We can make a choice to subvert our culture’s tendency to value property over people or even treat people as property, and instead place people before both profit and property. The power of this choice should not be underestimated. It is the very stuff that has the potential to change our world. Read more
We’ve been discussing the importance of listening to those on the margins of society and their experiences and wisdom. What follows is a result of doing just that in the context of the subject of nonviolence. Read more
But all of this drives home the point. This reformulation is the result of what the vulnerable see! Those in positions of privilege and power in our society are so indoctrinated and socialized that they don’t even see what is so wrong and dangerous about the traditional description of love-as-atoning sacrifice. Read more
We can listen to the most vulnerable. We can hear from their experiences whether or not our “revelations” or interpretations of sacred texts produce good fruit, whether interpretations are life-giving or oppressive to those on the margins. Read more
"Jesus was teaching the rejection of violent responses to this world’s evil. Yet he was not teaching that we should simply do nothing! Jesus was teaching nonviolent ways for oppressed people to take the initiative, to affirm their humanity, to expose and neutralize exploitative circumstances." Read more
It doesn’t matter the reason for subjugation or marginalization in domination systems. It’s not the reason for the exclusion that Jesus rejects, but the exclusion itself! Read more
Change doesn’t have to come through such violent upheaval. It could start today. Here. Now. With you and with me, if we will choose it. Read more
For many, only when they discover for themselves the Jesus in the story from the perspective of their own social location do they realize there is an alternative, story-Jesus that’s radically different than the Jesus they encountered in the religion that formed around him. Read more
I can’t help but notice that history is cyclical. We in our society today may be being faced with similar choices between what we have now and a path of nonviolence and resource-sharing. Read more
The Jesus we meet in the Jesus story resonated with the marginalized and oppressed of the 1st Century. It makes perfect sense that those who share that experience today will see within the Jesus story things that others in a more dominant social position will initially miss. Read more
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