“For Jesus to associate with tax collectors was not an association with the oppressed. It was an association with the despised, all right, but with despised oppressors. The tax collectors were the guys who could send a SWAT team to your house, for Pete’s sake. The people who despised the tax collectors were actually the …
Give or Take a Few Pounds
All You Need Is . . . No, Not that Kind
“Yes, what matters fundamentally is love. But in the Bible love sometimes knocks heads together, fights serpents and dragons, silences the foe and the avenger, and casts the godless into Hell” (Empires of Dirt, p. 86).
So Smoothly
“But [Greg] Boyd simply appeals to an NPR ethic, the kind of ethic that goes down smoothly with a five dollar latte” (Empires of Dirt, p. 85).
Peasants, Pitchforks, and Pink Panthers
Introduction: The linked article here is of considerable interest, and I so recommend a careful reading of it to you. The article concerns the decline of the trained gatekeepers, and the rise of an untutored hoi polloi who do things like promote celebrity evangelicaladies like Jen Hatmaker on the one hand, and elect Donald Trump …
No Spirit Left
“So this means that Christians who labor now for the eradication of civil vice, folly, corruption, and tyranny—may their tribe increase—are working to shed a Zion light that the nations might enjoy. But when they have succeeded, they will not have achieved a Marxian ‘withering away’ of the state, or some kind of anarchist paradise. …
Today is Tuesday. You Know What That Means.
The Eternal State: Re: “The New Jerusalem” This is compelling. If Revelation 21-22 explain what the bride of Christ looks like, does the Bible explain what things will look like after the return of Christ? Sure, God desires righteousness and justice, and the new heavens and earth would look like that, but it does seem …
The Night Before Whatsit
So here is some festive doggerel I wrote some time ago, and which I periodically post at appropriate times of the year — and now it is the turn of 2017. Have a merry Christmas. Comments are open, but only if you want to say merry Christmas back. ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all …
The New Jerusalem
“The New Jerusalem is not a figure of Heaven, the final eternal state, but is rather a glorious image of the Christian Church. This is explicit in a number of places. The Jerusalem above, Paul says, is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26). When we come to worship God on the Lord’s Day, we …