Lenten Reading: Sermon on the Mount #4

February 26, 2013 By 2 Comments
Rand

Reading the Sermon on the Mount has become a great way for my wife and I to spend some quiet time together in the morning before the day kicks into high gear. Today, she and I talked for a while about some patterns we saw in the "you have heard it said…but I tell you" passages in Matthew 5:21-48. We remembered that the familiar "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" (Matthew 5:38) refers back to commands in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. The laws of ancient Israel authorized retaliation for injustices, but they also restrained the scope of vengeance. Retaliation was reciprocal. If I … [Read more...]

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What I’m Reading Now: Bonhoeffer, by Eric Metaxas

February 4, 2012 By 7 Comments
Obama and Bonhoeffer Book

I have read five books so far in 2012. Two were by Martin Luther King - A Call to Conscience, a collection of speeches, and A Knock at Midnight, a collection of sermons - and a third book was Manning Marable's recent biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. (I wrote a bit about the Marable book here and here.) I am now approximately four-fifths of the way through Eric Metaxas's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Not long after starting the Bonhoeffer biography, I realized that Bonhoeffer, Malcolm X, and Dr. King all have something in common: they … [Read more...]

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