Not since the Reformation has the choice been so clear. On one side, Christians who read the red letters of the Bible and find in the teachings of Jesus a call to help the poor, support widows, orphans and aliens, and to respond with love, above all else. And on the other side, Christians who make excuses in their faith to justify beliefs. These Republican Christians invest their faith in “but” theology. “I agree Jesus says that,” Republican Christians say,... Read more
Note: This isn’t the sort of thing I usually write on this site. But, here it is. A day on Walton’s Mountain Thousands traveled to remote Schuyler, Virginia this weekend for the Waltons 45th Anniversary Reunion. From more than a dozen states fans made the pilgrimage to the hometown of Waltons creator Earl Hamner, Jr. to remember the hear-warming drama set during the Great Depression and WW II. The family program about life in a small Virginia town aired from... Read more
I met Will Willlimon recently. (His preaching technique was exactly what I was taught in seminary. But that’s another story.) In my first semester of seminary I read Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, written by Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas. According to Amazon: “Only when the Church enacts its scandalous Jesus-centered tradition will it truly be the body of Christ and transform the world. … Resident Aliens discusses the nature of the church and its relationship to surrounding culture.... Read more
Recently I wrote: The Bible is clear. Jesus is with the losers, not the leaders. Jesus was an unemployed Palestinian. A Syrian refugee child. A Honduran roofer. Jesus is the dark-skinned woman cleaning your table, your hotel room, your office. Jesus was the poor child of an unmarried mother, not the child of a millionaire or a celebrity. Jesus inherited his family’s poverty, not millions of dollars or a position of power and privilege. Jesus was dark-skinned, dirty, and a... Read more
The Shack, the book and movie, is another stark example of the differences among modern Christians. Some Christians are quick to discredit and criticize a movie they’ve never seen about a book they’ve never read. They casually toss around words like “blasphemy” and “heresy,” while they proudly declare they won’t be exposed to neither book nor movie. They celebrate remaining ignorant of what The Shack may contain, rather than be exposed to new or different ideas. In the same way,... Read more
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