In Guns We Trust
I ran across a fascinating image today. It’s a wall-mounted gun cabinet disguised to look just like a rugged wooden cross, advertised as a great way to share your faith while simultaneously protecting yourself with those firearms.
Can Queer and Transgendered Persons Represent the Image of God?
How should we think about the current meteoric rise in gender-fluid thinking and self-expression in today’s culture? Can LGBTQ+ people represent the Imago Dei, the Image of God? It’s a pressing question for the church.
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Let Us Agape One Another
Today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I’m struck by two things: a peace that God has the entire world in His hands, even those who haven’t heard about Jesus yet, and a determination that showing agape love to my immediate neighbors ought to be a primary focus. And I think Dr. King had a handle on how to show agape love.
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Doctrinal Humility
It’s long intrigued me that many doctrinal positions are not universally held, and I started thinking about why we lock to hard into clearly debatable positions. I think humans tend to latch onto an idea that comforts us, and then we build walls of doctrine around that idea. Let’s explore that tendency.
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The One Ring of Political Power
The parallels between today’s America and 1930s Germany are striking. In “The Lord of the Rings” J.R.R. Tolkien describes The One Ring, a malevolent and active power which subverts and dominates anyone who wears it. I wonder if the recent pursuit of political power by the Evangelical church is akin to slipping on that ring.
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Exponential Christianity
I’ve been thinking about how to make an impact on the world. I think we all want to affect our world. For most of us, it’s what drives our choices, maybe not day-by-day but at least over time. Naturally I want to have a large impact as quickly as possible. But I’ve begun to wonder if my impatience itself is keeping me from truly having an impact.
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Cinderblocks of Faith
I’ve discovered that once you kick out some cinderblocks from a faulty foundation, many other previously-stable things tend to be disrupted as well. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.
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Deconstruction or Repentance?
What if your life mission was to walk the streets of your city, visiting the street corners next to each church, and to cry “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand” – and what if the ones you were calling to repent were the church people who were actually faithfully and diligently living out what they’d been taught were the religious commands from holy scriptures?
This ought to sound familiar. If you did that you’d be following Jesus’ example.
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Small Groups and Synagogues
Do small groups support Sunday services, or do Sunday services support small groups? That question is very relevant to the current concerns of many believers about American Christianity’s practices. To find an answer, it’s instructive to consider the Jewish religious practices familiar to the New Test
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Let’s Not Take Brandon to Church
It’s hard to imagine a more precise illustration of “the ends justify the means” – and a more ironic one – than a Christian reverting to very anti-Christian behavior in order to obtain or preserve political power for the church. How did we ever get here?
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