Monthly Archives: January 2017

Confusion: Rights or Love

church, government, Jesus, justice, love, Matthew, politics, redemption, refugees, vengeance, violence

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. (1 Cor 14:33 RSV)

Last week’s blog included the sentence:  “Let the cacophony begin.” It has.

I have not intended to focus this blog on politics, but, like Moses’ experience with the burning bush, the current din of confusion in the political realm beckons me to turn aside to listen.  When I do, I hear that a significant component of the confusion involves the mistaken identification of national interests in self-protection with Christian motivations. Continue reading Confusion: Rights or Love →

Go to Shiloh (Jer 7:12)

church, environment, ethics, government, grace, Hope, Jeremiah, nationalism, particularism, prophecy, Uncategorized

“Do not trust deceptive words, saying ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these [stones]’.”  Jer 7:4, my translation

Sometime in the outgoing seventh century BCE, God sent Jeremiah to the temple in Jerusalem to warn the Judeans that, unless they changed their behavior, God would unleash the Babylonians to conquer. The venue for Jeremiah’s message proved to be as significant as the words themselves. Early in the sermon Jeremiah apparently quoted a Continue reading Go to Shiloh (Jer 7:12) →

Tireless Exertions

anger, civil society, ethics, grace, justice, love, politics, racism, reconciliation, violence

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. Eccl 1:4 RSV

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

I was born in February of 1957, when the union still had only forty-eight states, three years after the US Supreme Court handed down the historic Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483), and just a few months before the first nine black students enrolled in Little Rock Arkansas schools implementing the ruling.  Local sit-in campaigns began at a Woolworth Continue reading Tireless Exertions →

What the world needs now is hesed, sweet hesed…

family, Jesus, love, Ruth, translation

Matt 5:44-47

I “love” chocolate and I “love” my wife.  Clearly, the word “love” is almost too multivalent to be useful sometimes.

Two days ago, my phone rang at just after 5pm.  It was my youngest son.  He began, “Dad, I’m OK, but….”  My heart sank to my stomach, my pulse quickened, my mind simultaneously imagined possibilities and braced to hear the actual.  He had been rear-ended by a tractor-trailer truck at highway speed on the interstate; his car had rolled and Continue reading What the world needs now is hesed, sweet hesed… →

Hermeneutics, Consistency, and “Christian Values”

church, civil society, discipleship, ethics, imago Dei, interpretation, Jesus, politics, poverty, racism, reconciliation, redemption

The concept of “Christian values” is playing a prominent role in the public arena today, but my Facebook® feed lately suggests very little agreement among those who call themselves Christian concerning the identification of these values or the definition of them individually. No one should wonder that people outside the church view it with suspicion Continue reading Hermeneutics, Consistency, and “Christian Values” →