Category

Theology

The One Who Daydreams and Sings

The handsome and tall Saul is chosen–Saul who looks like a king, who embodies authority. But the God of the Exodus has not shown God’s favor for Saul. The God who moves from despair, the God who reveals God’s name to those in pain, the God who picks stutterers to be God’s mouthpiece finds no…

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Putting People in Crosshairs

As a Christian, I urge Christian political leaders to refrain from violent and divisive language….we do not need to put our opponents in crosshairs, or reload, but affirm our positions without personalizing, marginalizing, or threatening. We need to place the path of Christ – non-violence, forgiveness, and prophetic hospitality – ahead of our limited viewpoints….

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How to Be Happy(?)

The Tetrapharmakos, or, “The four-part cure,” is the Greek philosopher Epicurus’ remedy for leading the happiest possible life. The “tetrapharmakos” was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Epicurus and his disciples to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul. The Four-Part…

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When the Scriptures are used maturely

When the Scriptures are used maturely, and they become a precursor to meeting the Christ, they proceed in this order: They confront us with a bigger picture than we are used to, “God’s kingdom” that has the potential to “deconstruct” our false worldviews. They then have the power to convert us to an alternative worldview…

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A New Language. Do you speak it?

Another Language Recently another language has grown up within the one others use. The new language has a special way: it avoids saying obvious things as if they are not so obvious; it never proclaims something that the kind of person being addressed is presumed to know already; it courteously gives credit to the needs…

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Only a weak, deficient being can love.

“…even if I were to possess all knowledge, without love I would be nothing, is not simple that with love, I am ‘something’—in love, I am also nothing but, as it were, a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing paradoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack.  Only a lacking, vulnerable being…

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