{"id":13107,"date":"2014-12-31T18:22:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T23:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/?p=13107"},"modified":"2014-12-31T18:22:18","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T23:22:18","slug":"seven-posts-from-2014-that-i-wish-more-people-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2014\/12\/31\/seven-posts-from-2014-that-i-wish-more-people-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven posts from 2014 that I wish more people read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

ilouque, \"Found Blur Motion,\" Flickr C.C.<\/a>
ilouque, \u201cFound Blur Motion,\u201d Flickr C.C.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

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\u2019s 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\u2019re well-written or good teaching. So I wanted to go a different route and pick out seven of my pieces in which I really wanted to teach something, regardless of whether they did well or not, and give them a second chance to do some teaching.<\/p>\n

1) January 6, 2014: The difference between spiritual purity and moral cleanliness<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMoral cleanliness understands holiness as faithfully following God\u2019s rules and boundaries because it pleases God for us to follow His rules. Spiritual purity understands holiness as purging the competing passions and loyalties from our heart so that we can be purely devoted to God. I believe that Christian holiness is about spiritual purity, but many of my fellow evangelical Christians believe it\u2019s about moral cleanliness.\u201d<\/p>\n

2) February 22, 2014: Three highly ignored social teachings of the New Testament: Sabbath healings, circumcision, and unclean foods<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the main reasons that many Christians fall short who are earnestly seeking to live Biblical lives is their refusal to see legitimate analogies between issues of controversy in the time of the Bible\u2019s stories and our lives today. Most Christians completely miss the significance of three important social teachings in the New Testament because they deal with issues that were a huge deal in their day but are completely uncontroversial now: Sabbath healing, circumcision, and unclean food\u2026 We don\u2019t allow these three major New Testament controversies to teach us anything, because we\u2019re unwilling to recognize the deeper principles<\/em> they teach and apply these to the actual controversies of the faith in our day about which many Christians are every bit as tight-fisted and hard-hearted as the 1st century religious leaders who crucified Jesus and persecuted Paul.\u201d<\/p>\n

3) March 4, 2014: What is Biblical Obedience? Abraham, Huck Finn, and Adolf Eichmann<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe most radical example of Biblical obedience I can think of (other than Jesus\u2019 journey to the cross) is when God tests Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mt. Moriah. This story raises difficult questions. Is obedience always a good thing? How do we know whether we\u2019re obeying God or conforming to the world, particularly if our world happens to be saturated in church culture? How does Abraham\u2019s radical example translate into our day? Does it look more like Huck Finn\u2019s quest to free his friend Jim from slavery in rebellion against his cultural values or Adolf Eichmann\u2019s willingness to follow orders and carry out the genocide of the Jewish people?\u201d<\/p>\n

4) April 26, 2014: \u201cColor-blindness\u201d IS racism<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people today say they\u2019re racially \u2018color-blind,\u2019 they\u2019re usually making a very specific ideological statement, that they can rise above their cultural preferences\u2026 and judge all people \u201cequally\u201d regardless of skin-color and solely based on their \u2018merits.\u2019 Here\u2019s the very large unrecognized assumption that\u2019s being made here: that human worth can be boiled down to a single number <\/em>so that one person can be said to have \u2018more\u2019 merit than the next person. I imagine that most cultures throughout history would scratch their heads at the idea that people\u2019s identity can be reduced to a number\u2026 Objective meritocracy is the foundation of most of the systemic evils that Western European civilization has committed over the past 500 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

5) July 7, 2014: God\u2019s triune sovereignty as provider, victim, and rebel<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEven though Christians say propositionally<\/em> that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in practice many of us only relate to God as Father, that is, the all-powerful, completely in charge sovereign of the universe who implicitly endorses our power and privilege because of his uncomplicated omnipotence. I would contend that our conception of God\u2019s sovereignty needs to include the subversive ways in which God\u2019s reign dismantles our power and privilege through Jesus Christ as the crucified victim<\/em> of our sins and through the unpredictable rebel<\/em> wind that \u201cblows where it chooses\u201d which we call the Holy Spirit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

6) October 21, 2014: Where I\u2019m actually coming from as a progressive evangelical<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said before it\u2019s like having a garden with many amazingly nourishing plants that\u2019s been overtaken by poisonous weeds whose roots are incredibly difficult to find. I received so many good and valuable teachings from evangelicalism, but tangled up with them are poisonous ideas whose source is difficult to pin down\u2026 To be a progressive evangelical is to be someone in the process of furiously weeding your theological garden constantly second-guessing yourself but with a sense of urgency that seems to outweigh the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

7) November 7, 2014: Can God improvise outside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think God folds his arms and shuts off people who have unorthodox beliefs, but he tries to put the people and circumstances in their lives that will help them overcome the stumbling blocks in the unique spiritual journey that they\u2019re on\u2026\u00a0I believe that God is constantly improvising and revealing insights that help us get closer to him from where we are, even if we\u2019ve hit our theological golf ball way off the fairway into a sand-trap somewhere. And I\u2019ve also seen people with unorthodox beliefs being used powerfully by God.\u201d<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s no secret that in the blogosphere, the posts that do well are the controversial ones that strike a nerve in some kind of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1934,"featured_media":13109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15,23],"tags":[3151],"class_list":["post-13107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture_","category-politics","category-theology","tag-3151"],"yoast_head":"\nSeven posts from 2014 that I wish more people read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A lot of bloggers at the end of the year put out a list of their top-performing posts for people to read again. 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