in the chp we are looking at today. [Again, help out this conversation by FB sharing it or by Retweeting it.]

The questions he asks in the first chapter are piled on top of one another, one after the other, question, question, question. They are probing one major issue: If we believe in an afterlife, and if that afterlife is entered as a result of some “condition”, what does it take to get in? What do you think? Please stop and answer that one. That’s the question this chp provokes.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Universalism 69 Comments

Lent 5: Seven Deadly Sins (Jeff Cook)

April 6, 2011 By scotmcknight 7 Comments

Jeff Cook, author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes , has offered some brief meditations for us to ponder during Lent this year.

Sloth

During Lent, we will meditate together on the Seven Deadly Sins and use this list as an aid in confession as we prepare ourselves for Holy Week, Good Friday and the Easter announcement of resurrection.

Sloth is not restfulness. Sloth is escapism of the deadly sort. Sloth saps our time and emotions through a favorite sports team, a new set of shoes, or obsession over our appearance—while leaving scant energy for our marriage or kids or duties. Nothing is so clearly modern, so clearly western as is sloth. Despite our fast-moving, success-worshipping, ulcer-ridden society, we invest our energies and talents most often in what is trivial. Despite our frantic pace, our eyes are seldom focused on what is actually “good.”

At its core, sloth moves us away from everything that ultimately matters and directs us toward simple distractions, for sloth is not laziness. Sloth is indifference—indifference toward my soul, my neighbors, my world, or my God. Drug users, Netflix addicts, and excessive videogamers may be poisoned by sloth, but so are most workaholics. In fact, sloth is best expressed not by a sluggish attitude but in zeal over petty matters. Sloth, in fact, is a sorrow about goodness. It finds those things that we were made to enjoy and pursue to be useless and boring.

To those of us who struggle with sloth Jesus said, “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for all things put right.”

(Excerpt from Seven: the Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook)

Filed Under: Lent 7 Comments