The Daily Office reading for yesterday was the opening of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. A single word appears 9 times in verses 3-7: παρακλησις, which can be translated as encouragement, comfort, or consolation. You may recall that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the παράκλητος (cognates as Paraclete) his speech to the disciples in John 14:16. In that context, the word is translated as intercessor or advocate in addition to comforter. So I thought it would be... Read more
There has been so much extra-Biblical speculation about the implications of the Garden of Eden story that it’s very hard to read the story on its own terms. When I was a kid, I couldn’t get over how ridiculous it was for God to be mad enough to burn billions of people in hell over a stupid apple. Well, it would be ridiculous if that were the truth. But if we read the actual text of Genesis 3, it offers... Read more
For this week’s Monday Merton, I am drawing from chapters 8 and 9 of No Man Is An Island. (more…) Read more
Those who have read this blog for a while will recall that about a year ago, God took me on a journey of exploring the Biblical concept of the fear of the Lord. The problem is that Christians conflate two different kinds of fear when talking about God: the Biblical sense of awe that compels our worship and the frightfulness which causes us to hide our sins and cling to idols. But I’ve also realized that fearing the Lord in... Read more
Our hymn of preparation at mass today was “The Church of Christ in Every Age.” Its first stanza does a great job of capturing the tension we face as an ancient faith guided by a living Spirit who is making all things new: The Church of Christ in every age beset by change but Spirit led must claim and test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead. (more…) Read more
[***UPDATE: I have not been able to find the original source for this quote. I had originally encountered it second-hand in social media. Gregory says something very similar but much less succinct in section 22 of his Second Paschal Oration here.] Today I encountered an awesome quote from Gregory of Nazianzus, a fourth century Christian theologian who was largely responsible for our understanding of Jesus being fully divine and fully human at the same time, which was established at the... Read more
Yesterday I got the audio from my bilingual sermon in the Dominican Republic. I had preached on Ephesians 4:17-24 and used the story of Pinocchio as an illustration of eternal life. I already shared a written summary. Here is the audio: Read more
My friend Jason Micheli blogged yesterday on the anxiety of parents whose kids have fallen away from Christianity. It’s a topic I often have in the back of my mind in confirmation season. One of the most painful statistic to look at for our church is the number of kids whose last Sunday in church was the day they were confirmed. We retain about a quarter to a third of the kids we confirm. We’ve tried a lot of different... Read more
For the past several months, I’ve been watching the conversation unfold as the evangelical feminist movement has declared war on the modesty culture that predominates fundamentalist churches where youth pastors and other church leaders enforce a strict dress code on teenage girls and teach them to take responsibility for protecting men from their lust. I came across a particularly heartbreaking example of a girl whose weight gain caused her youth leader to send her home from church for wearing jeans... Read more
Tomorrow night I will be starting a new sermon series at LifeSign called the Journey to Eternity. My hope is to offer a fresh perspective on eternal life that is more faithful to what the Bible actually teaches than the depictions of eternal life in popular Christian discourse which have created so many stumbling blocks for people who are seeking God’s truth with sincerity. (more…) Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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