One of the most fascinating and wonderful mysteries that I’ve experienced in ministry is the support that my blog readers have given to our campus ministry, the NOLA Wesley United Methodist Campus Ministry. At this point, more than half of NOLA Wesley’s non-institutional support comes from people who have no relationship to our ministry other than their connection to my blog. Friends, your generosity has blown me away. I literally could not do it without you. Last December, when I... Read more
My next conversation is with Sandhya Rani Jha, the director of the Oakland Peace Center who has written a book that every Christian who cares about social justice needs to read: Transforming Communities: How People Like You Are Healing Their Neighborhoods. If you want to see hope in a time of despair, look at what’s happening on a local level instead of just scrolling through your social media feeds. This book will get you inspired to do justice a way that... Read more
My Facebook friend Lee Wyatt has written a book called The Incredible Shrinking Gospel about the way that the gospel in American Christianity has been reduced to so much less than the gospel really is. One of the things Lee is really passionate about is reaching people who don’t feel bad about themselves which the Four Spiritual Laws gospel seems to require. Here’s what Lee has to share about his book. MG: Where should we start? LW: It’s titled “The Incredible Shrinking... Read more
As I wrote in a previous post, watching Star Wars VIII was a very spiritual experience for me. One of the most powerful moments of the movie happens in the end when all hope seems to have been snuffed out but a little stable boy force-grabs a broom and we know that the Resistance isn’t over (it’s not a spoiler because it doesn’t give away the plot). When I saw that moment, it seemed like the perfect expression of Advent... Read more
Jesus didn’t come primarily to solve the economic, political, and social problems of the world. He came to forgive our sins. — Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) December 18, 2017 Tim Keller knows better. On a week when a bunch of old white guys just voted to give themselves a giant tax giveaway, it looks pretty tone deaf for an old white guy to spend his political capital pushing back against social justice Christianity. You were supposed to be the reasonable Calvinist, Tim! Yes,... Read more
When I first met Jason Micheli in the fall of 1996 at UVA’s First Year Fellowship, he was already a full-grown man with a deep baritone voice. I was pretty goofy and socially awkward so I didn’t have many friends at First Year Fellowship but Jason was always willing to talk to me. I felt cool when I hung out with him since he was so manly. He wasn’t in the in-crowd but he was the cool outsider who turned all the... Read more
I’ve decided to start doing author interviews on Facebook messenger in lieu of doing book reviews, which I’m terrible at. This interview is with Sarahbeth Caplin, who has written seven books, most notably her memoir about her faith journey as a secular Jew who became a Christian, then got caught up in a toxic evangelical college ministry where she met her husband Josh before they escaped together. The crazy thing we discovered through our interview is that a major part... Read more
Watching Star Wars Episode 8 last night was an incredibly spiritual experience for me. I will not share anything about the plot, but I will say that I’ve been at war with myself for the last two days for reasons that I can’t disclose, and God granted me a major victory over Satan after what I saw last night in Episode 8. We’ve been studying obsessive compulsive disorder in counseling class, and just like every other disorder we study, I’ve... Read more
I was originally going to write something about Roy Moore and the 81% of white evangelical Alabama voters who said they supported him in the exit survey for the Alabama special election. I was trying to figure out the best angle to score another viral post and chalk up another win for my ideological team. For many years, the purpose of my theology has been to prove the fundamentalists wrong. I have ached and longed for the evidence that would... Read more
I have apparently siloed myself from the evangelical end-timers enough not to see the triumphalist exultation that my friends are reporting over the past few days on their Facebook feeds in the wake of Donald Trump’s declaration of an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Some of the end-timers are apparently very open about the way that they see these events as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy that will unleash a final Armageddon conflict that will result in Jesus’... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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