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”
Category Archives: poverty
“Blessed are the peacemakers” – Matt 5:9
Saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace – Jer 8:11
Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with nine “Beatitudes” that readers often unfortunately reduce to platitudes. The seventh, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” for example, can sound like a call to passivity and placidity: “Blessed are those who accept life with serenity, remaining calm, preserving calm, spreading calm.” Both the context and Continue reading “Blessed are the peacemakers” – Matt 5:9
By our Fruits
Luke 16:19-31
Several years ago now, when I had been teaching undergraduates for a few years, I said something (demonstrably true) in class about the text-critical problems with a particular passage of scripture that caused a minor disturbance among students. It soon reached the ears of the administration. Nothing came of it in the long run, I am happy to say, except for Continue reading By our Fruits
Poor Happens
And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (John 9:2 NAS)
Poverty is not (proof of) sin. Poverty is not a character flaw. Poverty happens to people.
John’s Gospel records an episode in Jesus’ ministry in which his disciples revealed their sadly respectable conventionality. Two prominent strands of theological tradition running throughout the Old Testament converged in their question concerning the identity of the sinner responsible for an unfortunate man’s blindness.
“Outside Agitators”
In the previous entry in this blog, I argued that the most profitable approach to reading prophetic literature involves a variety of “pattern recognition.” Yesterday, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, I took the opportunity to re-read Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” his famed “I Have a Dream” speech, and the concluding chapter of his
Christmas Prophecy
Christmas disturbs me this year. Usually, I hear in the Christmas story the announcement that the prophetic insight encapsulated in the phrase “Immanu-el (Hebrew, “God is with us”; Isa 7:14; Matt 1:23) has found ultimate expression in the birth of a child. Christmas usually reminds me that God wants communion with human beings, created in God’s image, to such a degree that God was willing come to us as an infant child. Christmas usually reminds me that we do not have to speculate about the character of the God, mysterious and majestic, who created the universe. Instead, God so desires to reveal