Being Christian Without Losing Your Mind
“How terrible it will be for you legal experts and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You give to God a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, but you forget about the more important matters of the Law: justice, peace, and faith.” – Matthew 23:23 If there’s such a thing as original sin, something we’re all guilty of by …
Nearby shepherds were living in the fields, guarding their sheep at night. – Luke 2:8 The message hidden in the Christmas story is this: In God’s kingdom, ordinary people are the real heroes. Shepherds see and hear a heavenly choir. Not the rabbis. A teenage girl gets visited by an angel. Not the princess in …
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in a pitch-dark land, light has dawned. – Isaiah 9:2 There was one part of my job as a pastor that particularly scared me. It was being with people in the darkest point in their lives, and feeling totally inadequate. What do …
Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, “Lord, the smell will be awful! He’s been dead four days.” – John 11:39 Martha, the sister of her dead brother Lazarus, was saying what others were thinking. Jesus had commanded the stone in front of Lazarus’ tomb, in which the body had …
In a school district in suburban St. Louis county, a controversy arose over the teaching of diversity curriculum. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Aisha Sultan described it, detailing the heated feelings and speeches. In one forum, a woman of color told of her own experience with racism. A nearby white woman responded to her, “No, you …
Dear friends, don’t believe every spirit. Test the spirits to see if they are from God because many false prophets have gone into the world. – 1 John 4:1 We can modernize what John says in the above warning. “Dear friends, for pity’s sake, DON’T RETWEET every tweet you get. Test them first to see …
About that time King Herod began to harass some who belonged to the church. He had James, John’s brother, killed with a sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he arrested Peter as well. – Acts 12:1-3a Herod Antipas followed in his father’s, Herod the Great’s, footsteps. Mean, vengeful, neurotic, violent. He also played to the …
And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” – Matthew 20:11-12 (NRSV) These workers are angry because they’ve been working since dawn and the ones who were …
He shouted, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I’m suffering in this flame.’ – Luke 16:34 This request from the rich man in hell is easy to gloss over, because of the drama of the whole scene. Yet, look …
There are two defining virtues for a Christian: honesty and humility. Honesty: Christians have the courage to try and see themselves as they are, as objectively as possible. We search for blind spots, masked prejudices, self-justifications, and so forth. (Wasn’t that the point of Wesley’s small groups?) Humility: We admit we are hopelessly and unconsciously …