Today’s psalm from the Presbyterian daily lectionary was Psalm 46. A couple of lines in this psalm are very popular, like verse 1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” or verse 10: “Be still and know that I am God.” But I had never really noticed verse 9 before: “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.” It seems like a... Read more
First of all, I’m completely dissatisfied with the title. Few words are more played out in the Christian blogosphere than “radical.” And yet I can’t think of another succinct way to capture the theological/political space I inhabit than to say that I worship a “radical” Jesus. For most of my adult life, I’ve lived in the strange intersection of what might seem like starkly contradictory orthodoxies: the evangelical Christianity I grew up with and the radical political ethos I have... Read more
Yesterday in church, our pastor prayed, “Make us comfortable with being uncomfortable.” I’d been looking for a New Year’s resolution, vision statement, or manifesto of some kind, and this seems like a good candidate. It captures the heart of the Christian discipleship journey. On the one hand, we should be “comfortable” because we’re safe. God has assured us of his unconditional love for us through everything that Jesus has done. But the reason we need this baseline “comfort” is in... Read more
A lot of bloggers at the end of the year put out a list of their top-performing posts for people to read again. I wanted to do something a little different. It’s no secret that in the blogosphere, the posts that do well are the controversial ones that strike a nerve in some kind of way regardless of whether they’re well-written or good teaching. So I wanted to go a different route and pick out seven of my pieces in... Read more
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine shared a set of ten “non-commandments” for atheists that had been compiled through a national contest. I thought I would take a moment to ponder them and offer some commentary in response. I hope that I am able to do this in a spirit of friendly conversation. As an evangelical Christian, I was indoctrinated to view every conversation with non-Christians as an opportunity to seek their conversion. While I do believe... Read more
At a recent campus ministry conference, the closing sermon was about Jesus’ exhortation to “enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction” (Matthew 7:13). The speaker said that our challenge as campus ministers is to promote “narrowness” in a university environment that promotes “open-mindedness” over against “narrowness.” He quoted a recent evangelical sociological study of young adult spirituality that divided young adults into six categories supposedly representing a one-dimensional... Read more
I know that I’ve been sharing a lot of troubling articles on social media about police brutality against black people. I always try to qualify it with an acknowledgment that most cops are just trying to do their job. I really believe that racism is a pervasive original sin in our society, and that white police officers are not any more or less racist than any other white person. They just happen to be thrown into stressful situations where they... Read more
At a campus ministry conference I’ve been attending, a conservative evangelical speaker talked about the critical importance of the doctrine of original sin, basically saying that we cannot love God in the right way if we don’t know that we are hopelessly broken and lost without him. He contrasted this doctrine with the “new-agey view” that we’re supposed to “trust our feelings” because people are “basically good.” As I was listening to this speaker, it made me wonder how many... Read more
There’s a war during the Christmas season that’s different than the supposed “war on Christmas” that people are waging when they say they want for your holy days to be happy. This other war is fought between clergy and other theo-nerds who are militantly committed to following the liturgical calendar which means not singing Christmas carols before Christmas Eve and those who say liturgy, schmiturgy, as long as people are getting saved, who cares what we sing when. The battle-lines... Read more
In the world of politics, most things are the opposite of what they seem. When politicians use cheap and dirty PR stunts to trick the media into to the narrative that they’re tough straight-shooters, they’re being the opposite of genuinely tough straight-shooters who actually stick to their principles no matter how great a PR disaster they’re creating for their Olivia Pope handlers and how merciless a pounding they’re receiving from that class of blabbering idiots known as pundits. One of... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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