Marginal Christianity

Theological Journal – January 6 A Central Rule of Life Text: Romans 12:1-2 The Message So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Observations: -Familiar foundational Pauline emphasis on human action responding to divine action -ordering of daily life as sacrifice, not a religious event or sphere of life (what Bonhoeffer calls “religionless Christianity”) -inertial dra...

Richard Rohr proposes five truths males need to face up to in order to grow and mature: Life is hard You are not important  Your life is not about you You are not in control  You are going to die I think that’s right. But I think it is of more general applicability. These five statements are essentially the message of Ecclesiastes. What life “under the sun,” apart from God, is and feels like. We do our best to fight against these realities but mostly end up screwing ourselves and others up in the process. And then we die. Living with God doesn’t mean life won’t feel like this. That’s life in a fallen world. God and his covenantal relationship to us is all that keeps our heads on straight and our heart centered where they need to be. And strengthens us to find our significance and security in relation to God rather than the myriads of other ways we try to find it. 

Entry into the City    John August Swanson Holy Saturday is the end. Jesus is dead. His disciples are scattered and disheartened. Where was God? If he couldn’t/wouldn’t be there for this man, what hope I there for the rest of us? This really is the end. All that’s left now is the Emmaus Road of discouragement and despair. What else is left when God doesn’t even show up for his own Son? Why did Jesus have to go through this? I mean, he did everything right. This is not a God who can be trusted! One who’d leave his beloved hanging on a cross, dying, aid to rest in a borrowed tomb without a sign of protest or resistance. Yet that’s where we are this Holy Saturday. I did read something recently which give a different take on this. But it’s far-fetched and implausible. I’m probably just grasping at straws here. But I’ll share it with you anyway. It’s from a series of letters from a senior Tempter in Hell to a junior devil he’s mentoring in the art of ...

Romans 12:1-2 12  1-2  So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.   (The Message) Sixth Sunday in Lent Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. What is this “culture” Paul warns about here? Misunderstanding and mischief follow not getting this right. “Cult...

http://noahstepro.com/the-end-of-adulthood-in-american-christianity/   October 10, 2014 — Sunday morning has typically come to mean two things in America: Church or Sports. This bifurcation of leisurely and religious pursuits in our culture is a development of the past 20 years…and it is a major sign of the end of adulthood in the American Church. A. O. Scott recently published a profound and possibly prophetic article in the New York Times entitled “ The Death of Adulthood in American Culture ” in which he suggests that we have witnessed the death of the mature male lead in pop media. This is a long developing trend in American literature, film and tv in which we see fulfillment come through friendships and personal journeys of adventure and rebellion, not the deep challenges of relationship and responsibility. What started as organized rebellion against injustice and stifling of creativity mutates a generation later into “bro comedies” of idle consumerism. Put ...