This weekend, I had the perfect setup for a stereotypical social justice Christian sermon. I was preaching on wrestling with God’s anger. My primary text was Mark 3:1-6 where Jesus heals a man with a withered hand on the sabbath. Verse 5 says, “He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts.” The lectionary Old Testament passage was Isaiah 58, in which God berates Israel for trying to win his favor by fasting... Read more
God spoke to me this weekend through some loving criticism I got about my blog and a verse from the Daily Office last week that I had decided to memorize in Hebrew, Psalm 69:6. The verse says in English, “Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me, O Lord God of hosts; do not let those who seek you be dishonored because of me, O God of Israel.” I memorized it because it... Read more
So I went to the Facebook United Methodist Clergy page yesterday with the question of whether “total depravity” is really a Methodist doctrine, and the response was pretty fierce. The phrase “total depravity” means different things to different people. Some take it to mean that humanity is utterly wicked, while others take it to mean that every aspect of our humanity is corrupted by sin, which are different claims. To me, the most important thing to understand is that we... Read more
During the past week, there have been a lot of stories in the news about child molestation. There was Dylan Farrow’s open letter in the New York Times about what her adoptive father Woody Allen allegedly did to her. Yesterday allegations were raised about the sexual abuse of women by Christian homeschooling pioneer Bill Gothard. Last week I shared that my ordination was delayed partly because it came up in my Board interviews that I had driven a girl from... Read more
It should come as no surprise that arch-fundamentalist Al Mohler went all in with a full-throated defense of Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham after his debate last night with Bill Nye “the science guy,” for which Mohler got a front-row seat. Mohler cast the debate as a “clash between the worldview of the self-declared ‘reasonable man’ and the worldview of the sinner saved by grace.” Basically, Mohler’s argument amounts to saying that humanity is so utterly depraved from Adam and... Read more
Scot McKnight had a very interesting post last week concerning a recently popular“scapegoat” atonement theory about Jesus’ cross based on the cultural theory of French philosopher Rene Girard. The scapegoat theory’s basic idea is that God the Father doesn’t demand Jesus’ blood as the price for humanity’s sin, but that we humans needed Jesus to be our scapegoat so that we could be liberated from our sin. McKnight contends that the Girardian view doesn’t count as an atonement theory because... Read more
Sometimes we get burned when we think we’re doing the right thing. This happened to Uzzah who was assigned to help transport the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 6. He touched the ark to keep it from falling and got struck down by God. What do we do when we face disappointments in life that seem unfair? How do we move forward? This is what I covered in last weekend’s sermon, which had three points: 1)... Read more
There are two obnoxious tendencies that many people seem to fall into quite naturally. The first is to universalize your personal story as the basis for making presumptions about the lives of people around you. The second is to define yourself against other people. I definitely do both of these. Growing up moderate Southern Baptist, I have always defined myself against fundamentalism, and since it’s very hard for me to understand where fundamentalists are coming from, I often come up... Read more
The 1999 film Magnolia is perhaps my favorite movie of all time. It’s about a tangled up web of really screwed up people who are connected with show business in some kind of way and all live in the vicinity of Magnolia Boulevard in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. There are only two main characters who are somewhat emotionally stable, a cop named Jim (played by John C. Reilly) and a hospice nurse named Phil (played by Philip Seymour... Read more
It may seem like a nonsensical distinction but I think it makes all the difference in the world in Christian theology. Which term gets to modify and define the other? Love or holiness? Is God’s love more holy than his holiness is holiness? I suspect that the reason that Wesleyans and Calvinists tend to talk past each other is because Wesleyans say God is most fundamentally love and thus define holiness in terms of love while Calvinists say God is... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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