1 Peter 1:22 says, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.” To me, this verse captures the ethos of true conservatism: obedience to the truth. Sincere love means truthful love that doesn’t sugarcoat or sell out to political correctness. I don’t always agree with conservatives about what constitutes obedience to the truth, but I very much respect this basic posture of... Read more
When you grow up evangelical, you view everything about politics through the lens of your religious experience. Other people are shaped most fundamentally by their connection to military culture or their work with the poor or their passion for science or something else. I honestly cannot think about political issues from an objective rational perspective; I’m almost entirely a reactionary. There is one analogy that shapes the political landscape for me: I am rabidly opposed to anyone who reminds me... Read more
This is not the normal theological fare for my blog but yesterday I had an experience that rebuked my cynicism about an entity that I tend to loathe more than anything else in our culture: customer service. I’ve gotten the run-around so many different times from someone who said he was named “John” but was clearly from India. I’ve had utterly Kafkaesque experiences where I’ve been told that a product I ordered from somewhere that is sitting in front of... Read more
[This is a reblog post from my friend Heather Goodman who describes experiencing a phenomenon that is unfortunately too common in Christian community: going out to a restaurant after church where the trendy, attractive people sit together at one table while the outcasts are relegated to a second table. As Heather points out, Jesus would be sitting with the outcasts.] (more…) Read more
For many of us who grew up evangelical, the word “compromise” has always been a bad word. It means to allow non-Christian values and influences to corrupt your devotion to Biblical truth. Frank Schaeffer, the son of the evangelical leader who started the modern Religious Right, claims that our government shutdown and its Tea Party architects cannot be understood apart from this fundamental characteristic of the evangelical ethos. Insofar as the Tea Party is an evangelical phenomenon, I think he... Read more
Whatever your opinion about whose fault it is, our government has gotten beyond ridiculous. Many people from my church are out of work because of the government shutdown. So I thought for the sake of some absurdist comic relief, I would start a game of “Would you refuse to negotiate if…?” The way you play the game is to think of the most ridiculous expectations that neighbors, husbands, wives, or kids could have for someone else to “negotiate” with them.... Read more
[This guest post comes from Lianne Simon, a woman who was born with sexual ambiguity and raised as a boy until she was 18. She has offered to answer any questions you have in a follow-up post. I trust that you will be respectful and appropriate.] (more…) Read more
Only a Southern Baptist like Russell Moore would be crass enough to refer to a sitting pope as a “theological wreck.” Moore took exception to some of Francis’ comments in a recent interview with La Repubblica magazine in Rome regarding how Christians should be engaging the world around them. Setting aside his initial tactlessness, I think Moore’s piece is reasonably thoughtful. Francis and Moore seem to have very different views of how evangelism is supposed to work. While I can... Read more
If you do right in order to be right, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. People whose lives are built around being right become bitter misanthropes like the ancient Pharisees of Jesus’ day. And the way that Christians today are often taught to understand agape love encourages this behavior. Specifically, agape love is often presented as a choice to love people who are unlovable. This is a gross misrepresentation. Agape is not our choice. Agape is God’s choice to... Read more
There’s one thing that makes me madder at God than anything else. It’s actually not when inexplicable tragedies happen or when people who prayed their hearts out lose their loved ones to diseases. Those things suck and are horrible. But what really threatens my faith more than anything is when well-meaning Christians who have devoted themselves to years of fasting and prayer end up making prophetic declarations that are monstrously at odds with the character of the God I have... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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