Marginal Christianity

  Two well-known books written in the first half of the last century expressed what kind of fools their authors believed we Westerners would become. Their proposals appeared to be diametrical opposites, and for a long time it seemed they were. However, in one of those ironies history is full of, in our day both have become true of the same people at the same time. Do you know these authors and their famous books? -One feared those who would ban books. One feared there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. -One feared those who would deprive us of information. The other feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. -One feared that the truth would be concealed from us. The other feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. -The first feared we would become a captive culture. The second feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the f...

Reelation 141:5 and 15:1-4 – Character of resisters A t-shirt I saw in the mall read, on the front, “Fool for Christ,” while on the back it asked “Whose Fool are You?” And that’s the question Revelation places before us too. As Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord. But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Whose fool?   Who do we serve? These prefaces to ch.14 and 15 offer a chance for us another way to stand back and take a look at who we are and need to be to enact faithful resistance to beastly orderings of life that foster injustice and oppression of the haves over the have-nots. We can hold these two passages up as a mirror to reflect on where we are in our growth as “resistical” believers. [1] Revelation 14:1-5 and 15:1-4 1.        Resistical believers know who they are. They have God’s name and the Lamb’s name written on their foreheads (14:1). This sign of ownershi...