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common, ordinary
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LETTERS FROM CELL 92: PART 6, "THE Letters from Cell 92: Part 6, "The Man for Others". Posted on 12.19.2010. We've made quite a journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological letters from prison. We began by considering the central, Christological preoccupation of the letters, and then moved through the three dominant themes of the letters: 1. The World Come of Age. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: BONHOEFFER'S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity. Posted on 10.10.2007. Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels"religionless
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCH AS MESH: A THOUGHT ON Over at the Daily Dish I saw this TED talk by Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, about Mesh businesses: Listening to the talk I was struck by the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing, allowing people to use my car when I'm not using it. It reminded me of my recent post regarding church giving, sharing and hospitality where I offered a few mesh-likeideas.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: GUTIÉRREZ ON JOB: PART 1 I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year. I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION OF EUNUCHS The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs. When thinking through how the prophets often reversed some of the Levitical code, consider the exclusion and inclusion of eunuchs. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TATTOOS AND SPIRITUALITY A study from 2006 found that 25% of people between ages of 18 and 50 have a tattoo. That number was up from 16% only three years earlier. Interestingly, a lot of this tattooing is being done by Christians who are using tattoos for spiritual purposes. Christians use all sorts of tattoos --Greek or Hebrew words, bible verses/references EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY Experimental Theologytrudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesusthe Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LESSONS LEARNED AT THE THRESHING Lessons Learned at the Threshing Floor of Araunah. In the prison bible study I lead we were going through 2 Samuel, which mainly recounts the reign of King David. The book of 2 Samuel ends with what many scholars call "appendices," bits of poetry and narrative that are tacked on to the end of the book. These appendices are found in 2 Samuel 21-24. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: WELCOME AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD Many would summarize the Kingdom vision with the word love. But love, as a word, has been distorted and diluted by overuse and misuse. Generally, love has gotten associated with feelings. But welcome is behavioral. It is an action. To welcome is to do something. In this, I think the vision of welcome is better than the more common, but less EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ON FOLK THEOLOGY On Folk Theology. One of the things that interests me most as a psychology of religion researcher is what we might call "folk theology." The word "folk" here is a reference to "the common people." So when we add "folk" in front of some academic discipline--folk psychology, folk philosophy, folk theology--we are speaking of howcommon, ordinary
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LETTERS FROM CELL 92: PART 6, "THE Letters from Cell 92: Part 6, "The Man for Others". Posted on 12.19.2010. We've made quite a journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological letters from prison. We began by considering the central, Christological preoccupation of the letters, and then moved through the three dominant themes of the letters: 1. The World Come of Age. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: BONHOEFFER'S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity. Posted on 10.10.2007. Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels"religionless
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCH AS MESH: A THOUGHT ON Over at the Daily Dish I saw this TED talk by Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, about Mesh businesses: Listening to the talk I was struck by the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing, allowing people to use my car when I'm not using it. It reminded me of my recent post regarding church giving, sharing and hospitality where I offered a few mesh-likeideas.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: GUTIÉRREZ ON JOB: PART 1 I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year. I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION OF EUNUCHS The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs. When thinking through how the prophets often reversed some of the Levitical code, consider the exclusion and inclusion of eunuchs. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TATTOOS AND SPIRITUALITY A study from 2006 found that 25% of people between ages of 18 and 50 have a tattoo. That number was up from 16% only three years earlier. Interestingly, a lot of this tattooing is being done by Christians who are using tattoos for spiritual purposes. Christians use all sorts of tattoos --Greek or Hebrew words, bible verses/references EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO: ON HURRY In 1973, John Darley and Daniel Batson published one of the most famous papers looking into helping behavior. The study was entitled From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. The Jerusalem to Jericho study was effectively a modern-day reenactment of the Parable of the GoodSamaritan.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ATTACHMENT TO GOD, PART 4: THE Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, tests of working model correspondence, and an exploration of faith group differences. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32, 92-103. We patterned the AGI off of a very popular adulthood attachment measure The Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR) developed by Brennan, Clark, andShaver.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: MEDITATIONS ON THE LITTLE WAY: PART Patricia, My apologies, but I did not communicate well my personal challenge of needing recognition and approval of others. I tend sometimes to become gloomy or passive-aggressive when I don't receive attention according to my self-expectations: in short, I resist the contentment graced to me through the small "deep down things" (as the poet Hopkins put it). EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TREAT THEM AS A PAGAN OR A TAX Treat Them as a Pagan or a Tax Collector. In Unclean I paint a picture of radical hospitality, a vision based on Jesus's own ministry of table fellowship with "tax collectors and sinners." And as I've made that argument people often point to passages in the bible that seem to push against that vision. One such passage comes from Matthew 18: EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: OPEN COMMUNION: WARNING! Open Communion: WARNING! Posted on 10.25.2012. Since the publication of Unclean I've continued, here on the blog, to expand upon my defense of open communion. And in making those arguments one text in particular comes up as a counterargument: 1 Corinthians 11.27-29. So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in anunworthy
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE HARROWING OF HELL The harrowing of hell refers to the events between Jesus' death and his resurrection. Specifically, the early church believed that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall. Jesus breaks down the doors of hell and leads the souls of the lost into heaven. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: DOWNWARD MOBILITY The great paradox which Scripture reveals to us is that real and total freedom is only found through downward mobility. The Word of God came down to us and lived among us as a slave. The divine way is indeed the downward way. This downward way, thus, marks the path of discipleship and interrupts the mythology of our culture: The disciple is the EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCHES OF CHRIST VERSUS In light of my last post--Four Reasons Why I'm Church of Christ--some of you wanted me to clarify the distinctions between the Churches of Christ and evangelicalism.Let me start with Dana's comment about Scot McKnight's definition of evangelicalism.According to McKnight evangelicalism is defined by four things: The centrality of the Bible. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: UNIVERSALISM: A SUMMARY DEFENSE I think the key for an evangelical examination of this issue is the question of whether hell has an exit. A "good" evangelical will probably have to concede that hell exists as some stort-of state of eschatological judgment (though not the Dante-esque ideas that were fostered on us in sermons) - but I don't think the same concessions have to be made as to whether it is a permanent state. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FRIDAYS WITH BENEDICT: CHAPTER 7 Fridays with Benedict: Chapter 7, The Ladder of Humility. In Chapter 7 of the Rule of St. Benedict --Humility--we encounter the famous ladder of humility, the twelve steps and stages that Benedict suggests mark the road to humility. 10 The first step of humility, then, is that a man keeps the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY Experimental Theologytrudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesusthe Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LESSONS LEARNED AT THE THRESHING Lessons Learned at the Threshing Floor of Araunah. In the prison bible study I lead we were going through 2 Samuel, which mainly recounts the reign of King David. The book of 2 Samuel ends with what many scholars call "appendices," bits of poetry and narrative that are tacked on to the end of the book. These appendices are found in 2 Samuel 21-24. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: WELCOME AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD Many would summarize the Kingdom vision with the word love. But love, as a word, has been distorted and diluted by overuse and misuse. Generally, love has gotten associated with feelings. But welcome is behavioral. It is an action. To welcome is to do something. In this, I think the vision of welcome is better than the more common, but less EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ON FOLK THEOLOGY On Folk Theology. One of the things that interests me most as a psychology of religion researcher is what we might call "folk theology." The word "folk" here is a reference to "the common people." So when we add "folk" in front of some academic discipline--folk psychology, folk philosophy, folk theology--we are speaking of howcommon, ordinary
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO: ON HURRY In 1973, John Darley and Daniel Batson published one of the most famous papers looking into helping behavior. The study was entitled From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. The Jerusalem to Jericho study was effectively a modern-day reenactment of the Parable of the GoodSamaritan.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: GUTIÉRREZ ON JOB: PART 1 I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year. I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: OPEN COMMUNION: WARNING! Open Communion: WARNING! Posted on 10.25.2012. Since the publication of Unclean I've continued, here on the blog, to expand upon my defense of open communion. And in making those arguments one text in particular comes up as a counterargument: 1 Corinthians 11.27-29. So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in anunworthy
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCH AS MESH: A THOUGHT ON Over at the Daily Dish I saw this TED talk by Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, about Mesh businesses: Listening to the talk I was struck by the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing, allowing people to use my car when I'm not using it. It reminded me of my recent post regarding church giving, sharing and hospitality where I offered a few mesh-likeideas.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: BONHOEFFER'S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity. Posted on 10.10.2007. Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels"religionless
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION OF EUNUCHS The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs. When thinking through how the prophets often reversed some of the Levitical code, consider the exclusion and inclusion of eunuchs. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY Experimental Theologytrudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesusthe Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LESSONS LEARNED AT THE THRESHING Lessons Learned at the Threshing Floor of Araunah. In the prison bible study I lead we were going through 2 Samuel, which mainly recounts the reign of King David. The book of 2 Samuel ends with what many scholars call "appendices," bits of poetry and narrative that are tacked on to the end of the book. These appendices are found in 2 Samuel 21-24. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: WELCOME AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD Many would summarize the Kingdom vision with the word love. But love, as a word, has been distorted and diluted by overuse and misuse. Generally, love has gotten associated with feelings. But welcome is behavioral. It is an action. To welcome is to do something. In this, I think the vision of welcome is better than the more common, but less EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ON FOLK THEOLOGY On Folk Theology. One of the things that interests me most as a psychology of religion researcher is what we might call "folk theology." The word "folk" here is a reference to "the common people." So when we add "folk" in front of some academic discipline--folk psychology, folk philosophy, folk theology--we are speaking of howcommon, ordinary
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO: ON HURRY In 1973, John Darley and Daniel Batson published one of the most famous papers looking into helping behavior. The study was entitled From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. The Jerusalem to Jericho study was effectively a modern-day reenactment of the Parable of the GoodSamaritan.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: GUTIÉRREZ ON JOB: PART 1 I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year. I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: OPEN COMMUNION: WARNING! Open Communion: WARNING! Posted on 10.25.2012. Since the publication of Unclean I've continued, here on the blog, to expand upon my defense of open communion. And in making those arguments one text in particular comes up as a counterargument: 1 Corinthians 11.27-29. So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in anunworthy
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCH AS MESH: A THOUGHT ON Over at the Daily Dish I saw this TED talk by Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, about Mesh businesses: Listening to the talk I was struck by the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing, allowing people to use my car when I'm not using it. It reminded me of my recent post regarding church giving, sharing and hospitality where I offered a few mesh-likeideas.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: BONHOEFFER'S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity. Posted on 10.10.2007. Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels"religionless
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION OF EUNUCHS The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs. When thinking through how the prophets often reversed some of the Levitical code, consider the exclusion and inclusion of eunuchs. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ON FOLK THEOLOGY On Folk Theology. One of the things that interests me most as a psychology of religion researcher is what we might call "folk theology." The word "folk" here is a reference to "the common people." So when we add "folk" in front of some academic discipline--folk psychology, folk philosophy, folk theology--we are speaking of howcommon, ordinary
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: WELCOME AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD Many would summarize the Kingdom vision with the word love. But love, as a word, has been distorted and diluted by overuse and misuse. Generally, love has gotten associated with feelings. But welcome is behavioral. It is an action. To welcome is to do something. In this, I think the vision of welcome is better than the more common, but less EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: N.T. WRIGHT ON THE SECOND COMING OF Wright argues that the answer is found in Mark 13. In Mark 13 Jesus again speaks of this "second coming": and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of theearth to the
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ATTACHMENT TO GOD, PART 4: THE Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, tests of working model correspondence, and an exploration of faith group differences. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32, 92-103. We patterned the AGI off of a very popular adulthood attachment measure The Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR) developed by Brennan, Clark, andShaver.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: MEDITATIONS ON THE LITTLE WAY: PART Patricia, My apologies, but I did not communicate well my personal challenge of needing recognition and approval of others. I tend sometimes to become gloomy or passive-aggressive when I don't receive attention according to my self-expectations: in short, I resist the contentment graced to me through the small "deep down things" (as the poet Hopkins put it). EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO SPIRITUAL We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lackThis internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life. One of the biggest obstacles to spiritual formation is this "reverie of lack," especially a felt lack of EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: NOAH, THE NEPHILIM AND THE The descendants of Seth are the good bloodline and the descendants of Cain are the bad bloodline. One sign you get of this has to do with the 7th descendent in each line. The 7th descendant on Seth's side is Enoch who we are told "walked with God" and who did not die but was "taken away by God." By contrast, the 7th descendant on Cain's side is EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCHES OF CHRIST VERSUS In light of my last post--Four Reasons Why I'm Church of Christ--some of you wanted me to clarify the distinctions between the Churches of Christ and evangelicalism.Let me start with Dana's comment about Scot McKnight's definition of evangelicalism.According to McKnight evangelicalism is defined by four things: The centrality of the Bible. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LETTERS FROM CELL 92: PART 6, "THE Letters from Cell 92: Part 6, "The Man for Others". Posted on 12.19.2010. We've made quite a journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological letters from prison. We began by considering the central, Christological preoccupation of the letters, and then moved through the three dominant themes of the letters: 1. The World Come of Age. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TATTOOS AND SPIRITUALITY A study from 2006 found that 25% of people between ages of 18 and 50 have a tattoo. That number was up from 16% only three years earlier. Interestingly, a lot of this tattooing is being done by Christians who are using tattoos for spiritual purposes. Christians use all sorts of tattoos --Greek or Hebrew words, bible verses/references EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY The Ethos of the Extraordinary answered that all that a person can do is to enlarge that life by the only means we have, striving to make of it a thing worth the telling, a thing that will have an impact on other minds, so that, being replicated there, it will take on amoreness. Kleos.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LESSONS LEARNED AT THE THRESHING Lessons Learned at the Threshing Floor of Araunah. In the prison bible study I lead we were going through 2 Samuel, which mainly recounts the reign of King David. The book of 2 Samuel ends with what many scholars call "appendices," bits of poetry and narrative that are tacked on to the end of the book. These appendices are found in 2 Samuel 21-24. THE BROKEN SIGNPOSTS OF N.T. WRIGHT: PART 1, NATURAL THEOLOGY In 2018 N.T. Wright delivered the Gifford Lectures, subsequently published in the book History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology.I'd like to devote a series to Wright's proposal about what he calls "the broken signposts" in human life. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO: ON HURRY In 1973, John Darley and Daniel Batson published one of the most famous papers looking into helping behavior. The study was entitled From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. The Jerusalem to Jericho study was effectively a modern-day reenactment of the Parable of the GoodSamaritan.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: GUTIÉRREZ ON JOB: PART 1 I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year. I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCH AS MESH: A THOUGHT ON Over at the Daily Dish I saw this TED talk by Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, about Mesh businesses: Listening to the talk I was struck by the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing, allowing people to use my car when I'm not using it. It reminded me of my recent post regarding church giving, sharing and hospitality where I offered a few mesh-likeideas.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCHES OF CHRIST VERSUS In light of my last post--Four Reasons Why I'm Church of Christ--some of you wanted me to clarify the distinctions between the Churches of Christ and evangelicalism.Let me start with Dana's comment about Scot McKnight's definition of evangelicalism.According to McKnight evangelicalism is defined by four things: The centrality of the Bible. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TREAT THEM AS A PAGAN OR A TAX Treat Them as a Pagan or a Tax Collector. In Unclean I paint a picture of radical hospitality, a vision based on Jesus's own ministry of table fellowship with "tax collectors and sinners." And as I've made that argument people often point to passages in the bible that seem to push against that vision. One such passage comes from Matthew 18: EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: BONHOEFFER'S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity. Posted on 10.10.2007. Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels"religionless
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION OF EUNUCHS The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs. When thinking through how the prophets often reversed some of the Levitical code, consider the exclusion and inclusion of eunuchs. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY Related to the Constantinian heresy is the Christian relationship to killing and war. Specifically, if we're looking for the "real" Christianity, to see if the taproot of the faith is good or bad, then we have to examine the earliest centuries of the church, from the New Testament writers up to EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: LESSONS LEARNED AT THE THRESHING Lessons Learned at the Threshing Floor of Araunah. In the prison bible study I lead we were going through 2 Samuel, which mainly recounts the reign of King David. The book of 2 Samuel ends with what many scholars call "appendices," bits of poetry and narrative that are tacked on to the end of the book. These appendices are found in 2 Samuel 21-24. THE BROKEN SIGNPOSTS OF N.T. WRIGHT: PART 1, NATURAL THEOLOGY In 2018 N.T. Wright delivered the Gifford Lectures, subsequently published in the book History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology.I'd like to devote a series to Wright's proposal about what he calls "the broken signposts" in human life. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FROM JERUSALEM TO JERICHO: ON HURRY In 1973, John Darley and Daniel Batson published one of the most famous papers looking into helping behavior. The study was entitled From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. The Jerusalem to Jericho study was effectively a modern-day reenactment of the Parable of the GoodSamaritan.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: GUTIÉRREZ ON JOB: PART 1 I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year. I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCH AS MESH: A THOUGHT ON Over at the Daily Dish I saw this TED talk by Lisa Gansky, author of The Mesh, about Mesh businesses: Listening to the talk I was struck by the idea of peer-to-peer car sharing, allowing people to use my car when I'm not using it. It reminded me of my recent post regarding church giving, sharing and hospitality where I offered a few mesh-likeideas.
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: CHURCHES OF CHRIST VERSUS In light of my last post--Four Reasons Why I'm Church of Christ--some of you wanted me to clarify the distinctions between the Churches of Christ and evangelicalism.Let me start with Dana's comment about Scot McKnight's definition of evangelicalism.According to McKnight evangelicalism is defined by four things: The centrality of the Bible. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TREAT THEM AS A PAGAN OR A TAX Treat Them as a Pagan or a Tax Collector. In Unclean I paint a picture of radical hospitality, a vision based on Jesus's own ministry of table fellowship with "tax collectors and sinners." And as I've made that argument people often point to passages in the bible that seem to push against that vision. One such passage comes from Matthew 18: EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: BONHOEFFER'S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer's Religionless Christianity. Posted on 10.10.2007. Toward the end of his life, while in a Nazi prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote some tantalizing letters to his friend Eberhad Bethage. In some of these letters Bonhoeffer wrestles with a notion he labels"religionless
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION OF EUNUCHS The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs. When thinking through how the prophets often reversed some of the Levitical code, consider the exclusion and inclusion of eunuchs. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the LORD. If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE LORD OF The Gospel According to the Lord of the Rings: Week 3, A Lower Anthropology. Last week we talked about one of two contrasts Fleming Rutledge makes between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That contrast was between chance and providence. In The Hobbit, Bilbo's fate seems to be driven by good fortune. In The Lord of the Rings thatelement of
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: TREAT THEM AS A PAGAN OR A TAX Treat Them as a Pagan or a Tax Collector. In Unclean I paint a picture of radical hospitality, a vision based on Jesus's own ministry of table fellowship with "tax collectors and sinners." And as I've made that argument people often point to passages in the bible that seem to push against that vision. One such passage comes from Matthew 18: EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: WEIRD (WESTERN, EDUCATED The core argument of the paper, based upon cross-cultural results examining how people play the Ultimatum Game or experience optical illusions, is that Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) people are, well, weird when compared to the rest of the world. From Adam McDowell's National Post article about thisresearch:
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE HARROWING OF HELL The harrowing of hell refers to the events between Jesus' death and his resurrection. Specifically, the early church believed that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall. Jesus breaks down the doors of hell and leads the souls of the lost into heaven. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO SPIRITUAL We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lackThis internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life. One of the biggest obstacles to spiritual formation is this "reverie of lack," especially a felt lack of EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ON PRETERISM, THE SECOND COMING AND On Preterism, the Second Coming and Hell. Posted on 6.24.2014. When it comes to eschatology my faith tradition, the Churches of Christ, has leaned heavily toward preterism. According to preterism almost all end-times prophecy in the bible is referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. I say "almost all" end-times prophecy as there is EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FRIDAYS WITH BENEDICT: CHAPTER 7 Fridays with Benedict: Chapter 7, The Ladder of Humility. In Chapter 7 of the Rule of St. Benedict --Humility--we encounter the famous ladder of humility, the twelve steps and stages that Benedict suggests mark the road to humility. 10 The first step of humility, then, is that a man keeps the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: FAITH AS QUANTUM SUPERPOSITION Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that holds that a physical system—such as an electron— exists partly in all its particular theoretically possible states simultaneously; but when measured or observed, it gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible configuration. EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY: ELIZABETH SMART AND THE PSYCHOLOGY Reflecting on her experience of rape by her abductor, and on why many victims stay with their abusers, Elizabeth made a connection with the Christian purity culture. Specifically, Elizabeth noted that, because of the sexual abuse she endured, she “felt HEAD COVERINGS IN WORSHIP: WHY FEMALE HAIR IS A TESTICLE A woman has a lot of hair on her head so that, when sperm enters her body during intercourse, the hair can suck the sperm upward and into her body. For the man the goal is to pull the sperm down and out of the body. The testicles were believed to be "weights" that helped exert this downward pull. What all this means is that, according tothe
EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY ...TRUDGING INTO THE DISTANCE IN THE BLEEDING STINKING MAD SHADOW OF JESUS...THE LORD OUT OF DUST HAD CREATED HIM, HAD MADE HIM BLOOD AND NERVE AND MIND, HAD MADE HIM TO BLEED AND WEEP AND THINK, AND SET HIM IN A WORLD OF LOSS AND FIRE... --FLANNERY O'CONNOR MY OLD FRIEND LUCIFER CAME / FOUGHT TO KEEP ME IN CHAINS / BUT I SAW THROUGH THE TRICKS / OF SIX-SIXTY-SIX --JOHNNY CASHSearch
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THE DIVINE COMEDY: WEEK 35, LAZY LOVEPosted on 9.27.2019
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To recap, since it's been a few weeks. A theory of love plays out upon the slopes of Mount Purgatory in _The Divine Comedy_. According Dante, our loves go bad in one of three ways. We've already talked about two of these. The first way love can go bad is loving a bad thing. This love is purified on the lowest slopes of Mt. Purgatory. The second way love can go bad is loving a good thing too much. This love is purified on the uppermost slopes of Mt. Purgatory. And in the middle of Mt. Purgatory, between the loves we've just described, is found the third way our love can go bad. We can love a good thing too little. Loving a good thing too little, a love that is lazy, is identified with the Deadly Sin of sloth in _The Divine Comedy_. Dante describes the sin of sloth as love that is "lukewarm." This may come as a surprise, but this part of _The Divine Comedy_ is why I'm blogging about it. The sin of sloth is the part of the _Comedy_ that most captured my attention, shook me up, and convictedme.
Why?
Well, when I looked at the loves being purified on Mt. Purgatory, I really didn't resonate or see much of myself in the bad loves found on the lowest and highest slopes, loving a bad thing or loving a good thing too much. To be clear, I do struggle with these sorts of temptations. But what really struck me as I ascended Mt. Purgatory with Virgil and the Pilgrim, was not how I love bad things or good things too much. What struck me is how _lazy_ and _lukewarm_ my love often is, how I don't love the good things in my life as well or as much as I should. Of all the Deadly Sins, I felt sloth best describedme.
I love Jana, my wife. But my struggle in my marriage isn't that I love Jana too much. No, I wish I loved her _better_. My love for her can be sluggish at times, procrastinating, slow, and lazy in many places. The same goes with my being a father. I love my boys so much, just like I love Jana, but I can get lazy as a Dad. I don't love my boys too much, I wish I loved them better. And the list goes on, even with my love for God. My love for God can get lazy and lukewarm. That's my sin. Sloth. I am a lazy lover, not loving the good things in my life with as much energy, passion, attention, and commitment as Ishould.
It was the sluggishness of my heart that struck me so powerfully when I read _The Divine Comedy_.Discussion
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FAITH LIES (WITH DARRELL SMITH): LIE #5, THERE IS ONE RIGHT WAY TO BELIEVE AND ONE RIGHT WAY TO BEHAVEPosted on 9.26.2019
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Continuing our Thursday series with Darrell Smith, sharing from his book Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How toSee Beyond Them
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FAITH LIES WITH DARRELL SMITH Lie #5: There is One Right Way to Believe and One Right Way to Behave Are Orthodox Jews more right than Reform Jews? Is Christianity more right than Judaism? Is Catholicism more right than Protestantism? Is one Protestant denomination more right than the rest? Is baptism by immersion more correct than baptism by sprinkling? Does a Greek Orthodox worship service provide access to the divine that a Baptist worship service does not? Is there one correct way to observe communion? Are certain methods of prayer more right and true than others? We can probably all think of people who could answer those questions with resounding certainty. We may even be those people. I certainly have Orthodox Jewish friends who believe that their embrace of the Jewish faith is truer than that of their Reform brothers and sisters. Likewise, I have Catholic friends who are convinced that all Protestants must return to the Mother Church and Protestant friends who sit in judgment of the Catholic Church. In my hometown, it is easy to find someone who “knows” a certain mode of baptism is the only true baptism—or that a specific style of worship is God’spreferred style.
All of these questions and thoughts can be summed up with two words: orthodoxy—correct belief and orthopraxy—correct behavior andpractice.
Whether we admit it or not, we answer or avoid the kinds of questions drummed up by orthodoxy and orthopraxy everyday. What do we believe? How do we behave? The nightly news always contains stories of some group of people somewhere fighting or defending a religious or spiritual principle. Those people—just like most of us—have arrived at an interpretive decision. They have decided that the orthodox version of their faith requires them to believe something, do something, defend something, refuse something, and in the most tragic but all-too-common expression, to attack something. Is it possible that we have completely misunderstood orthodoxy andorthopraxy?
Is it possible we are all part of a diverse creation that flows from a God that cannot be contained by any one belief or behavior? Next week, Faith Lie #6 – Faith is a Private MatterDiscussion
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JOSEPH AND JESUS: PART 5, YOU INTENDED EVIL, BUT GOD INTENDED GOODPosted on 9.25.2019
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This will be our last post drawing out Christological themes in the Joseph narrative, leaning upon Walter Brueggemann's commentary onGenesis
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We've talked about the themes of betrayal, passion, death and resurrection, all culminating in a grace and forgiveness that breaks with the past to give birth to a new future. Our last observation is how the actors in the human drama, intent on doing evil, are used by God for creative, redemptive purposes. God plays a very long game in the Joseph narrative. Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery, expecting to never hear from him again. It's awicked, evil act.
And yet, many years later, that evil act becomes the means of their salvation and deliverance. Ruling in Egypt, Joseph finds himself positioned to save his family from starvation. The covenantal promises that God made to Abraham are about to die, but God makes a way toward life. God uses the wicked, evil act to restore, deliver and save. And save not just this one family, but all nations who will one day be blessed through this family. As Joseph declares to his brothers (Genesis 50.20): > You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish > what is now being done, the saving of many lives. The Christological parallels should be obvious. What humanity did to Jesus upon the cross was a wicked, evil thing. But what we intended for evil, God intended for good in order to accomplish what is now being done. The saving of many lives.Discussion
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JOSEPH AND JESUS: PART 4, RISK, PASSION AND INVOLVEMENTPosted on 9.24.2019
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We've mainly been talking about the motifs of resurrection in the Joseph narrative, but there's also aspects that point to the passionin the gospels.
We've already mentioned a bit of this, how both Joseph and Jesus are betrayed and abandoned by their brothers (familial brothers in the case of Joseph, and kingdom brothers in the case of Jesus). And that rift wounds and hurts. Both Jesus and Joseph shed tears. Jesus in Gethsemane, and Joseph when he encounters his brothers again. To be clear, I'm aware that the tears don't come in the same places in the story for both Joseph and Jesus. The point is the deep _pathos_ of each story. Neither story is stoical or a narrative of resignation.There is _feeling_.
As Brueggemann writes about the tears in the Joseph story around his disclosure to his brothers: > The narrative asserts the Joseph can speak a word which creates > newness...In this speech of Joseph, the power of the conspiracy of > chapter 37 is broken. The break with the awful deed comes in the > lordly speech. But this regal speech is based on the flood of > passion...Joseph's speech is filled with passion....The point is a > central one in biblical faith: The power to create newness does not > come from detachment, but from risky, self-disclosing engagement. Again, the parallels with the passion of Jesus are striking. The pathos of God that is "the power to create newness does not come from detachment, but from risky, self-disclosing engagement."Discussion
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JOSEPH AND JESUS: PART 3, A BREAK WITH THE PASTPosted on 9.23.2019
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When the forgiving victim returns to speak a word of grace a break with the past occurs. When Joseph forgives his brothers he refuses to reenact the past, refuses to pay back an eye for an eye, refuses to seek revenge and retaliation. Grace breaks with the violent past to open up the possibility of a new future, a future predicated on love rather than blood. Brueggemann describes this in the Joseph narrative: > had yet to discover that assertion > was a complete break with the past. They feared that the live Joseph > would exploit and act out the past...But Joseph does not. He breaks > that past. He invites his brothers to put that pitiful past behind > them...Joseph opens to them another future. > self-announcement in regal language is a beginning with new > possibility. The new possibility does not come from anything done by > the brothers. It is, rather, a gift wrapped in the speech of their> brother.
What we see playing out here with Joseph on a small, intimate, and domestic scale plays out with Jesus on a cosmic, universal scale. In Jesus's act of forgiveness, in dying for the sins of the world, his word of grace decisively breaks the past, opening up a new future forthe world.
In Jesus, the cycle of violence comes to an end and the possibility of a new world opens up before us.Discussion
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FOLLOW BY EMAIL
Posted on 9.20.2019
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We'll get back to Dante next week. Today a bit of housekeeping. For a few years people have asked me to add a "subscribe by email" feature to the blog. Whenever I've poked around Blogger in the past I could never see an easy-to-add widget for this. And since I'm generally indifferent and apathetic about making it easy for people to find, follow, share, or read my blog, there I let the matter sit. Well, after another nudge from a friend this week I took another look at the widgets available on Blogger. And there it was: emailsubscription!
So, at the homepage of the blog, where you see the
sidebar on the right, at the top of the sidebar is a place where you can subscribe to the blog via email. Let me know if you use it andhave any issues.
And if this is something you've been wishing for, well, "You're Welcome!" True, it goes against my blogging philosophy to make this blog easy and accessible, I still like to keep things simple, primitive, and advertisement-free here on Blogger, but sometimes you just have to give the people what they want. See you next week, perhaps now in your Inbox!Discussion
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FAITH LIES (WITH DARRELL SMITH): LIE # 4, I AM SUPPOSED TO PROTECT AND DEFEND GOD AND MY FAITHPosted on 9.19.2019
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Continuing our Thursday series with Darrell Smith, sharing from his book Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How toSee Beyond Them
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FAITH LIES WITH DARRELL SMITH Lie #4: I Am Supposed to Protect and Defend God and My Faith Shortly before his death, renowned theoretical physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking gave an interview to the Spanish paper _El Mundo_. In that interview, Hawking stated, “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t.” Bam! That is one of those drop-the-microphone-and-leave-the-room quotes, isn’t it? There was no uncertainty, no ambiguity. “There is no God. See ya later, Hawking out.” What are we supposed to do with that? One of the most intelligent thinkers to ever live said that science proves that God is not real. What does that do to you? What is welling up inside of your gut? Do you feel yourself beginning to perform mental gymnastics to make Hawking’s thoughts jive with your own? Maybe not. Maybe you feel your mind throwing up a wall to keep such arguments out. Maybe you find it easier just to dismiss Dr. Hawking as a lost soul who didn’t really know what he was talking about. Do you want to argue with Dr. Hawking? Do you want to forget about him? Do you want to prove thatGod does exist?
If I’m honest with myself, I can admit that I have felt all of these responses at different times when I am faced with people, opinions, and worldviews that do not seem to fit into my understanding. As strange as it may seem, it is in our reaction to this benign story where we find our next lie—the idea that we, in some way, are responsible for defending or protecting God—that we need to be able to explain God and prove God in any situation at any time. Let’s state some truths clearly in the first person: * I am not responsible for defending or protecting God—and that is a good thing because I need God to defend and protect me. * God will not falter or disappear if I do not argue correctly, fight for, or stand up in the name of God—and that is a good thing because if God could falter or disappear, God wouldn’t be much of aGod.
* God does not need my protection or defense—and that is a good thing because if God did need my protection or defense, we would bothbe screwed.
Explore these statements and expose the incomplete and unhelpful idea that God needs our defense in Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How to See Beyond Them.
Next week, Faith Lie #5 – There is One Right Way to Believe and One Right Way to Behave.Discussion
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JOSEPH AND JESUS: PART 2, THE FORGIVING VICTIMPosted on 9.18.2019
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So, both Joseph and Jesus come back from the dead to face again thosewho betrayed them.
Now, we've been conditioned to view this return as "good news," but the fact of the matter is that we would be terrified to face a person whom we've betrayed and abandoned. In short, the resurrection event initially engenders fear and the anticipation of punishment and judgment. We expect the victim to return with vengeance on his mind. That's certainly what Joseph's brothers expect. And fear was the first reaction upon the news of Jesus' resurrection. But in both instances, the victim doesn't seek revenge. Rather, the victim returns and speaks a forgiving word. Joseph to his brothers, and Jesus to his disciples. Here's how Walter Brueggemann describes Joseph's disclosure to this brothers and makes a parallel with the gospels: > The key fact in the life of this family is that they must live now > with the reality of a live, powerful, ruling Joseph... terror > and astonishment of the brothers is not unlike that of the early > church with the disclosure of the live Jesus...>
> put them in grave danger. The > wrath of their now powerful brother is imminent. But the response of > Joseph is not the expected one. Instead of a response that depends > on the past estrangement, his fresh speech concerns something new: > 'Do not be dismayed...Do not be angry with yourselves...for God sent> me...'
In the same way, Jesus appears to his disciples and says, "Peace." Or, in the language of Hebrews, the blood of Jesus speaks "a better word" than the blood of Abel. Instead of a word of vengeance, we get aword of mercy.
Discussion
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ON FREEDOM AND UNIVERSAL SALVATIONPosted on 9.17.2019
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Related to yesterday's post about David Bentley Hart's book That AllShall Be Saved
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below is a reworked post from six years ago, giving newer readers a taste of how I've argued for universal reconciliation. The big point of the post below is how to square universal reconciliation with human freedom. For a lot of people, that's the big sticking point. An appeal to human freedom sits at the heart of many arguments for eternal conscious torment, but it also sits at the heart of a view called "conditionalism" or "separatism," the view of hell espoused by C.S. Lewis and dramatized in The Great Divorceand Rob
Bell in his book Love Wins.
Using _Love Wins_ and C.S. Lewis as points of contrast (and to be clear, I'm a huge fan of both Lewis and Rob), what follows is a meditation on love, freedom, and salvation: When _Love Wins_ came out many pointed out that what Rob Bell was saying wasn't new. _Love Wins_ was sharing the view famously espoused by C.S. Lewis. Specifically, God's love wins _because God respects human freedom_, not because everyone, eventually, is reconciled to God. C.S. Lewis famously phrased the notion this way: The doors of hell are locked, but they are locked from the inside. We banish _ourselves_ from heaven, not God. The idea here is that God never forecloses on salvation. Not now, not ever. But humans, exercising their freedom, can turn away from God and keep turning away. Perhapsfor eternity.
Here are selections from _Love Wins_ where Rob Bell is walking through this conditionalistic, separatist vision of "love winning"_:_ > If we want hell, > if we want heaven,> they are ours.
> That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. > It always leaves room for the other to decide.> God says yes,
> we can have what we want, > because love wins.>
> ... Now back to that original question: "Does God get what God > wants?" is a good question, an interesting question, an important > question that gives us much to discuss.>
> But there's a better question, one we can answer...It's not "Does > God get what God wants?"> but
> "Do we get what we want?" > And the answer to that is a resounding, affirming, sure and positive> yes.
> Yes, we get what we want. > God is that loving.>
> If we want isolation, despair, and the right to be our own god, God > graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our > God-given power and strength to make the world in our own image, God > allows us that freedom; we have the kind of license to that. If we > want nothing to do with light, hope, love, grace, and peace, God > respects that desire on our part, and we are given a life free from > any of those realities. The more we want nothing to do with all God > is, the more distance and space are created. If we want nothing to > do with love, we are given a reality free from love. The specific issue I'd like to assess in this vision, and with conditionalism/separatism generally, is the regulating notion that _love requires freedom_. Love wins, not because we all get to heaven, but because we all get what we want. Love _wins_ because love allows us _freedom_. So even if someone is separated from God, perhaps for all eternity, that is a win for love. Because you are getting what youwant.
You don't want God and walk away.God allows this.
So love wins.
Let's think about that. Love, according to conditionalism/separatism, allows people to walk away from God. More, Love allows people to keep walking. Toward what? Away from "light, hope, love, grace, and peace." So this passage in _Love Wins_ asks us to imagine Love allowing people to walk deeper into darkness, despair, hate, revenge, and violence. To get a sense of this, imagine the horrors, depravity and bestiality of war. And then keep multiplying that. We imagine Love allowing people to walk deeper and deeper into that? The question all this raises is if a loving God would allow that descent into madness to happen. The response, I'm guessing, comes back to the issue of freedom. What, it might be asked, am I suggesting? That God thwart our choices and corral us, against our will, into heaven? That seems to be the key idea driving Rob's and Lewis' vision: Love requires freedom. This is how love "wins." As _Love Wins _says, "That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for theother to decide."
It's at this point I'd like to push back with a little psychology, because I think the notion of freedom at work in conditionalism/separatism is flawed. At root, our psychological experience of freedom is comprised of two things: 1) Self-authorship/ownership and 2) Choice/caring congruence. We feel free when we "own" our decisions and actions. When I scratch my nose I feel that I "own" (i.e., willed) the entire action. This sense of ownership helps create a feeling of self-authorship. I am writing, with my decisions, the story of my life. We know this experience of "ownership" is a feeling because there are situations when this feeling can become suspended. Hypnosis and disassociation are examples. In such cases my motor cortex is activated--I'm doing things--but I don't feel the actions are "mine." The second part of the feeling of freedom involves choice/caring congruence. When our choices align with what we want or care about we feel a sense of inner harmony and freedom. I'm doing what I want to do. Harry Frankfurt calls this volitional unanimity. Everything within me "agrees." Desire, choice and behavior are aligned. (Programming note: I use the word "volitional" a lot in what follows. "Volitional" means "pertaining to the will.") Feelings of "unfreedom" occur when we are forced, say, at the point of a gun, to do something that is misaligned with what we care about. We are doing something we don't want to do. The point-of-a-gun example seems obvious enough when we think of external compulsion. But the compulsions can be internal as well. Psychosis, obsessive-compulsions, and addictions are all examples of states where people feel internally overthrown or coerced. But these are really just extreme example of what Paul describes in Romans 7, doing things we don't really want to do. Paul describes this lack of volitional harmony as being "wretched." It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel free. We feel internally betrayed and coerced, "against our will" as it were. All this describes our inner experience of freedom. Freedom--call it free will or voluntary behavior--is the experience of self-authorship and inner unanimity. Let's now go back to Rob Bell's statement: "That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide." As it stands, this assessment is totally non-controversial. Love doesn't put a gun to your head. Love doesn't force, manipulate, or coerce. In short, God wants our choices to be voluntary. God wants us to "own" the decision. God wants us to "want" the decision. But here's the critical issue at this point, an issue that many who make strong appeals to human freedom against universalism regularly overlook. As we've just noted, _more than mere choice is involved in creating the experience of freedom_. For a feeling of freedom to exist we need choice/caring congruence. Suddenly, this freedom thing is looking a bit more complicated. Freedom isn't simply the absence of external coercion. Freedom is about getting our choices to align with our affections and desires. God abandoning us to our choices isn't freedom. It's a lack of coercion, to be sure. But that's a very thin view of freedom, love andchoice.
Let me try to illustrate this by taking on a sacred cow. You often hear preachers say, "Love is a choice." This is wrong. Love is fundamentally about _caring_. To be clear, I'm not saying that love is a _fleeting_ feeling. I'm saying that love is _a deeply rootedaffection_.
What is remarkable is that everyone knows this already. So it's a testimony to how strange things have become that I have to spend words convincing people to stop and note how very strange and inhuman is the "love is a choice" formulation. Just think of someone you love (I've got my sons in my mind) and ask yourself: What best describes your experience of love toward these people? Choice? Or a deeply rootedaffection?
I don't know about you, but I don't wake up and "choose" to love my sons. No, I wake up and feel a deeply rooted affection. To be sure, those affections affect my choices and decisions. And that's going to be my final point in all this. _Caring drives choice_. I make loving _choices_ because I _care_ about my boys. I don't choose to care about my boys so that I can make loving choices. That'sbackward.
>
Given what I've sketched above, let's return to the view of freedom at the root of _Love Wins_ and conditionalism/separatism. What's the problem with C.S. Lewis' and Rob Bell's view of love and freedom? On the one hand, the notion that Love isn't going to force or coerce anyone into heaven is perfectly true. I totally agree. But there's something problematic if this is all we mean by "freedom," God just leaving us to our choices. Again, freedom isn't just about choices. Freedom about something deeper and more complex. Freedom has to be about what we care about. Freedom has to be about love. I think Augustine was pointing to this when he said that all our little loves are shadowy and incomplete until they fully rest in the Love of God. "Our hearts are restless," he famously wrote, "until they rest in Thee." Our affections are broken and scattered. Our loves are all pointed in the wrong direction. And due to that disarray our choices become sinful and self-defeating. With our affections broken our choices are broken. Here the deep problem with conditionalism/separatism comes into view. If our affections are disordered there is no way we can "choose our way" toward God. Something deep within us is confused and disoriented. We want the wrong things. So if God wants us to turn toward the Kingdom God can't just abandon us to our choices. God can't just step back and say, "I love you. And because I love you I will step back to grant you freedom." That's a recipe for disaster. Because freedom isn't about the absence of external pressure or force. Freedom, rather, is about getting our choices aligned with our affections. But if we want the wrong things to begin with how are we to make goodchoices?
The point is, love isn't going to win if God just steps back to abandon us to our choices. There might be a "win" in there somewhere, but it's not a winning God would want. Love doesn't win if all we have are choices running amok because of our disordered affections. No, love really wins only when God begins to work at a deeper level, when Love begins to work with our loves. Love moves our loves toward Love. Our desires and affections have to change before our choices begin to move. And that requires positive action on God's part. Not the Divine withdrawal and passivity that _Love Wins_ imagines in the passageabove.
And I'd also like to make the point that this healing of affections is generally going to be a very slow process. Because Rob Bell's right on this point: God isn't going to overthrow or coerce our affections, internally or externally. God can't just change our affections overnight without that being experienced as a volitional assault upon us. These are psychic structures rooted deep, deep within our identity. These are psychic glaciers that are going to have to move ata glacial pace.
But they can move, even if slowly. And the slow pace allows us to preserve our inner sense of self-authorship and unanimity. Which brings us to one the reasons why I prefer universalism to conditionalism/separatism. Conditionalism suggests that God abandons us to our disordered affections and the predictable volitional mess that soon follows. Universalism, by contrast, confesses that God loves us and will not abandon us, that freedom isn't about a lack of coercion. _A lack of coercion is not what sets us free. What sets us free is having our affections healed_. Freedom happens when our loves come to rest in Love. And where conditionalism/separatism envisions God's abandonment, universalism envisions God's tireless and eternal involvement in bringing this healing to completion. It is a vision of Love healing the loves of my life--bringing order, unanimity, and harmony.Bringing freedom.
That is when Love truly wins.Discussion
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THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVEDPosted on 9.16.2019
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Many of my long time readers found me in the early years of this blog because of my writings defending universal reconciliation. Newer readers might be unaware of these posts since I haven't written about this topic a lot lately. But nothing has changed, I still believe that God will, in the end, reconcile all things to Himself. In the early years of this blog, my colleagues in theology and Biblical studies thought I was bonkers when I shared my views. Rob Bell did come out soon after with Love Wins,
but that wasn't vindication. If anything, it made things worse. Rob Bell and _Love Wins_ represented everything that goes wrong with progressive, liberal theology. It was assumed that I believed in universal reconciliation because I was "progressive." It didn't matter that some pretty less-than-liberal heavy hitters flirted with or endorsed universal reconciliation, from the church fathers to Karl Barth. There's more to this view than is typically assumed. You just can't dismiss it with a wave as a capitulation to modernity, liberalism, and humanism. All that to say, the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has just published That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and UniversalSalvation
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I seriously doubt that my colleagues can accuse _David Bentley Hart_ of being a squishy, progressive, "love wins" theologian. As Hart makes clear in the book, universal reconciliation has nothing do with with liberalism. The point is, rather, for me at least, the simple yet courageous recognition that Christianity is incoherent without universal salvation. If you don't buy that and don't want to read the book, you can dip into a bit of Hart's argument in his article God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo (an essay reworked as a chapter in _That All Shall Be Saved_). And if you don't want to read that article, here's the gist of it: If God created the vast majority of humanity knowing that He would torture them for all eternity, well, then he'd be a monster. A God that creates ex nihilo, only to end up torturing the majority of His creation for eternity, strains the theological definitions of omnipotence and omnibenevolence past the point of breaking. So I'll say it again: Christianity is incoherent without universal salvation. The issues here are real, but it takes some theological courage to admit and face those issues directly, honestly and squarely rather than dismiss them as a modern product of liberalism and humanism.Discussion
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THANK YOU
Posted on 9.13.2019
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Two weeks ago, I invited you to donate Bibles for the French-Robertson unit, easy to read translations for the prison chaplains to hand out to inmates requesting a Bible. The unit had run out of Bibles and the chaplains have no budget to buy them. And now, thanks to you, the Bibles are coming in. Thank you! The Bibles you shipped directly the the prison have been arriving. On Monday I took inventory of all the boxes stacked in the chaplain's office. And below is a picture of four boxes of Bibles you've shipped to me that I'll be carrying out to the unit. Again, Thank You! Let's pray that God uses these gifts to bring comfort, grace, and transformation to the men who receive them.Discussion
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FAITH LIES (WITH DARRELL SMITH): LIE #3, THE DEVIL IS GOD’SCOUNTERPART
Posted on 9.12.2019
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Continuing our Thursday series with Darrell Smith, sharing from his book Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How toSee Beyond Them
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FAITH LIES WITH DARRELL SMITH Lie #3: The Devil is God’s Counterpart What is at stake in this lie is not whether evil is real. It’s not even whether the devil is real. It’s whether or not that evil, or the devil, can stand against our God. The question we need to ask is who have we said the devil is and how does that distort our view of God and of ourselves? This is a lie about a good God versus a bad god—what is known as dualism. Dual means two opposing forces. Good versus evil, dark versus light, rightversus wrong.
The primary example of dualism in our world is the idea that there is a good, supernatural force guiding the universe that battles an evil, supernatural force corrupting the universe. God versus Satan makes sense to us because it successfully divides and organizes our reality for us. It just seems simple to think that everything that is good and right is because of God, and everything that is bad and wrong is because of the devil. As much as we might feel that such thinking is neat and orderly, it falls apart really quickly as soon as something that is bad and wrong touches our lives. When evil or corruption really hits home and affects us personally, we want answers. “Where were you, God?” “Why did you let that happen to me?” In turn, those questions shine a bright light on dualism and lead to questions like, “If God created everything, why did God create the devil?” or “How did the devil get access to me?” What originally seems orderly about dualism becomes confusing and disordered as soon as we start talking plainly about the devil. To be honest, we have every right to be confused. The history of our faith is rife with misunderstanding and misapplying information about the devil. The truth is, we don’t have a clear and consistent picture about the devil—not even within the pages of the Bible. Don’t miss that. The Bible itself does not offer a clear picture about the nature, state, or identity of the devil. What the Bible does make clear, however, is that whatever the devil is, the God who is for you stands unopposed. Next week, Faith Lie #4 – I Am Supposed to Protect and Defend Godand My Faith
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JOSEPH AND JESUS: PART 1, THE DEAD ONE IS ALIVE!Posted on 9.11.2019
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We were studying the book of Genesis in our adult Sunday School class, and one of the Sundays I had the Joseph narrative to teach. We were using Walter Brueggemann's commentaryas a resource.
In Brueggemann's commentary I was struck by the parallels between the Joseph narrative and the gospel accounts, especially the passion, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. I'd like to share some of theseparallels.
The first is simply to note that we can read the story of Joseph as a story of resurrection. Specifically, Joseph's disclosure to his brothers, who betrayed him, foreshadows Jesus' own betrayal, death, and return. Joseph was betrayed and abandoned by his brothers. And Jesus was betrayed and abandoned by his followers. And both Joseph and Jesus are "left for dead." And then, out of nowhere, the dead one is standing right in front ofyou.
As Brueggemann describes it, in Genesis 45, when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers: "We are permitted to witness a gospel disclosure: The dead one is alive! The abandoned one has returned inpower!"
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PARABLES: THE SHEEP AND THE GOATSPosted on 9.10.2019
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The parable of the sheep and goats: > Matthew 25.31-46 > When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, > he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered > before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a > shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep > on his right and the goats on his left.>
> “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who > are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom > prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry > and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me > something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed > clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I > was in prison and you came to visit me.’>
> “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you > hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? > When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes > and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to> visit you?’
>
> “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for > one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for> me.’
>
> “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who > are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his > angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was > thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you > did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I > was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’>
> “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or > thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and > did not help you?’>
> “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for > one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’>
> “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous > to eternal life.” It probably comes as no surprise, given my book Stranger God , that the parable of the sheep and the goats has had a huge influence upon my life andthinking.
The point I take away from the parable: We don't extend hospitality to be like Jesus, we extend hospitality to welcome Jesus. It's a simple point, but how many churches get this reversal? Churches like to stand in the position of Jesus, as the Savior. But in Matthew 25, the Savior is the stranger, the homeless, the incarcerated. When we welcome the stranger, shelter the homeless, or visit the incarcerated we are the one who are being saved.Discussion
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PARABLES: THE SOWER AND THE SOILSPosted on 9.09.2019
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You likely don't need a reminder of the Parable of the Sower, but hereit is:
> Matthew 13.3-9
> Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went > out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along > the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky > places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, > because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants > were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other > seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still > other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, > sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them> hear.”
And as we know, in a rare change of pace, Jesus goes on to interpretthe parable for us:
> Matthew 13.18-23 > “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone > hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the > evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This > is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground > refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with > joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When > trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall > away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears > the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of > wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on > good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. > This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or > thirty times what was sown.” So, why has this parable been increasingly important to me? Well, I speak and preach a lot. Every week I'm speaking to my church, the inmates in my Bible study, and my students in my Psychology and Christianity class. And then, on many weekends I'm speaking at churches, conferences, or guest lecturing at other schools. And because of all that speaking I can get self-focused and self-absorbed. How did I do? Did I make an impact? I focus on my speaking ability and my ideas. And because of this, I fret and pushmyself.
But over the last year or so, I've become increasingly relaxed and at peace about any "impact" I'm having, largely due to the Parable of the Sower. "All you can do, Richard," I tell myself, "is sow the seed." Much of the "success" of any talk I give isn't really in my hands. It's mostly up to the person listening and the status of their heart. And I don't have access to their heart. God does, but I don't. My job is to just sow the seed. I've become more focused on _fidelity_ to the task than maximizing "effectiveness." I try to do my very, very best, and once I'm done I'mat peace.
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THE DIVINE COMEDY: WEEK 34, LOVING A GOOD THING TOO MUCHPosted on 9.06.2019
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Two weeks ago, we observed what Dante meant when Virgil shared that love can go wrong when we love a bad thing. We can desire to hurt others (wrath), we can desire that misfortune befall others (envy), and we can delight when others do experience misfortune (pride). These are the worst sins, purged on the lowest terraces of Mt. Purgatory. This week, I'd like to take things out of order and jump to the top of Mt. Purgatory, where the sins of excessive love are found. There we find the Deadly Sins associated with loving a good thing too much. As Virgil shares in Canto XVIII: > the love that yields excessively to this > is purged above us on three terraces, > but how the nature of such love is threefold,>
> I would have you discover for yourself. The Pilgrim does climb the mountain to discover the "threefold" nature of excessive love, the sins of greed, gluttony, and lust. Greed, gluttony, and lust are examples of loving a good thing too much. Possessions, money, comfort, status, praise, success, pleasure, a nation, a dream, a job, your appearance, your reputation. The list goes on and on. Name any good thing in your life, and ponder how you might be loving this good thing a little too much, perhaps way toomuch.
Our life is full of good things, gifts to be enjoyed, but we can love a good thing too much. And when we do, our love curdles and goes bad.Discussion
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FAITH LIES (WITH DARRELL SMITH): LIE # 2, GOD IS ANGRY AND DOESN’T LIKE ME—ESPECIALLY WHEN I SINPosted on 9.05.2019
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Today we continue our Thursday series with Darrell Smith, who is sharing from his book Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How to See Beyond Them.
FAITH LIES WITH DARRELL SMITH Lie #2: God is Angry and Doesn’t Like Me—Especially When I Sin _The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire... _ — Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God," 1741 What happened to you as you read through the Jonathan Edwards’ quote above? How do you respond? Is there something in you that rejects the philosophy behind Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of anAngry God?”
If you are like me, perhaps you have picked up a milder version of this philosophy. You may not think that God holds you over the “Pit of Hell” like a loathsome spider, but you may believe that God disapproves of you—or is disappointed with your life. Whatever our response may be to the idea that God is angry with us and doesn’t like us, the truth is, too much of the Christian faith is built upon this corrupt foundation. * It is a foundation that leads to a world where punishment must be meted out for all bad behavior. * It is a foundation that not only empowers but demands judgment. * It is a foundation that distances children from their loving divine parent as they begin to believe what gives them divine value is the way they behave. Behind the lie “God is angry and doesn’t like me—especially when I sin” is the idea that your relationship with God—God’s affection for you—is based on your behavior. The better person you are, the more God likes and loves you—the more God will bless you. The more mistakes you make and sins you commit, the less God likes and loves you—the less God will bless you. Whether we recognize it or not, this lie requires God to have anger—or even worse, the dreaded biblical wrath—over the sinful behavior of people. This lie characterizes God as the cosmic scorekeeper watching our every move and shaking the Godhead in disappointment— wondering how we could repeatedly be so bad. Actually putting these words to it may make this idea seem silly and easily dismissed, but the incomplete idea that God is angry and doesn’t like us when we sin is too prevalent and too important to leave unexamined. It must be exposed in all the little nooks and crannies of our lives. If we can all admit that none of want to run head-long into an authentic, loving, relationship with an angry cosmic scorekeeper, then we can begin to receive the God we actually have. Next week, Faith Lie #3 – The Devil is God’s CounterpartDiscussion
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PARABLES: THE UNFORGIVING SERVANTPosted on 9.04.2019
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A parable that's been increasingly influential on me is the parable of the unforgiving servant: > Matthew 18.23-35 > “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to > settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man > who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he > was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his > children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.>
> “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient > with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The > servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him> go.
>
> “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow > servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and > began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.>
> “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be > patient with me, and I will pay it back.’>
> “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into > prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what > had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master > everything that had happened.>
> “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ > he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me > to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I > had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to > be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.>
> “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you > forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” The parable is told as an answer to Peter's question, "How often am I to forgive? Is seven times enough?" Jesus responds, "Not just seven, but seventy times seven." And then he goes on to tell this parable. Now, intellectually speaking, the point of the parable is obvious, simplistic even. The servant has been forgiven a great debt, yet is unwilling to forgive a much smaller debt. I think everyone understands this point of the story. But my question is this: _Do we actually liveit?_
What I mean is this: Do you live under a great burden of grace? Do you feel forgiven a great and massive debt? And has this emancipation affected your capacity to pay mercy forward? Does your moral life flow out of a great ocean of gratitude? Again, I know this seems a simple Sunday School lesson, fit only for children. Intellectually, you're not having any trouble tracking with me. What I'm asking you about is _if you've experienced this gratitude_, in your heart. And if you have, has forgiveness given you a greater capacity to forgive? Has grace given you a greater capacity for grace? Has mercy given you a greater capacity for mercy? Because grace rarely seems to translate into action. We claim God's love for ourselves, yet are petty and miserly in giving grace to others. We're vindictive and hold grudges.What's going wrong?
It's my hunch that this goes wrong because we're not operating out of gratitude, not living out of a daily and felt realization that we've been extended a great mercy. What I'm wondering about is the connection between gratitude and virtue, between gratitude and love, between gratitude and mercy. If we really felt and operated out of gratitude, wouldn't our actions change in an instant? Wouldn't we become radically different people?Discussion
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PARABLES: THE TREASURE IN THE FIELDPosted on 9.03.2019
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The parable of the treasure in the field has had a huge impact upon how I view the kingdom of God:> Matthew 13.44
> The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man > found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he > had and bought that field. Over the last year or so on the blog I've written about how welcoming the kingdom of God is a matter of perception, a matter of seeing. That's not how we tend to think about the kingdom. Most of us, I'm assuming, adopt a moral framework when we talk about welcoming or entering the kingdom. Following Jesus is about becoming a better, moremoral person.
But the parable of the treasure suggests the kingdom is nothing like that. The kingdom isn't morally hard, it's just hidden. The kingdom is here and available, but we cannot see it. But if we do come to see it, our response isn't a long slog of spiritual discipline and mortification. The response is, rather, happy, easy, fast, and automatic. It's all a matter about if you can see what is hidden right in frontof you.
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PARABLES: THE WHEAT AND THE TARESPosted on 9.02.2019
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The parables of Jesus keep haunting me. I'm not sure why. For most of my life I never really spent much time thinking about the parables. The parables were never theological touchstones for me. But increasingly they are, and I'd like to share a few parables in a series that I keep pondering and returning to. To start, the parable of the wheat and the tares: > Matthew 13:24-30 > Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a > man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was > sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went > away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also> appeared.
>
> “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you > sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’>
> “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.>
> “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them> up?’
>
> “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the > weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together > until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First > collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather > the wheat and bring it into my barn.’” For most of my adult life the public witness of Christianity has dismayed me. The brand "Christian" has been pretty damaged. So much so, many of us want to distance ourselves from being identified asChristian.
Problems with churches and denominations fill the news. Abuse scandals, large and small, abound. The horrible news accumulates andyou just despair.
And then I think of the parable of the wheat and the tares. The kingdom of God on earth was never going to be a pure community or spotless witness. The Children of God and the Children of the Devil will be all mixed up together on earth. Jesus said so. And yet, the moral response to that situation isn't to begin an inquisition, to start a violent weeding process. It's up to God to judge the weeds at the harvest. Our call is simply to be faithful in the midst of this ambiguous situation. To be clear, I don't think Jesus is saying we should be passive in the face of evil in the pews. The point I believe Jesus is making is that the location of the Kingdom of God is going to be hard to identify this side of judgment, and that we're going to have to tolerate an ambiguous situation until then. Because I have a great desire to create a "pure space" right here and right now. I'm really drawn to the weeding business. And yet, I know I'd do great damage if I started that up. I try to act with wisdom and responsibility, trying to balance grace and justice. But I can't be trusted to get that right. So instead, I live with the ambiguity, with the mixed and confused moral witness of the church, with wheat and tares living side by sideuntil the harvest.
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PLEASE HELP! A PRISON BIBLE STUDY REQUESTPosted on 8.30.2019
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For years, here on the blog and in my books, I've shared stories about the Men in White, the inmates in my Monday night Bible study at the maximum-security French Robertson unit here in Abilene, TX. Many of you have been moved by the stories of the Men in White, and today I'd like to share a way you can minister to them. The chaplain's office has shared that there is a need at the unit for easy-to-read paperback Bibles. The chaplains don't have enough Bibles to hand out when they get requests from the inmates. So they asked if the volunteer chaplains could put out the word about getting someBibles donated.
Here is an Amazon link to the sort of Bible we are looking for. If you or your church would like to help, send a Bible (or more) to the following address: > Chaplains Office> Robertson Unit
> 12071 FM 3522
> Abilene, TX 79601 If you're having trouble with Amazon shipping to the prison directly, feel free to ship them to me and I'll take them out to the prison:> Richard Beck
> ACU Box 28011
> Abilene, TX 79699 Thank you if you can help with this request. And please remember the prisoners in your prayers.Discussion
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FAITH LIES (WITH DARRELL SMITH): LIE # 1, THE BIBLE IS ONLY THELITERAL WORD OF GOD
Posted on 8.29.2019
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Today we continue our Thursday series with Darrell Smith, who is sharing from his book Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How to See Beyond Them.
FAITH LIES WITH DARRELL SMITH Lie #1: The Bible is Only the Literal Word of God Try these statements on for size… “The Bible is not up for interpretation. It is the inerrant, infallible Word of God.” “If the scriptures are not literally true, then they are not true atall.”
“God said it. I believe it. That’s it.” My guess is that most of us have heard statements like these before. We may even have been the one speaking such statements. While an honorable intention behind such statements might be to treat the Bible with reverence and respect, the reality is that these ideas are not helpful, and they steer us into cul-de-sacs rather than opening up the journey. Telling an imperfect human being that the Bible is a volume of perfection—writings that are without error or humanity—ensures not only that we will not be able to relate to the Bible, but also that we will only be able to use it for measuring. If it’s simply the divine rulebook, then all I can do with it is decide whether I am following the rules well enough to be okay with God...or decide whether or not YOU are following the rules well enough to be okay with God. This is not to imply that the Bible does not contain any words from God—only that the Bible is not the written record of God’s dictation. God was most certainly the inspiration for the Bible, but not the medium. People were the medium—they did the storytelling, the writing, the selecting, and the interpretation that resulted in the Bible. The Bible is not God’s Bill of Rights and Constitution. Rather, it is a divinely inspired story of progression that should open things up rather than constrict and regulate. If we are going to undertake an earnest journey into our faith, we must first be critically honest about the map. Next week, Faith Lie #2: God is Angry and Doesn’t Like Me—Especially When I Sin.Discussion
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ME VERSUS WE: PART 5, PROPHETIC WORDSPosted on 8.28.2019
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This will be the last post in this series, and I wanted to end with a comment about prophetic words. One of my worries in pentecostal and charismatic communities is the practice of prophecy. Specifically, in these communities people are often given (or report that they've been given) a prophetic "word from the Lord" to be shared with another person. The practice varies, but typically people approach you and say, "The Lord has given me a word that he wants me to share with you." Now, I don't want to launch into a full scale criticism of this practice. My interests right now in this series are narrow. Specifically, my concern about getting and giving a "word from the Lord" is that these words tend to be for _individuals_. The Lord has a word for _you_, the Lord has a word for _me_. Once again, the focus is on _me_. But when you look at the prophetic tradition, the focus isn't on me, it's on _we_. Look at the books of prophecy in the Old Testament. The prophet is speaking a word to a _people_, a group, a community. Israel and Judah. The same goes for the New Testament when we look at the prophetic words of Jesus and John the Baptist. This is not to say that there aren't examples of prophetic words spoken to individuals in the Bible. But the vast majority of those words are from prophets to kings. Moses to Pharaoh. Samuel to Saul. Elijah to Ahab. John the Baptist to Herod. The context here is still communal as the king ismisruling a people.
In short, "words from the Lord" are better suited for we rather than me. Prophecy isn't about getting specific, divine guidance for my life. Prophecy isn't a self-help tool. A "word from the Lord" shouldn't be the Christian version of a fortune cookie. Prophecy finds its proper home in a community, in a word for _us_.Discussion
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ME VERSUS WE: PART 4, IF YOUR HAND CAUSES YOU TO SIN, CUT IT OFFPosted on 8.27.2019
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Again, one of the big points I'm making in this series is how, when we read the Bible as isolated individuals, our imaginations are tempted into a pietistic moralism. As another example of this, consider Jesus' discourse on how we should treat sin in our lives:> Mark 9.43-47
> If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you > to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the > fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it > off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two > feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, > pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with > one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell. All that sounds very harsh and Puritanical. And it is, but we need to attend to how Jesus' words here are aimed at We rather than Me. Let's pay attention to the verse that kicks this text off:> Mark 9.42
> If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in > me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone > were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. And let's also note the final lines from this teaching of Jesus inMark 9:
> Mark 9. 49-50
> Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its > saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among > yourselves, and be at peace with each other. Notice how Jesus' concern about sin focuses upon the _community_: "If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble." It doesn't really matter, for our purposes, if "little ones" refers to literal children or to disciples of Jesus. Our point is that Jesus' harsh language concerning sin is focused upon a community, not a solo actor wrestling with a private vice. This focus is highlighted in the final words of Jesus' discourse: "be at peace with each other." All that to say, we privatize our sin when we focus on Me. We end up thinking that sin is primarily about naughty things I do in private than as actions that harm the community. Sin is a Me problem, we think, rather than a We problem. But for Jesus, it's the exact opposite. Victory over sin, for Jesus, is less about _piety_ than it is about _peace_. Sin is a We problem.Discussion
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ME VERSUS WE: PART 3, ECONOMY, NOT SACRIFICEPosted on 8.26.2019
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We've all heard the story of the Rich Young Ruler:> Mark 10.17-22
> And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt > before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit > eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? > No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do > not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false > witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he > said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And > Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one > thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will > have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the > saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. All of us, I'm assuming, have been personally dismayed by this story. Who would even dare to obey the command "sell everything"? Now, I don't want to take the edge off of this story. Jesus is making a radical demand. But again, to the point of this series, I think we miss Jesus' point by focusing on "me" rather than "we." Specifically, when we read the story of the Rich Young Ruler we quickly ask ourselves, "If I were to sell everything, how would I take care of myself? Wouldn't I become dependent upon the charity of others? And how would that help anything if I became poor?" Those are reasonable questions. And they arise because we're imagining that the command "sell everything" is directed toward a lone individual being asked to make a radical sacrifice. But that's not what Jesus is imagining. Jesus isn't pointing to "me," he's pointing to "we." The story continues:> Mark 10.28-30
> Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and > followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one > who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or > children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not > receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and > sisters and mothers and children and lands..." Jesus isn't calling for a _sacrifice_. He's calling for an _economy_. If it's just "me," the command "sell everything" leaves me impoverished. But if the command "sell everything" is directed at "we," then I'm not impoverished, I've entered an economy of sharingand gifts.
When we think in terms of "me" we're bullied by scarcity. What's going to happen when I have nothing? By contrast, when we think in terms of "we" we find ourselves surrounded by abundance. That's Jesus' message to Peter: In the kingdom you're not going to be left destitute. You're going to receive a hundredfold "houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands." To be clear, Jesus is still making a radical demand. But the demand is placed upon the _community_. It makes no sense for one person to sell everything to find himself or herself homeless and knocking on doors for a meal. An isolated act of sacrifice doesn't create the economy of the kingdom. To be sure, that sacrifice would be heroic, but it doesn't create the kingdom. Yes, there are sacrifices to be made, but they are sacrifices being made by the community as a whole so that no one is left destitute and that all are cared for (see, again, Acts 2and 4).
The goal, as Jesus points out to Peter, isn't poverty, but an economyof abundance.
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THE DIVINE COMEDY: WEEK 33, LOVING A BAD THINGPosted on 8.23.2019
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So, last week we shared Dante's taxonomy of bad loves. Our loves go bad in one of three ways. We can love a bad thing. We can love a good thing lazily. And we can love a good thing excessively. Also recall that the terraces of Mount Purgatory are each devoted to the purgation of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. With this two-fold scheme in place, the topography of Mount Purgatory reflects how Dante fits the Seven Deadly Sins into his theory of badlove.
For example, this week let's examine the lowest terraces of MountPurgatory.
On the three lowest terraces, the sins furthest away from Paradise, we find the Deadly Sins of pride, envy, and wrath. These three sins are examples of what Dante means by "misdirected love," loving a bad thing. These are the worst of the Seven Deadly sins. What does it mean to love a bad or wicked thing? Well, in the case of pride, Virgil shares this analysis with thePilgrim:
> There is the man who see his own success > connected to his neighbor's downfall; thus, > he longs to see him fall from eminence. For Dante, pride is rooted less in love of self (an excessive love) than loving a wicked thing: the downfall of your neighbor. For Dante, pride is rooted in Schadenfreude and what psychologists call "downward social comparison." Now, we might not like this evaluation of pride. Personally, I think Dante is forcing things a bit here. I think pride is rooted in excessive self love, which would put it in the upper terraces of Purgatory rather than at the bottom. Regardless, we do see illustrated here what Dante means by loving a bad thing. When we desire that bad things befall others and delight in their failures and misfortunes, well, that's loving a bad thing. For the sin of envy, Dante makes a very similar analysis: > Next, he who fears to lose honor and fame, > power and favor, if his neighbor rise: > vexed by his good, he wishes for the worst. Like pride, envy is rooted in social comparison. Where pride is delighting in the fall of others, envy is wishing and desiring their fall. Again we see the point: to wish pain and failure on others isloving a bad thing.
Finally, the sin of wrath is described this way by Virgil: > Finally, he who, wronged, flares up in rage: > with his great passion for revenge, he thinks > only of how to harm his fellow man. Desiring revenge and wanting to hurt others--the sin of wrath--is another example of loving a bad thing. These three Deadly Sins--pride, envy, and wrath--are examples of "misdirected love," three examples of loving a bad thing. These are the worst sins which are punished on the lowest slopes of MountPurgatory.
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FAITH LIES (WITH DARRELL SMITH): WHAT ARE FAITH LIES?Posted on 8.22.2019
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I was recently in San Antonio at the invitation of Lynn Anderson and some amazing people associated with Alamo Heights United Methodist Church , Haven for Hope , and the Pioneer Recovery Groupled by Chris Estus.
A highlight of my time in San Antonio was getting to participate in a Bible study at Haven for Hope along with Dinah Shelly, lead by Chris, Darrell Smith, and Ryan Jacobson, who are all on the ministry team at Alamo Heights. It was an energizing time for me, to see how this group was sharing a generous vision of Christianity in a marginalized context. It's something I'm doing every Monday night out at the prison and Wednesday nights at Freedom Fellowship. I felt so at home with Chris, Darrell, and Ryan, sharing their theological vision along with their passion for sharing that vision in marginalized contexts. During our time together, I learned of Darrell's recently published book Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How toSee Beyond Them
.
I invited Darrell to share excerpts from his book here with us. Today is an introduction to the book, and for the next seven Thursdays you'll be introduced to one of the faith lies.Enjoy!
FAITH LIES WITH DARRELL SMITH Introduction: What are Faith Lies? Faith lies are those seemingly required religious ideas or spiritual beliefs that are often confusing and rarely helpful. Kent owns and manages a business in south Texas. He lives in San Antonio with his wife, Trisha. His two grown daughters have recently followed new careers and new marriages away from San Antonio. Nevertheless, the tight-knit, family-oriented community where Kent and Trisha raised their daughters is still home. Kent and Trisha have both been faithful and serving members of a mainline protestant church there for the last 25 years. They are both college-educated, upwardly mobile professionals, and devout Christians. Last month, they quit their church. These two dedicated, serving evangelicals determined that their church had lost its way and was becoming theologically corrupt by social justice and universalist influences. They also decided it was their duty as disciples to stand up to this development—to reject it in the name of Jesus—and viewed their leaving as an act of holydefiance.
Kent and Trisha do not represent an isolated situation within the church. They are part of a widening divide within the Christian tradition. For every couple who is willing to publicly declare that they are spiritually offended and quit the church, there are 10 more who just quietly disappear and even more who remain steadfast but confused in the pew. I have had the opportunity to work with many earnest Christians who feel the strain on their faith as American Christianity is forced out of its vacuum into a more global and inclusive conversation. The tragic irony is that Ameri-Christian evangelicals like Kent and Trisha—who would follow, and supposedly defend, Jesus—appear largely out of touch with the inclusive faith of Jesus. In the absence of the ancient Eastern context that birthed the Christian faith, Western thinking—from Greek philosophy all the way to American Imperialism—has filled the void and raised up generations of Christians who sincerely believe that it is their faithful duty to blindly believe the texts of the Bible as the literal and stationary dictates of God and to reject any deviation from that ideology while defending the honor of Jesus and his church. Faith Lies: Seven Incomplete Ideas That Hijack Faith and How to SeeBeyond Them
is a gentle and generative journey that seeks to help devoutly faithful people release the burdens and baggage of a de-contextualized American Christian faith and reconnect to the ancient calling to rest, feast, and love. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is a journey that creates space for the honest investigation and protest of the unhelpful and incomplete ideas we have inherited and are nowdefending.
In the coming weeks, we will briefly look at the seven primary lies presented in _Faith Lies_—hoping that our investigation and dialogue can lighten our religious load while moving us all away from our corners and toward each other. * LIE 1: The Bible is Only the Literal Word of God * LIE 2: God is Angry and Doesn't Like Me—Especially When I Sin * LIE 3: The Devil is God's Counterpart * LIE 4: I Am Supposed to Protect and Defend God and My Faith * LIE 5: There is One Right Way to Believe and One Right Way toBehave
* LIE 6: Faith is a Private Matter * LIE 7: Real Faith is Blind BeliefDiscussion
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ME VERSUS WE: PART 2, KENOSISPosted on 8.21.2019
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It's one of the most famous moral exhortations in all of the Bible.From Philippians 2:
> Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,>
> who, though he was in the form of God, > did not regard equality with God > as something to be exploited,>
> but emptied himself, > taking the form of a slave, > being born in human likeness. > And being found in human form,>
> he humbled himself > and became obedient to the point of death— > even death on a cross.>
> Therefore God also highly exalted him > and gave him the name > that is above every name,>
> so that at the name of Jesus > every knee should bend, > in heaven and on earth and under the earth,>
> and every tongue should confess > that Jesus Christ is Lord, > to the glory of God the Father. Because of this text, self-emptying--kenosis--has been taken to be at the very heart of Christlikeness, the defining Christian virtue. And yet, kenosis has been hit pretty hard in the last few decades in light of feminist scholarship. Specifically, it seems both toxic and dangerous to expect a woman to practice kenosis if she's dealing with an abusive spouse. And the same goes for any other oppressed person. Should someone at the very bottom--victims in particular--be expected to go even lower in the name of "being like Jesus"? What makes this even worse is that women have, in fact, been given pastoral advice guided by that sort of theology, that by being "submissive" to her abuser the woman is "following the example ofJesus."
There's a whole lot to be said here, about how to read Philippians 2 in light of these concerns, but for this post I want to make a simpleobservation.
Again, to the point of this series, kenosis goes off the rails when we think in terms of "me" rather than "we." Let's back up and look at what Paul is encouraging with his appeal to Jesus' self-emptying: > If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from > love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make > my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in > full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or > conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. > Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests> of others.
The point should be obvious. Kenosis isn't about me, it's about we. "Be of the same mind." "Having the same love." "Being in full accord and of one mind." "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit." "Regard others as better than yourself." "Look to the interests ofothers."
Kenosis isn't a part of your moral self-improvement project. Kenosis is forming a community. Let me say that again: _Kenosis is forming a community._ The problem with both the feminist critique of kenosis and with the toxic advice for victims to submit to abuse is that both are focusing on "me" rather than "we," seeing kenosis as something an individual does in isolation from the community. And when viewed as an isolated, individual practice, yes, that can produce some toxic situations. Kenosis practiced in isolation can produce some pretty dysfunctional asymmetries. Kenosis finds it proper and healthy home when it is being practiced by an entire community, where your self-emptying for me is being matched by my self-emptying for you. Kenosis is an _economy_, it's not an isolated act of self-mortification. Jesus empties, but the Father and Spirit are there to ennoble and exalt. That dance of mutuality in Philippians 2 isn't what we're seeing in an abusive situation. And that's why Paul aims his sermon on kenosis toward those who were not looking after the interests of others. Kenosis punchesup, never down.
In short, kenosis is a classic example of how reading the Bible as being about "me" rather than "we" can create some toxic, dysfunctionaloutcomes.
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ME VERSUS WE: PART 1, THE PLURAL YOUPosted on 8.20.2019
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In my recent series on the book of Acts in one of the posts I made the observation that we tend to get confused about Biblical commands because we personalize them. That is, we tend to think in terms of "me" rather than "we." For generations, Bible scholars have been pointing this out to us, how the "you" we encounter in the New Testament epistles is a _plural _"you." Commands and exhortations are being directed at the _community _rather than at individuals. (By the way, here in Texas we understand this. We say "you" for the singular and "ya'll" for the plural. Outside of Texas, I don't know how anyone can figure this out. "Ya'll" is indispensable.) The point I made in my last series is that when we read Biblical commands and exhortations we tend to, automatically and unconsciously, think of them as things directed at me and me alone. The radical individualism of our culture--the atomized, isolated ego--has so scarred our imaginations that it never occurs to us that the Bible speaks toward a group, toward a community. This is important, as I recently pointed out, because Biblical commands and exhortations can become downright toxic or harmful if directed solely at individuals. The issue from my most recent series was Jesus' command "do not worry" from the Sermon on the Mount. When aimed at _individuals _we find this command almost impossible to obey. As isolated individuals trying to keep afloat in a capitalistic and meritocratic world--where your entire life situation depends upon your performance--how could we not worry? But Jesus' command isn't aimed at "me", it's aimed at "we," aimed at creating, as we find in Acts 2 and 4, a community where worry becomes irrelevant. Jesus says instead of worrying seek first the kingdom, become the People of God, and all these things will be added to us. Jesus' focus is on we rather than me. That's one example. And I'd like to share a few more in this series.Discussion
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TEACHING ACTS IN PRISON: PART 10, WATCHMENPosted on 8.19.2019
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I ended my series on Acts out at the prison by jumping to the prophet Ezekiel. That might not be "proper" in the eyes of scholars, to jump out of one book to another to make a point, but hey, it's my study and I can do what I want to. So the call of Acts is to join in the great campaign of sabotage, to join in the resistance movement reclaiming contested space in the world in the name of King Jesus. And yet, as you'd guess from my last post, this can be hard and lonely work in the prison. Where to find encouragement and comfort when you stand alone on the battlefield? I had the class turn to Ezekiel. In the first chapters of Ezekiel the prophet gets his call. And it's going to be hard and lonely work:> Ezekiel 2.1-8
> He said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak > to you.” As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my > feet, and I heard him speaking to me.>
> He said: “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a > rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their > ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. The > people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to > them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says.’ And whether they > listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they > will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, > do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though > briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions. > Do not be afraid of what they say or be terrified by them, though > they are a rebellious people. You must speak my words to them, > whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But > you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that > rebellious people; open your mouth and eat what I give you.” If anyone knows what it's like to live among thorns and scorpions, it's the men in prison. This passage in Ezekiel is one of the best descriptions of "contested space" in the Bible. Now, when you're preaching to thorns and scorpions that's a tough gig. The men in the prison live this reality. But the call to Ezekielcontinues:
> Ezekiel 3.16-21
> The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, I have made you a > watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give > them warning from me. When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will > surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade > them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked > person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for > their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not > turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die > for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.>
> “Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and > does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. > Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The > righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will > hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the > righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely > live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.” Living as he is among thorns and scorpions, the prophet isn't going to very successful. But the prophet does have to be a watchman. It's lonely work, standing watch on the wall in the middle of the night, but that is the call. The metric of success is faithfulness and speaking the truth. You speak the truth to the wicked and to the righteousness, and that's the only thing you can control. You do your job, and then their fate is in their hands. As a watchman, you've doneyour duty.
That message buoys the men in prison. The faithful don't see a lot of success around them. Theirs is lonely work. The faithful followers of Jesus in prison are mainly watchmen, called to faithfulness and speaking the truth in their very dark world. Keep them in your prayers.Discussion
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Welcome
to the blog of Richard Beck , author and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University(beckr@acu.edu).
THE THEOLOGY OF FAËRIE * Part 1: The Enchantment of the Inklings * Part 2: The Elvish Art and Desiring Dragons * Part 3: The Wonder of Things * Part 4: Glorious Treachery * Part 5: The Good Catastrophe * Part 6: The Fairy-Story That Entered History THE LITTLE WAY OF ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX * Part 1: The Democratization of Holiness * Part 2: Story of a Soul * Part 3: "My Vocation is Love" * Part 4: The Practice of the Little Way * Epilogue: The Dark Night of Faith and Love THE WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW PROJECT (ONGOING) * (Project Overview) * A Private and Public Faith* Instead of Death
* My People is the Enemy* Free in Obedience
* Dissenter in a Great Society* Count It All Joy
* Imposters of God
* A Second Birthday
* Suspect Tenderness * An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land * Conscience and Obedience AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POSTS * On Discoveries in Used Bookstores * Two Brothers and Texas Rangers * Visiting and Evolving in Monkey Town * Roller Derby Girls * A Life With Bibles * Wearing a Crucifix * Morning Prayer at San Buenaventura Mission * The Halo of Overalls* Less
* The Farmer's Market * Subversion and Shame: I Like the Color Pink* The Bureaucrat
* Uncle Richard, Vampire Hunter * Palm Sunday with the Orthodox * On Maps and Marital Spats * Get on a Bike...and Go Slow* Buying a Bible
* Memento Mori
* We Weren't as Good as the Muppets * Uncle Richard and the Shark * Growing Up Catholic * Ghostbusting (Part 1) * Ghostbusting (Part 2) * My Eschatological Dog * Tex Mex and Depression Era Cuisine* Aliens at Roswell
ON THE PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS * Christ and the Powers * Why I Talk about the Devil So Much * The Preferential Option for the Poor * The Political Theology of Les Misérables* Good Enough
* On Anarchism and A**holes * Christian Anarchism * A Restless Patriotism* Wink on Exorcism
* Images of God Against Empire * A Boredom Revolution * The Medal of St. Benedict * Exorcisms are about Economics * "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" * "A Home for Demons...and the Merchants Weep" * Tales of the Demonic * The Ethic of Death: The Policies and Procedures Manual * "All That Are Here Are Humans"* Ears of Stone
* The War Prayer
* Letter from a Birmingham Jail EXPERIMENTAL THEOLOGY * Eucharistic Identity * Tzimtzum, Cruciformity and Theodicy * Holiness Among Depraved Christians: Paul's New Form of MoralFlourishing
* Empathic Open Theism * The Victim Needs No Conversion* The Hormonal God
* Covenantal Substitutionary Atonement * The Satanic Church* Mousetrap
* Easter Shouldn't Be Good News * The Gospel According to Lady Gaga * Your God is Too Big FROM THE PRISON BIBLE STUDY* The Philosopher
* God's Unconditional Love * There is a Balm in Gilead * In Prison With Ann Voskamp * To Make the Love of God Credible * Piss Christ in Prison * Advent: A Prison Story * Faithful in Little Things * The Prayer of Jabez * The Prayer of Willy Brown * Those Old Time Gospel Songs* I'll Fly Away
* Singing and Resistence * Where the Gospel Matters * Monday Night Bible Study (A Poem) * Living in Babylon: Reading Revelation in Prison * Reading the Beatitudes in Prision * John 13: A Story from the Prision Study* The Word
SERIES/ESSAYS BASED ON MY RESEARCH * The Conflicts of Love * Death and Christian Art* Profanity
* Satan and the Emotional Burden of Monotheism * Death, Gnosticism and the Incarnation * Summer and Winter Christians * Sinning in Your Heart * Quest Religious Orientation * Satan as a Functional Theodicy* Attachment to God
* PostSecret
THE THEOLOGY OF _CALVIN AND HOBBES_* Table of Contents
THE THEOLOGY OF _PEANUTS_* Table of Contents
REFLECTIONS ON GENDER AND THE CHURCH * Can Patriarchalists Pray the Lord's Prayer? * Power and Gender: Among Us It Shall Be Different * Call No Man on Earth Father * Head Coverings: Why Female Hair is a Testicle * A Letter to My Church on Women's Roles * Pragmatics or Power in Patriarchy? * Whores: A Meditation on Gender and the Bible * On Masculine Christianity and Powerplays * Thoughts on Mark Driscoll While I'm Knitting* Ambivalent Sexism
* Direct Your Hearts to Her * Gender, Submission and Ecosystems of Abuse THE SNAKE HANDLING CHURCHES OF APPALACHIA * Part 1: Texts, Codes and Translations * Part 2: Religious Experience * Part 3: The Theology of Serpents * Part 4: Snakebite, Death and Victory ECCENTRIC CHRISTIANITY * Part 1: A Peculiar People * Part 2: The Eccentric God, Transcendence and the PropheticImagination
* Part 3: Welcoming God in the Stranger * Part 4: Enchantment, the Porous Self and the Spirit * Part 5: Doubt, Gratitude and an Eccentric Faith * Part 6: The Eccentric Economy of Love * Part 7: The Eccentric Kingdom THE FULLER INTEGRATION LECTURES * Can We Believe in God Non-violently? * Monuments of Self-Glorification* You Are Beloved
* Kenosis as Pouring Out and Vomiting BLOGGING ABOUT THE BIBLE * Unicorns in the Bible * "Let My People Go!": On Worship, Work and Laziness* The True Troubler
* Stumbling At Just One Point * The Faith of Demons * The Lord Saw That She Was Not Loved * The Subversion of the Creator God * Hell On Earth: The Church as the Baptism of Fire and the HolySpirit
* The Things That Make for Peace * The Lord of the Flies * On Preterism, the Second Coming and Hell * Commitment and Violence: A Reading of the Akedah * Gain Versus Gift in Ecclesiastes * Redemption and the Goel * The Psalms as Liberation Theology * Control Your Vessel* Circumcised Ears
* Forgive Us Our Trespasses * Doing Beautiful Things * The Most Remarkable Sequence in the Bible * Targeting the Dove Sellers * Christus Victor in Galatians * Devoted to Destruction: Reading Cherem Non-Violently * The Triumph of the Cross * The Threshing Floor of Araunah * Hold Others Above Yourself * Blessed are the Tricksters* Adam's First Wife
* I Am a Worm
* Christus Victor in the Lord's Prayer * Let Them Both Grow Together* Repent
* Here I Am
* Becoming the Jubilee * Sermon on the Mount: Study Guide * Treat Them as a Pagan or Tax Collector * Going Outside the Camp * Welcoming Children * The Song of Lamech and the Song of the Lamb* The Nephilim
* Shaming Jesus
* Pseudepigrapha and the Christian Witness * The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs* The Second Moses
* The New Manna
* Salvation in the First Sermons of the Church * "A Bloody Husband" * Song of the Vineyard BONHOEFFER'S LETTERS FROM PRISION * Part 1: A New Theology * Part 2: Who is Christ for Us Today? * Part 3: World Come of Age * Part 4: Religionless Christianity * Part 5: The Arcane Disciplne * Part 6: The Man for Others CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY AND RACE RELATIONS * The Gospel According to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Six Part Series) * Bus Ride to Justice: Toward Racial Reconciliation in the Churchesof Christ
* Black Heroism and White Sympathy: A Reflection on the CharlestonShooting
* Selma 50th Anniversary * More Than Three Minutes * The Passion of White America * Remembering James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman* Will Campbell
* Sitting in the Pews of Ebeneser Baptist Church * MLK Bedtime Prayer* Freedom Rider
* Mountiantop
* Freedom Summer
* Civil Rights Family Trip 1: Memphis * Civil Rights Family Trip 2: Atlanta * Civil Rights Family Trip 3: Birmingham * Civil Rights Family Trip 4: Selma * Civil Rights Family Trip 5: MontgomeryHIP CHRISTIANITY
* Part 1: Seeing and Authenticity * Part 2: When Bad is Good * Part 3: Christianity is Cool * Part 4: High and Low * Part 5: Stuff White People Like * Part 6: Selling Out THE CHARISM OF THE CHARISMATICS * Part 1: Holy Ghost Conga Lines * Part 2: The Pentecostal Worldview * Part 3: Surprised by God * Part 4: Hermeneutics as Enchantment * Part 5: Bodies and Souls * Part 6: The Heart Has a Way of Knowing * Part 7: The Preferential Option for the Poor WOULD JESUS BREAK A WINDOW?: THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE TEMPLE ACTION * Part 1: Jesus and Violence Toward People or Property? * Part 2: Jesus, Empire and Othering Violence * Part 3: The Theological Scars of EmpireBEING CHURCH
* Instead of a Coffee Shop How About a Laundromat? * A Million Boring Little Things* A Prayer for ISIS
* "The People At Our Church Die A Lot" * The Angel of Freedom * Washing Dishes at Freedom Fellowship * Where David Plays the Tambourine * On Interruptibility* Mattering
* This Ritual of Hallowing* Faith as Honoring
* The Beautiful
* The Sensory Boundary * The Missional and Apostolic Nature of Holiness * Open Commuion: Warning! * The Impurity of Love * A Community Called Forgiveness * Love is the Allocation of Our Dying * Freedom Fellowship * Wednesday Night Church * The Hands of Christ * Barbara, Stanley and Andrea: Thoughts on Love, Training and SocialPsychology
* Gerald's Gift
* Wiping the Blood Away * This Morning Jesus Put On Dark Sunglasses * The Only Way I Know How to Save the World* Renunciation
* The Reason We Gather * Anointing With Oil * Incarnations of God's MercyEXPLORING PRETERISM
* On Preterism, the Second Coming and Hell * Rethinking Heaven and Hell: On Preterism, N.T. Wright and theChurches of Christ
* Knowing the Things That Make For Peace * Dry Bones, You Shall Live: Preterism and the Resurrection of theDead
SCRIPTURE AND DISCERNMENT * Owning Your Protestantism: We Follow Our Conscience, Not the Bible * Emotional Intelligence and Sola Scriptura * Songbooks vs. the Psalms * Biblical as Sociological Stress Test * Cookie Cutting the Bible: A Case Study* Pawn to King 4
* Allowing God to Rage * Poetry of a Murderer * On Christian Communion: Killing vs. Sexuality * Heretics and Disagreement * Atonement: A Primer * "The Bible says..." * The "Yes, but..." Church * Human Experience and the Bible * Discernment, Part 1 * Discernment, Part 2* Rabbinic Hedges
* Fuzzy Logic
INTERACTING WITH GOOD BOOKS * Christian Political Witness* The Road
* Powers and Submissions* City of God
* Playing God
* Torture and Eucharist * How Much is Enough? * From Willow Creek to Sacred Heart * The Catonsville Nine* Daring Greatly
* On Job (Gutiérrez) * The Selfless Way of Christ* World Upside Down
* Are Christians Hate-Filled Hypocrites? * Christ and Horrors * The King Jesus Gospel* Insurrection
* The Bible Made Impossible * The Deliverance of God * To Change the World * Sexuality and the Christian Body* I Told Me So
* The Teaching of the Twelve * Evolving in Monkey Town * Saved from Sacrifice: A Series * Darwin's Sacred Cause* Outliers
* A Secular Age
* The God Who Risks
MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
* The Dark Spell the Devil Casts: Refugees and Our Slavery to theFear of Death
* Philia Over Phobia * Elizabeth Smart and the Psychology of the Christian Purity Culture * On Love and the Yuck Factor * Ethnocentrism and Politics * Flies, Attention and Morality * The Banality of Evil* Regarding Sex
* The Ovens at Buchenwald * Violence and Traffic Lights * Defending Individualism * Guilt and Atonement * The Varieties of Love and Hate* The Wicked
* Moral Foundations
* Primum non nocere
* The Moral Emotions * The Moral Circle, Part 1 * The Moral Circle, Part 2* Taboo Psychology
* The Morality of Mentality* Moral Conviction
* Infrahumanization
* Holiness and Moral Grammars THE PURITY PSYCHOLOGY OF PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY * Part 1: The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity * Part 2: "Do One Wrong Thing and You're Tainted" THE THEOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE * Self-Esteem Through Shaming * Let Us Be the Heart Of the Church Rather Than the Amygdala * Online Debates and Stages of Change * The Devil on a Wiffle Ball Field * Incarnational Theology and Mental Illness * Social Media as Sacrament * The Impossibility of Calvinistic Psychotherapy* Hating Pixels
* Dress, Divinity and Dumbfounding * The Kingdom of God Will Not Be Tweeted* Tattoos
* The Ethics of :-)
* On Snobbery
* Jokes
* The F-word
* Hypocrisy
* Can you sin on a deserted island? * Everything I learned about life I learned coaching tee-ball * Gossip, Part 1: The Food of the Brain * Gossip, Part 2: Evolutionary Stable Strategies * Gossip, Part 3: The Pay it Forward World * Sinning in Your Heart?, Part 1: The Morality of Mentality* Human Nature
* Welcome
* On Humility
JESUS, YOU'RE MAKING ME TIRED: SCARCITY AND SPIRITUAL FORMATION * Part 1: The Biggest Obstacle to Spiritual Formation * Part 2: The Scarcity Trap * Part 3: The Therapeutic is the Political A PROGRESSIVE VISION OF THE BENEDICT OPTION * Part 1: The Promise and Challange of the Ben Op * Part 2: Avoiding the Ben Op of the Pharisees * Part 3: How to Avoid the Dark Side * Part 4: Why Progressive Christians Need the Ben Op * Part 5: Sabbath as Resistance * Part 6: The Limits of Liturgy and Becoming a Franciscan Community UNIVERSAL RECONCILIATION* Love and Freedom
* On Hell and Holocausts: Comparing Annihilationism and Universalism * Being Hopeful and Dogmatic * Holiness in Heaven? * Universalism and the New Perspective on Paul * A Googolplexian Hell * The Best Ending to the Christian Story: An Exchange with DanielKirk
* Universalism and the Bondage of the Will * Universalism and the Prophetic Imagination * Universalism and Theodicy * Universalism FAQ & Answers * Universalism: A Summary Defense * Why I Am a Universalist Series (and Resources)GEORGE MACDONALD
* Introducing George MacDonald * Unspoken Sermons: The Consuming Fire * Unspoken Sermons: The Higher Faith * At the Back of the North Wind * Unspoken Sermons: "The Narrow Circle of Their Heaven" * The Real Emerald City * Unspoken Sermons: Justice JESUS & THE JOLLY ROGER: THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS LIKE A PIRATE * Part 1: The Kingdom of God Is Like a Pirate * Part 2: The Violent Take It By Force * Part 3: The Curious Case of Capt. Jack Sparrow * Part 4: Raising Merry Hell * Part 5: Living Under the Sign of Death * Part 6: The Pirate Code of the Kingdom ALONE, SUBURBAN & SORTED * Part 1: Bowling Alone * Part 2: Hollowed Out * Part 3: Broken Bridges * Part 4: The Big Sort * Part 5: Sameness & Shouting * Part 6: A Purple State of Mind * Part 7: The Third Place * Part 8: Where Everybody Knows Your Name THE THEOLOGY OF MONSTERS * Part 1: Omens & Warnings * Part 2: Jekyll & Hyde * Part 3: Monsters & Heros * Part 4: Monsters & Scapegoats * Part 5: Illicit Hybrids * Part 6: Monsters & Death * Part 7: Hospitality & Monsters ORIGINAL SIN: A NEW VIEW * Part 1: Malthus & Sin * Part 2: Malthus & Acquisitiveness * Part 3: Malthus & Immoral Society * Part 4: Malthus & Paul * Part 5: A Game Theoretic View of Sin * Part 6: Mimetic Rivalry, Mirror Neurons, & Sin * Part 7: Hobbesian Traps & Sin * Part 8: Worm Theology * Part 9: Salvation from Malthus THE OMEGA POINT: THOUGHTS ON CONSCIOUSNESS, COMPLEXITY, ENTROPY & GOD* Part 1
* Part 2
* Part 3
* Part 4
THE THEOLOGY OF UGLY * "Ugly" as a theological category * Spirituality and aesthetics* Ugly and ethics
* The ugly cross
* The Isenheim Altarpiece* Pied beauty
* Christina's World
ORTHODOX ICONOGRAPHY * Notes on Icons: Stylization * Notes on Icons: Light * Notes on Icons: Time and Space * Notes on Icons: Perspective * Nativity, Baptism, and Transfiguration* The Crucifixion
* The Harrowing of Hell * Christ Pantokrator* John the Baptist
A WALK WITH WILLIAM JAMES * Part 1: The Jamesian Situation* Part 2: Habit
* Part 3: Belief as Vote * Part 4: Pragmatism and the Emerging Church * Part 5: Theology is a Fork * Part 6: Ontological Emotion * Part 7: Religious Surrender * Part 8: Introverts at Church * Part 9: Bubbles in the Sun * Part 10: Ghostbusting * Part 11: The Empirical Trace * Part 12: Saintliness PREPARING FOR THE CARTESIAN STORM (FREE WILL & SOULS IN THE AGE OFNEUROSCIENCE)
* Guide to Posts
MUSINGS ON FAITH, BELIEF, AND DOUBT * The Meanings Only Faith Can Reveal * Pragmatism and Progressive Christianity * Doubt and Cognitive Rumination * A/theism and the Transcendent* Kingdom A/theism
* The Ontological Argument * Cheap Praise and Costly Praise* god
* Wired to Suffer
* A New Apologetics
* Orthodox Alexithymia * High and Low: The Psalms and Suffering * The Buddhist Phase * Skilled Christianity * The Two Families of God * The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity * Theodicy and No Country for Old Men * Doubt: A Diagnosis * Faith and Modernity * Faith after "The Cognitive Turn"* Salvation
* The Gifts of Doubt* A Beautiful Life
* Is Santa Claus Real? * The Feeling of Knowing * Practicing Christianity * In Praise of Doubt * Skepticism and Conviction* Pragmatic Belief
* N-Order Complaint and Need for Cognition THE THEOLOGY OF HUMOR * Part 1: Humor as Power * Part 2: Humor as Prophecy * Part 3: Laughter and Smiles * Part 4: Emotional Contagion GAME THEORY AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD* Games and Utility
* Zerosum and Non-zerosum Games * The Prisoner's Dilemma* Free Riders
* Tit for Tat
* The Ultimatum Game* Reciprocity
* Community > Reciprocity * Evolutionary Stable Strategies * Social Information, Reputation, and Generalized ReciprocityHOLIDAY MUSINGS
* Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV * Advent: Learning to Wait * A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 1 * A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 2 * It's Still Christmas * Easter Shouldn't Be Good News * The Deeper Magic: A Good Friday Meditation * Palm Sunday with the Orthodox * Growing Up Catholic: A Lenten Meditation * The Liturgical Year for Dummies * "Watching Their Flocks at Night": An Advent Meditation * Pentecost and Babel* Epiphany
* Ambivalence about Lent * On Easter and Astronomy * Sex Sandals and Advent * Freud and Valentine's Day * Existentialism and Halloween * Halloween Redux: Talking with the DeadTHE OFFBEAT
* Batman and the Joker * The Theology of Ugly Dolls * Jesus Would Be a Hufflepuff * The Moral Example of Captain Jack Sparrow * Weddings Real, Imagined and Yet to Come * Michelangelo and Neuroanatomy * Believing in Bigfoot * The Kingdom of God as Improv and Flash Mob * 2012 and the End of the World* Chocolate Jesus
* The Polar Express and the Uncanny Valley * Why the Anti-Christ Is an Idiot * On Harry Potter and Vampire MoviesARCHIVES
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