Mercy Not Sacrifice
A facebook friend shared this meme. It’s scary how perfectly it captures a phenomenon in both the mainline and evangelical worlds alike which I’m going to call the idolatry of the mission statement. (more…) Read more
A facebook friend shared this meme. It’s scary how perfectly it captures a phenomenon in both the mainline and evangelical worlds alike which I’m going to call the idolatry of the mission statement. (more…) Read more
Postmodern thinkers sometimes settle for deconstructing the motives of their critics instead of making defensible arguments. Unfortunately, a recent Mere Orthodoxy piece exhibited this behavior, promising to explain why the American suburbs are a good, wholesome place, but focusing its energy on developing a caricature of suburbia’s critics as “urban gentry and intelligentsia.” I’ve used that rhetorical trick before: Bob criticizes X; Bob is a snobby aristocrat; therefore everyone who criticizes X is a snobby aristocrat. Well, I’m not an... Read more
It’s probably the most poignant scene in the original Star Wars movie. Obi-Wan has engaged Darth Vader in a fierce lightsaber duel to provide cover for Luke Skywalker and his friends to escape the Death Star. Luke looks over to his mentor; they lock eyes; Obi-Wan raises his saber to let Vader kill him; and Luke is left to figure out how to become a Jedi without his mentor. This weekend at our LifeSign contemporary service, we are talking about... Read more
It sounds like an ignorant hippie thing to say and the greatest possible contradiction. Eternity is a word for forever, for things of grave significance. A moment is definitively fleeting, unimportant. How could eternal and moment be used in the same sentence? And yet, this was the paradoxical insight shared in a video at our church men’s retreat last weekend by Ed Dobson, a famous pastor who has been living with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) since 2001. As Ed puts... Read more
God broke me today in a really good way. You see I’m a recovering cynic who relapses at least several dozen times a day. Nothing is more insufferable to me than an overly cheerful person. Somehow I’ve been programmed to presume that cheerful people are disingenuous. But then there’s my friend Beth Anderson who smiles more than just about anyone I know and is also absolutely genuine to the core. She preached a sermon to us at our provisional retreat... Read more
Recently I’ve found myself called into conversation with the new evangelical feminist movement that has blown up in the last few years. I consider myself an ally, a “man-feminist” if you will. I also consider myself a misogynist, or someone who sins uniquely against women because of things about my manhood. My own particular form of misogyny often manifests itself as my need to be recognized as the hero of Christian feminists everywhere, the anti-Driscoll (Give me my gold star... Read more
I’m pretty exhausted from having had two retreats back to back this weekend and preparing to head to my third, so it’s going to be a week in which I quote Merton without commentary. All of these quotes are from No Man Is An Island. (more…) Read more
The lectionary reading for last week was taken from Revelation 21-22 which describes the New Jerusalem at the end of John’s apocalyptic vision. A single verse in this reading completely debunks every irresponsible interpretation of Revelation by the doomsday-lusters and Left Behind series fans: Revelations 21:24 — “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of earth will bring their glory into it.” (more…) Read more
The Daily Office reading for today was Romans 14:13-23. I was particularly struck by verses 22-23: “The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith;for whatever does not proceed from faithis sin.” So basically Paul defines sin as “whatever does not proceed from faith.” But... Read more
I read a very disturbing post on Patheos by a woman named Libby Anne who grew up with parents who were influenced by the parenting philosophy of Michael and Debi Pearl. The Pearls are very popular in the homeschooling world; they could be described as an extreme version of Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson. The idea is that your most important task as a parent is to break the will of your child so that they will be... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In