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Missing the Kingdom of God
Last Sunday our gospel text was Mark 3:23-35. The story here is the pressure Jesus is getting from his family and then the religious leaders. Neither one is happy with him. For his family, Jesus was avoiding them and his ministry was attracting so many people that his own family couldn’t get into their own home to eat. This put…
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Selling off Christianity for parts
This interview is a real gift for me. There were times in my life, long before deconstruction was the phrase to use, where similar shifts happened for me theologically.
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Political and spiritual involvement
One of the words we toss around without understanding the definition is “secular.” When it comes to being in the public square, it is a misunderstood (and abused) word. In Jesus and the Powers, Wright and Bird draw a clear picture of true secularism, where government is useful to allow religious voices to be heard but not dominating, and non-religious…
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Racism and white moderates
The problem of Dr. King’s day and our day, as pointed out by James Cone in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, is the silence of those who might have something to say, but don’t.
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Tribalism and Truth
We have been Balkanizing the U.S. for quite some time. We truly want to hang out only with “our folks” no matter the place on the political spectrum. I miss the days before social media. Truly.
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Away with fear
Fear drives politics. It raises money. It gets people turned toward an “enemy”… and then looking for “solutions.” This is not the way of the Kingdom of God.
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The simplicity of the gospel
On our road trip, we’ve revisited Simply Christian by NT Wright on audiobook. It has helped reset my mind as I long more and more to be anchored to Christ. A book I picked up for the trip (physical copy of a book) is Salvation by Allegiance Alone by Matthew Bates. It is similar in approach.
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Nostaligic history, reading the Bible well, and other such things
Two recent podcasts are worth your time in our current cultural season. This one with Russell Moore and Karen Swallow Prior discusses the way we read Scripture, how to read well, and is a good conversation between two people who long to hold on to Jesus and are getting re-acclimated to a world that has shifted greatly in the last…
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Impacting my theological thinking
The other day I pulled out some books that have had some deep impact over the years in my theological thinking. There are a couple that impacted me because of the place in life I find myself currently. If I had to have an essential reading list, these would be on it.
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Our cultural blindness
Over the past several years I have become more aware of a blindness we carry in the American white evangelical church regarding sin.
Tag: Theology
