Street Vendors
For Sale, originally uploaded by jeanne.lopez.
I have a Two-sided Coin and No Pockets!
One reader e-mailed me to ask if I was a religious liberal. My side nearly exploded as it tried to absorb the crush of my resultant and hearty laughter. No! I am no religious liberal! I tried religious liberalism for a bit. I nibbled on it like a dense fish foolishly flirting with a hook, but quickly discovered that it tasted of the same old, failed, and unmistakable humanism of bygone years. I’m also not a religious conservative either. It’s just as distracting. This detrimental pair happily share the two sides of a sad coin of codependency. I chucked it into a wishing well a long time ago. My wish? To go far beyond that dichotomy; to dive into Gospel.
Hauerwas on the End of Religious Pluralism
Stanley Hauerwas video and audio lecture: The End of Religious Pluralism.
You are Treating Jesus like a Commodity
“… I worry that those you entice to following Jesus at your event, will start off with such a skewed picture of what this Jesus character is about that they will never really be able to see clearly the real Jesus we meet in the gospels.”
Ariah Fine
Are We Willing to Make Adjustments to Heed God’s Call?
Many of us ask God for an assignment, or look hard to see where God is at work, but then hesitate or refuse to make necessary adjustments. Jesus exemplifies willingness to make an adjustment: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). Other Biblical examples: Noah could not continue life as usual and build an ark at the same time (Gen 6); Abram could not stay in Ur or Haran and father a nation in Canaan (Gen 12.1-8); Moses could not stay on the back side of the desert herding sheep and stand before Pharaoh at the same time (Ex. 3); David had to leave his sheep to become a king (1 Sam. 16. 1-13); Amos had to leave the sycamore trees in order to preach in Israel (Amos 7.14-15); Jonah had to leave his home and overcome a major prejudice in order to preach in Nineveh (Jonah 1.1-2; 3.1-2; 4.1-11); Peter, Andrew, James, and John had to leave their fishing business in order to follow Jesus (Matt. 4.18-22); Matthew had to leave his tax collector’s boot to follow Jesus (Matt. 4-18-22); Saul (Paul) had to completely change directions in his life in order to be used of God to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 9.1-19).
What is Prayer?
“Prayer is a bulletin board where I post memos to the Almighty. It is not a chess game where I negotiate to get God to see or do things my way. He knows how it looks through my eyes. He knows how to manage a universe. Prayer isn’t a way to see things like he does. It’s a refuge.”
Ragamuffin Prayers
Eavesdropping on a Radical Emergent Unitarian Conversation
Go on, try to parse the musings of this self-identified and self-proclaimed “Radical, Emergent, Unitarian” conversation about Jesus Christ.
An Environmental Friendly Car
Is this the future of ecology friendly automotive transportation: Aptera?
Three Major Presuppositions of the Jesus Seminar
The three major presuppositions of the Jesus Seminar: 1. Scientific Naturalism (i.e., anything outside the realm of natural explanation can never be backed by historical evidence). 2. The primacy of the apocryphal gospels. 3. The necessity of a politically correct Jesus. Read More »
