The New Living Translations of Ephesians 2.10 says “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
I’ve often heard this verse extolled as a sort of self-affirming mantra to fall back on when you’re feeling down about yourself. Most recently I encountered it in this tweet from Joel Osteen: “You are not average. You have been custom made. You are God’s masterpiece.” (more…)
James McGrath posted a chart of the results of survey regarding the authorship of the Pauline epistles. He points out that “seeing the numbers” can provide a quick summation of scholarly opinion. But for me, visualizing those numbers is even better, so I put together this quick chart based on the data:
Be sure to read McGrath’s thoughts on the survey, as well as Rick Sumner’s.
I commented to someone yesterday that I was bored and annoyed by the whole Reza Aslan controversy, so I hadn’t bothered to write about it. So in light of that disinterest, let me go ahead and add my two cents to the fray: (more…)
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that in an interview Pope Francis said: “Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord? … You can’t marginalize these people.”
This story has spread across the internet as if the Pope has said something ground-breaking about the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality, as if they’ve made a 180-degree about-face and are now open and accepting of gays. But nothing could be further from the truth. (more…)
I just read Karl Barth’s sermon “Saved By Grace” from his slender volume The Preaching of the Gospel. What a great sermon! You can read the whole thing online, but here’s an excerpt:
Dear brothers and sisters, where do we stand now? One things is certain: the bright day has dawned, the sun of God does shine into our dark lives, even though we may close our eyes to its radiance. His voice does call us from heaven, even though we may obstruct our ears. The bread of life is offered to us, even though we are inclined to clench our fists instead of opening our hands to take the bread and eat it. The door of our prison is open, even though, strangely enough, we prefer to remain within. God has put the house in order, even though we like to mess it up all over again. By grace you have been saved!–this is true, even though we may not believe it, may not accept it as valid for ourselves and unfortunately in so doing may forego its benefits. Why should we want to forego the benefits? Why should we not want to believe? Why do we not go out through the open door? Why do we not open our clenched fists? Why do we obstruct our ears? Why are we blindfolded? Honestly, why?
While reflecting on the nature of evangelical Christianity, this quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters came to mind:
My dear Wormwood,
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And’. You know–Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.
“If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference” — but of course we do have differences, and often important ones at that! I agree with the sentiment that we should seek unity, that we should cling to “mere” Christianity and that we should hold our differences with humility. But therein lies the rub: what for one Christian is a minor theological difference not worth quibbling over is, for another, a heresy that threatens the very foundations of belief.
What beliefs do unite us? What are the essentials? What defines someone as a Christian? Is it merely a self-designation that has a potentially different meaning for each person? Simply a follower of Jesus? A profession that Jesus is Lord? An affirmation that Christ died for our sins, was buried and was raised on the third day? Agreement with the Apostles’ Creed? With the Nicene Creed?
But moving past those essentials (whatever they may be), how do we negotiate our differences on other matters? How do we hold true to our deeply held beliefs while still respecting — and even welcoming — the diverse beliefs of others? How do we find unity as “mere Christians” when we have so many seemingly unbridgeable theological gaps?
A common objection to universalism (the view that all people will eventually be reconciled to God) is that it violates our free will — that in order for God to save everyone, he would have to force some to love him. Those who argue from that point of view disavow universalism in part because they believe that some people will freely choose to reject — and will always choose to reject — God’s saving love and grace.
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Which of these men would you rather encounter in an alley late at night … and why?
In an earlier post, I asked “Why are you or why aren’t you an evangelical Christian?” I received some great, thought-provoking responses, and several people asked for some specifics about my answer to that question. So here goes!
I understand how all of these facets can be taken to unhelpful and even dangerous extremes. I realize that American evangelicalism has often been particularly negligent in that regard and regularly expresses hate and judgment in place of compassion and grace. But, for me, the characteristics I outlined above stand at the very heart of Christianity — every use of the word “evangelical” can be changed to the word “Christian.”
That’s how I understand evangelicalism. But … that’s clearly not how many others understand it. For them, evangelicalism has to do with forcibly evangelizing, with drawing up battle lines, with defining in and out groups, with rooting out heresy, with condemning others to hell, with vehemently opposing abortion and homosexuality, with standing up for gun rights and with supporting a generally Republican agenda. For many, the term evangelical is a synonymous with a “brand” of Christianity that bears little, if any, resemblance to the Christianity that I believe in.
I’ve always self-identified as an evangelical because that was the tradition I was brought up in and because it seemed to me to best fit my understanding of what I believe. But identifying as such puts me in the same room as many other self-proclaimed evangelicals with whom I share very little theological common ground.
To the extent that this discussion is about arbitrary theological delineations, it is perhaps a futile undertaking to try and pin down any specific meaning for the term evangelical. But this has very practical implications for me: I do get asked what religion I am, I do get asked what kind of Christian I am. I don’t need or particularly want to place myself in a box with clearly defined borders. But I do want to respond to those sorts of questions in the most honest and accurate way possible. It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that “Evangelical Christian” is perhaps not a useful term of self-identification, at least not without a great deal of potentially tedious explanation.
On the other hand, I think that self-identifying as evangelical while making it abundantly clear that my stance on a number of controversial issues falls to the (far?) left of the ideological spectrum potentially offers a powerful witness about the compatibility of Christianity with overt support for traditionally “liberal” issues. From my perspective, there isn’t necessarily any conflict between a deep love of the Jesus and the Bible and support for gay rights, women’s rights and a slew of other issues.
Am I an evangelical? Yes! What exactly does that mean to me and to you? Let’s sit down and have a conversation about it …
The Trayvon Martin case highlighted some significant issue in the American legal system. But this wasn’t simply an isolated incident of a random miscarriage of justice.
From The Sentencing Project:
More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the “war on drugs,” in which two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.
From The Innocence Project:
Nearly 70 percent of the 242 people exonerated by DNA testing to date are people of color. These exonerations have spotlighted racial bias in the criminal justice system and the need for reforms that address these inequalities.
From the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
blacks were disproportionately represented among homicide victims and offenders. Blacks were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide.
The American “justice” system is deeply broken, especially in terms of race. How many more Trayvons have to die before we take notice of these systemic problems? How much longer do we wait before implementing real change, before facing our shortcomings and honestly working together towards a solution? These problems didn’t come about overnight and neither will they easily fade away. But do we really want to wait for the media to pick the next cause célèbre for us? Or do we want to be proactive, tackling the roots of the problems head on?
When you have the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, you have a problem. And the answer to that problem isn’t more prisons, it isn’t spending more money on law enforcement, it isn’t more laws, it isn’t harsher mandatory sentencing.
The Trayvon Martin case was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of issues of race and crime in the United States. Will this be the incident that finally sinks the ship, or will we continue steaming full speed ahead, oblivious to the deadly mass of cold discord that’s lurking just below the place surface of lives?
