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
The message of Jesus is simple: Love God. Love others. That’s it. Everything else is secondary. No “buts.” No sinner’s prayer. No conversions. God loved us before we knew who God was. So we should love God, it’s only fair. God loved others, too, while God loved us. So we should love others, too, like God does. It’s difficult, sometimes, to love others who are particularly unlikable, much less lovable. Pause and consider for a moment, I’m sure you can... Read more
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