[When] we live in a universe where we are in charge, all we see on the horizon is our end. -Alyssa Wilkinson Robert Joustra and Alyssa Wilkonson watched a lot of zombie movies in order to write a book about Christianity. Their book How to Survive the Apocalypse is one of the better books I read last year as Joustra and Willlkinson tried to make sense of the world we live in by watching and explaining the stories that we are telling ourselves. To that end,... Read more
“Everywhere I looked people were standing in two’s. It was like Noah’s west-side, rent-controlled Ark.” -Carrie Bradshaw in Sex in the City I have an awkward relationship with Valentine’s day. As a husband and father, I enjoy celebrating it with my wife and kids, but I intensely dislike it when churches try to capitalize on it. As if it was distantly related to Easter or Christmas and not something heavily promoted by Hallmark and www.Flowers.com I say I don’t like... Read more
So Friday before last, President Trump signed the new and controversial Executive Order reducing the amount of refugees who could enter the United States. Since it was on a Friday, the worship order for our church assembly that coming Sunday had already been planned for a couple of weeks and this was a real curveball, probably for pastors all over the country. So I addressed it in passing in my sermon (I have a growing hunch that if I address everything this administration does I won’t... Read more
So before the election I was in a series called The Gospel According to Stranger Things. It’s a blog series about Netflix great breakout new show, that has been met with lots of both critical and popular success, and I’m trying to step back and ask the question, “What made this so great? Why did this resonate with us so much?” And today I want to suggest an idea I’ve been considering for a while. Part of the power of ST, was that, unlike... Read more
Maybe you saw last year, a few days after the results of the Presidential election shocked much of the nation, there were several paragraphs from a 1998 philosophy book that was starting to make the rounds. The book “Achieving Our Country” was written by Richard Rorty at a time when the economy seemed to be doing quite well. President Clinton was creating better social infrastructures for the country. Diversity was becoming more and more popular in the media (Anybody else remember the rise of those... Read more
I think it’s interesting that the Bible never hints at what race Adam and Eve were. When the first human is introduced into the story he is simply called ’ādām, which means “humankind.” Their “race” is not identifiable; Adam and Eve are neither black or white, they’re not even Jews. The division of humankind into nations and races isn’t even mentioned until Genesis 10, and even then none are presented as superior to another. Genesis is emphasizing, unlike all other ancient religions, that the image... Read more
““The highest goal of human beings [is] not the preservation of any given state or government, but the preservation of their kind.”-Adolf Hitler In the 1940’s two Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark performed a series of tests on African-American children designed to see how living in a segregated society impacted them. They gave the children two different dolls, identical in every way except one was white and one was black, and asked them questions like “Which doll is nice?” “Which... Read more
One of the things that I love about my job is that my Church gives me time to study and prepare. It’s a real blessing, I try to not take for granted. Not everyone gets paid to go off every year to pray and study, and it’s not just to write sermons, it’s to equip the priesthood of all believers for ministry. So when people ask me if there are any books I recommend I’d like to be as helpful as possible.... Read more
Gloria in Profundis by G.K. CHESTERTON There has fallen on earth for a token A god too great for the sky. He has burst out of all things and broken The bounds of eternity: Into time and the terminal land He has strayed like a thief or a lover, For the wine of the world brims over, Its splendour is split on the sand. Who is proud when the heavens are humble, Who mounts if the mountains fall, If the... Read more
Hillbillies respect the dead. That’s one of the first things you should know about us, If you’re not from fly-over country, than you might be surprised to see that whenever a funeral procession goes down the road here, all the cars pull over, and people will often get out of their car and stand in respect for the deceased and their family. Mind you these are people that we don’t know. We don’t know their race, background or eduction, but... Read more
Jonathan Storment
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In