Marginal Christianity

          We are beginning to learn that we live by what we love rather than by what we can figure out, prove, or reason our way toward. Reason, rather, works to provide grounds for our living by what we love. We were meant to live by and for the love of our Creator. Our reason would have unfolded all knowledge and insight congruent with that love. We call that truth. Unfortunately, humanity rejected the love of God and chose its own love, each to their own. Our reason went to work generating all manner of claims for the truth of our loves. John Calvin describes our minds engaged in this work as a “factory for idols.” Our loves “enchant” us. We are bound by their spell to mobilize all our resources to support and “prove” them true.           In The Silver Chair Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Jill Pole are called into Narnia by Aslan to search out and rescue Prince Rilian, so of King Caspian...

David Brooks FEB. 21, 2017 Most of us came of age in the last half of the 20th century and had our perceptions of “normal” formed in that era. It was, all things considered, an unusually happy period. No world wars, no Great Depressions, fewer civil wars, fewer plagues. It’s looking like we’re not going to get to enjoy one of those times again. The 21st century is looking much nastier and bumpier: rising ethnic nationalism, falling faith in democracy, a dissolving world order. At the bottom of all this, perhaps, is declining economic growth. As Nicholas Eberstadt points out in his powerful essay “ Our Miserable 21st Century ,” in the current issue of Commentary, between 1948 and 2000 the U.S. economy grew at a per-capita rate of about 2.3 percent a year. But then around 2000, something shifted. Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/opinion/this-century-is-broken.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-c...

Round uP of Christ’s Seven Letters to the churches Our Resistical Worship Service So Far We have been called to Worship in a responsive way by John (1:4-8). John has introduced himself as Jesus’ interpreter (1:9-11) and Jesus as the Guest Preacher for the day (1:12-20). Jesus has greeted his churches with a message directed to each of the seven. We are ready to sing and sing we will with the two hymns in Revelation 4 & 5. In a world of pervasive and intensive indoctrination into the worldview of the Empire this worship service is a counter-blast challenging and correcting its mistakes and errors by casting Jesus Christ as the world’s rightful and true Emperor before whom the Roman wannabe is revealed for who he really is and whittled down to size. The vision of Christ John crafts to introduce him provides basic elements of the seven messages Christ delivers to his churches. That there are the symbolic number “seven” of them shows us that these messages offer in...

The role of the Bible is a vital topic many are wrestling with today. The most promising of the proposals made about this is that the Bible is one large, if rambling, story. God meets us in the witness to this story in the Bible and through the Spirit we are made a part of it. The biblical story becomes our story too. It’s in this story that discover the character and will of the God made known in Jesus Christ. We learn that we do not and cannot know God apart from the Bible’s portrayal of this figure. In short, through meeting God in the biblical story we learn that the most characteristic and distinctive thing Christian faith says is that its God is Jesus-like. So the Bible’s witness to Jesus, its revelation through him of God’s character and will, his word to us as a form of God’s presence, is its chief role in the church’s life. Yet too often we read the Bible for very different reasons. Devotional inspiration (a thought-for-the-day approach), an ethics rulebook, a doctri...

Letters to seven churches (2) (cont’d) Thyatira (2:18-29): Imperial Economy vs. God’s Economy The message to this church comes from the One with “eyes like flames of fire” and “feet . . . like burnished bronze” (v.18; cf. 1:14,15). Thyatira was a growing commercial and manufacturing city particularly working with bronze. This may account for way Christ is identified. Yet fire and burnished bronze can also connote power and judgment. The focus of this message seems to be on economic entanglements with the empire and the ways such commitments can compromise faith and witness. Again, Christ offers a mixed report.   On the plus side, “love, faith, service, and patient endurance” in which they are growing (v.19). On the negative side, though, they tolerate a Jezebelian teaching (“the deep things of Satan,” v.24). Jezebel was the Canaanite wife of King Ahab of Israel who influenced him and nation to practice idolatry. The parade example was when Ahab schemed to take ...

Insight from The Chronicles of Narnia:                                                                                      The Character of Leadership in Prince Caspian           There much talk today about leadership in the church. Too much talk in my opinion. Emphasis on leadership skills and competencies obscures what is truly crucial and underemphasized about “leadership.” Leonard Sweet [1] hits the nail on the head:                ...

President Trump disembarking from Air Force One as he returns from Florida on Feb. 12. Al Drago / The New York Times February 14, 2017 Thomas L. Friedman Thank God for the resignation in shame by Mike Flynn, President Trump’s national security adviser. And not just because he misled the vice president and engaged in deeply malignant behavior with Russia, but, more important, because maybe it will finally get the United States government, Congress and the news media to demand a proper answer to what is still the biggest national security question staring us in the face today: What is going on between Donald Trump and the Russians? Sorry, Kellyanne Conway, I am not ready to just “move on.” Every action, tweet and declaration by Trump throughout this campaign, his transition and his early presidency screams that he is compromised when it comes to the Russians. I don’t know whether Russian oligarchs own him financially or whether Russian spies own him pers...