Category: Theology
-
Dollars Have Wings (Prayer for the Offering)
Lord, dollars fly away. Wealth makes wings for itself. We put money where we want it put, but it doesn’t stay put. Our money blows away, rolls away, goes up in smoke, and vanishes. We try to keep control of it, but we keep finding it beyond our control. This money is not up to…
-
Sermon on the Mount Comix #1
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) was the first passage of Scripture that ever grabbed ahold of me in a way I couldn’t ignore. In this message, Jesus breathes the pure spirit of grace even as he applies the law with a strictness that only the author of the law could accomplish. In…
-
Emergent Allergies: Bigger is Better
If anything, for emerging churches, smaller is better. But why? Like any renewal movement in the church, the emerging church movement hearkens back to the good ol’ days of Acts 2. These were days of community, economic simplicity and radical discipleship, days when the church was the church and the world was the world. But,…
-
Cuneiform tablets, big fish and God’s Word
I ran across an article today from the on-line edition of the London Times from July 11 entitled “Museum’s tablet lends new weight to Biblical truth.” For obvious reasons, this article caught my attention so I began to read. The verdict is this: from the 100,000 or so cuneiform tablets located in the British Library,…
-
Emergent Allergies: Boundaries
The problem with boundaries is that they serve too often to keep people out, rather than to keep people in. Insider/outsider, or ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ language too often threatens to undermine a gospel which is about an ever-expanding ‘us’ group. Furthermore, it tends to seduce us into thinking that ‘they’ are the problem, at which…
-
The End of Integration?
In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, David Brooks laments the ‘end of integration’. (Read the whole piece here.) Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration… Expecting integration, Americans find themselves confronting polarization and fragmentation. Amid all the problems that have made Americans sour and pessimistic, this is the deepest… But it…
-
Ecumenical Honesty, Finally!
On July 10, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a document entitled “Responses to some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church.” You may have heard about it already even if you have not read the document itself. Recalling and reaffirming the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching since, at…
-
Emergent Allergies: Systems
As part of an ongoing series of posts on emerging churches, I’m going to look at a few emergent allergies — things that get emerging churches itching and scratching and threaten to leave an embarrassing rash. As I noted in a previous post, the early days of deconstruction are receding from view as these churches…
-
Remembering Benedict of Nursia
Today is the feast of Benedict of Nursia. Details of Benedict’s life come primarily from the second book of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great and from Benedict’s own Rule for Monks. Born in 480 in Nursia, just outside of Rome, Benedict was educated in Rome before adopting a life of asceticism. He spent three…
-
Interpreting Texts on Interpretation
Does God withhold truth from believers? Now, I am not talking about the areas of physics, science, medicine, etc. Rather, my question is spiritual in nature: are there things about God and his creation that I cannot know while living on earth? Well, many Christians have already formed a response and, I am guessing, many…