Walter Wink: Miracle is just a word we use for the things the powers have deluded us into thinking that God is unable to do. In J. Beilby, P. Eddy, Understanding Spiritual Warfare, 66. Read more

This post is by John Frye. I imagine that many if not most evangelical church congregations at least paused a moment last Sunday and prayed for the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. My wife, Julie, and I noted that so many FaceBook messages called us to “weep with those who weep.” Like President Obama, pastors initially responded as parents, trying to grasp the horror at the loss of 20 little children’s and six teachers’... Read more

This post comes from a friend, a pastor, Doug Fondell.  Confessions of a Former Gun Enthusiast.   I grew up loving guns. Guns were always on my top 5 list when it came to Christmas gifts until about the age of 12. It seems Santa had a way of giving them to me whether I was naughty or nice. This was the way it was in the 60’s. First a pop gun (remember the cork on a string). Then a... Read more

From Jonathan D. Fitzgerald: The most inflammatory voices are always the loudest; this is a fact of our contemporary media landscape. Threaten to picket at the funeral of innocent children killed in cold blood and you’ll make national headlines. Suggest that these killings were the result of expelling God from the public school system, and you’ll get people’s attention…. But there’s another voice, softer even than the others, crying out in response to the murder of innocents. It is a... Read more

Ross Douthat: But no matter how tight a connection one draws between a gun culture and a high murder rate, gun ownership is not an intrinsic evil: Most gun owners are law-abiding citizens, most guns are never used to kill, and the tragedies associated with the Second Amendment are exceptions to a liberty that’s mostly exercised with restraint, discretion and an appropriate level of caution. The intrinsic evil that we’re concerned with here is murder, not gun ownership — and that... Read more

RE-POST: It is time. And it is the season of peace. We join the people of Newtown and Aurora and elsewhere to raise the flag of peace when it comes to guns. The church and its leaders ought to be first in line. I join them. James Atwood admits he has been waiting for 36 years, but that wait (for all of us who have been waiting) is now over: Atwood himself wrote the book. What’s he been waiting for?... Read more

Mr Rogers: 4. On What We Do “What matters isn’t how a person’s inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life. What really matters is whether he uses the alphabet for the declaration of a war or the description of a sunrise–his numbers for the final count at Buchenwald or the specifics of a brand-new bridge.” From The World According to Mister Rogers (Kindle Locations 621-623). 5. On Looking for the Helpers “When I was a boy... Read more

My own view on gun laws is for tighter regulations on who own guns and ramped up restrictions on what kinds of guns can be owned. But I believe in the church, and by that I mean the church needs to embody a kingdom ethic when it comes to guns. Christians ought to be different. But Christians are citizens so citizen conversations are worthy of careful attention. Australia is not the USA, but we can learn from Australia’s decision to... Read more