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Good morning, internet world! At what am I to be offended about today?
We are a gullible culture. All of us. It’s easy to poke fun at conservative Christians (and part of it is a critique of my own tribe), and when I say “everyone” then there are those who say, “SEE! You are into both sideism! Or, whataboutism !” (So, there… you can be offended about that today.) But it comes to…
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The bravery and anxiety of closing a church
Then I told them once more, “Go in peace to love and serve your neighbors.” I know that I may never see some of those people ever again.
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Confronting the powers
One of the conclusions from Jesus and the Powers is that followers of Jesus will have to confront spiritual and worldly powers in this life. Conflict will happen. When authority goes wrong, it must be held accountable.
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 8
The final chapters in the book, Jesus and the Powers, are a struggle for me. Chapter 7 is the struggle. Chapter 8 is the summary. The fact of the matter, for Wright and Bird, is that government of some form is necessary. I can’t disagree. For all the shouting people do about corrupt government (on the “right” or the “left”),…
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The root of war
“We have only to open our eyes and look about us to see what our sins are doing to the world, and have done. But we cannot see. We are the ones to whom it is said by the prophets of God: ‘Hearing hear, and understand not; and see the vision, and know it not.” Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain…
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 7
There are governments to resist. We wrestle with the need to submit to a point and then how to resist when there are violations of conscience and crossing allegiances, but then there is a need to understand there are things to resist. The how is tricky, and it takes the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit. This isn’t about…
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 6
It’s been a week without writing mainly because I’ve been absorbing the political shooting from last week and then seeing how it might play out in the Republican National Convention. Along with that was preparation for this coming week’s book study group on Jesus and the Powers. It’s been a week of absorbing and reflecting.
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The call for the moral center to hold
David French writes in the hours following an assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a political rally in Pennsylvania: Now is the time for America’s moral center to rise up and declare — with one voice, neither red nor blue — “Enough.” We either recover our sense of decency and basic respect for the humanity of our opponents, or we…
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Jesus and the Power, Part 5
What will you do with your life? The world needs kingdom-minded Christians now more than ever. This is from p. 89 of Jesus and the Powers, and it is a great question I have carried with me for over 30 years. Where does the Spirit want to have me active in the work of the Kingdom in this world? What…
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Jesus and the Powers, Part 4
In leading a discussion on this book, the first week gave me this observation for our group: they wanted detailed definitions and detailed actions. Here is the “problem” with the book (and, also, with how Jesus leads): no finite details are given. Beautifully, when it comes to “actions,” they readily admit this:
