For many Christians, the idea of separating their faith and their politics is absurd. They see nothing wrong with having an American flag in the sanctuary. They have no problem pledging allegiance to the flag before the service starts. They sincerely believe that being patriotic and Christian is perfectly fine – even normal. But for the first 300 years of Church history, no Christian would have ever pledged allegiance to their birth nation. To do so would have been... Read more
The Messiah came as promised, but not as expected. They wanted a warrior. They got a baby. They wanted a King. They got a shepherd. They wanted regime change in Israel. They got regime change in their hearts. Jesus subverted their ideas of Messiah. He came as the unexpected answer to their prayers for freedom, and liberty, and salvation. They expected a violent revolutionary. They got a peaceful revolutionary who disarmed their hearts and transformed their lives. When this unexpected... Read more
Over the weekend I was in Grafton, Ohio [near Cleveland], speaking at a Forum on “Crucifying Our Politics To Pledge Allegiance To The Lamb.” While there, the host of the event, Pastor Jim Thornton, mentioned something about the “4 Degrees of Love” originally described by Bernard of Clairvaux, a French Catholic monk born in 1090. According to Bernard, there are 4 Degrees of Love which are described as follows: The First Degree: To love oneself for the sake of oneself... Read more
I had an interesting dream the other night that was a combination of philosophy, theology and mathematics. I’ll do my best to communicate this in blog form but it might be something that works better as a live presentation or dialog. Let me know if this makes sense or not. The philosopher Xeno had a theory which worked on paper (in theory) but was not possible to recreate in the real world. In essence, Xeno proved mathematically that it... Read more
So, as I’m drilling down to uncover why so many of those who profess to know Christ are comfortable with killing, and torture, and war, I’ve discovered something: It turns out that what we really seem to lack is an abiding connection to the love of Christ in our daily, walking around lives. At least, I cannot personally fathom how anyone who was abiding in Christ – who is Agape love incarnate – could look at another person made in the... Read more
When it comes to the book of Revelation there are ultimately two camps: Futurists (who believe the book tells us something about future events that have not happened yet) and Preterists (who believe the book told First Century Christians about events that would “soon come to pass” in their lifetime). I am not a Futurist. As such, I read the book of Revelation as a prophecy about events that have already taken place (from our perspective) and were fulfilled soon... Read more
Today was the perfect storm of Christians praising the Law of Moses, I guess. First, a friend on Facebook posted a statement about how “Romans 13 is clear: violators of the Law will suffer the consequences” in reference to how immigrant children are being torn from their parents. [More on that in a moment]. Then, another friend made a comment about how America needs to get back to ‘an eye for an eye’ and ‘a life for a life’ if... Read more
I just spent the weekend in Portsmouth, Ohio talking with fellow believers about what it looks like to love our enemies as Jesus commanded us. That in itself is a rare conversation to have these days. I was extremely blessed that so many people would show up and sincerely wrestle with this topic in such a real and practical way. My friend Joshua Lawson was the perfect person to co-host this dialog with. In fact, it was his idea... Read more
Just in case you’re not paying attention, American Christianity is a Christless Christianity. We demand the Ten Commandments to be displayed in our courthouses, but we never give a thought to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. We justify our cruelty to immigrants by quoting random passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans, but skip over dozens of commands from Jesus about showing mercy, caring for the weak and vulnerable, and totally ignore his warning that “whatever you have... Read more
There was no way I could have anticipated how my little suggestion would explode and impact the lives of hundreds of people on the other side of the country. It was just another meeting at work. One of our vendors wanted to hold an event with our sales team in Buffalo to promote their “Build To Order” network during the week of September 11th. A few ideas were tossed back and forth, and then I said: “Why don’t we... Read more
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