Monday 14 May 2012
Even more striking—and all-pervasive—are Jesus’ teachings that we must elevate “feminine virtues” from a secondary or supportive to a primary and central position. We must not be violent but instead turn the other cheek; we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us; we must love our neighbors and even our enemies. Instead of the “masculine virtues” of toughness, aggressiveness, and dominance, what we must value above all else are mutual responsibility, compassion, gentleness, and love… What he was preaching was the gospel of a partnership society. Riane Eisler ☀
Jesus taught the love of enemies, but Babylonian religion taught their extermination. Violence was for the religion of ancient Mesopotamia what love was for Jesus: the central dynamic of existence. Walter Wink ☀
Thursday 3 May 2012
imagine jesus carrying a gun ☀
If you’re comfortable risking the use of lethal force to defend your property or that of your neighbors, you’re doing so against the teachings of Jesus. If you’re a Christian and yet you think risking the end of another person’s life to protect your house or possessions is reasonable, we don’t merely have a difference of opinion. I’m calling you out and telling you to repent.
Zimmerman was armed, we’re told, because there had been numerous burglaries in the neighborhood and he wanted to protect his community. By carrying a gun, he implicitly acknowledged his willingness to use it in defense of property. I understand that many Americans have no problem with that. But a Christian must object.
As someone who has been robbed, had guns held to his head, and sat under the threat of lethal force as I watched my apartment being ransacked, I can emphatically say it is wrong to use force to defend your possessions. I did not sit there seething, wishing I had a gun. I offered the men a drink. I share this not because it is remarkable but because it the least that any Christian should be expected to do in similar circumstances.
Wednesday 2 May 2012
If, as Christians claims, the story of the Bible is important to us, then we shouldn’t be so worried about foreigners; we shouldn’t be so afraid of immigrants. After all, the story of the Christian gospel centers on a man named Jesus — or, as we called him in my Hispanic family, Jesús: the one who was born on the migrant trail, moving from place to place, born to parents who did everything they could to protect him from Herod and his government, parents who even defied the will of Herod and snuck away under the cover of darkness, crossing into Egypt without proper documentation — sin papeles, as we would put it today. Called to Welcome the Stranger ☀
We [Black theologians] want to know who Jesus was because we believe that that is the only way to assess who he is. […] Without some continuity between the historical Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ, the Christian gospel becomes nothing but the subjective reflections of the early Christian community. James Cone ☀
Tuesday 1 May 2012
When people engage in nonviolent resistance, they experience something of their higher selves; for nonviolence is a characteristic of the coming reign of God, and a foretaste of its transcendent reality. Walter Wink ☀
Monday 30 April 2012
Jesus never says a word about homosexuality, but there was one kind of sin that he spoke out against all the time. There was one kind of sin that got Jesus really mad. This was the sin of religious people who shut out those in need of mercy. This was the sin of people who used the Bible as a weapon. You hear Jesus saying this on page after page of the gospels. Why? Because this type of sin has the potential to damage people like few other things do. It is particularly damaging because they claim to be speaking for God. So if we really want to speak out against sin, we as Christians need to speak out against the kind of sin that Jesus did, and side with the kinds of folks he did. What does Jesus think about Homosexuality? ☀
Tuesday 17 April 2012
A Year of Living Like a Follower of Jesus ☀
I am waiting for someone to write part three of this trilogy, A Year of Living Like A Follower of Jesus. But don’t look at me. No way. I mean, can you imagine. If I tried doing that for a year—or for six hours—well…I’m getting a stomach ache just thinking about it.
And I don’t mean all that stuff you know you’re supposed to take figuratively—like cutting off your hand or gouging out your eye if they cause you to stumble. I’m talking about all the stuff that you know Jesus meant literally. The stuff he actually expected his followers to do if they wanted to be a part of his movement, what he called the Kingdom of God.
Serve God without drawing attention to yourself;
Give your possessions to those who need them, even if you do, too;
Bless people who flat out hate you and want to destroy you;
Don’t defend yourself at the drop of a hat;
Don’t stand in judgment over others at the drop of a hat;
Respond to cruelty with kindness;
Truly believe that people who absolutely creep you out are of infinite worth, and then act like it;
Don’t worry—about anything;
Control your anger and make peace with others wherever you go rather than perpetuate conflict.
If I tried doing even the first three on this list, I would pop a vein in my head before breakfast and collapse.
Unlike most of the commands in the Old Testament—don’t eat camel meat, keep your bull out of your neighbor’s property, banish someone with crushed testicles, and be sure to collect a dowry from your virgin daughter’s seducer—the things Jesus talked about are actually commanded of his followers, with, if I may guess, the expectation by Jesus that they would form the pattern of our daily lives.
This is the promise of the resurrection — not that we will no longer be wounded. No, we will always be wounded. Between hunger and poverty, war and terror, abuse and hate, our world will make sure that none of us escape unscathed without wounds that do not heal. But as people of the resurrection, our promise is that our wounds will not always and forever bleed us of our lives, our vitality. The promise of the resurrection is not the assurance of a life without wounds but a life in which our wounds, even if they define us as they do Jesus, do not bleed us. The promise of the resurrection is that, eventually, after the bleeding stops, our wounds, while they won’t ever heal, might just begin to heal others. David R. Henson ☀
Sunday 1 April 2012
Friday 30 March 2012
In Jesus’ own life and career and in his instructions to his disciples, the enemy becomes a privileged object of love. Because we confess that the God who has worked out our reconciliation in Christ is a God who loves his enemies at the cost of his own suffering, we are to love our enemies beyond the extend of our capacity to be a good influence on them or to call forth a reciprocal love from them. In other ethical systems, the “neighbor” may well be dealt with as an object of our obligation to love. But Jesus goes further and makes of our relation to the adversary the special test of whether the love we have is derived from the love of God. John Howard Yoder ☀
Here in the US, society holds onto redemptive violence, like the death penalty, and participatory violence, in the name of self-defense, as rights divined by God himself. I find that this position couldn’t be further from the truth. Jesus, Self Defense, And The Death Penalty ☀
Thursday 29 March 2012
The light of truth is simply the only thing that scatters the darkness in ourselves and in the world because God doesn’t deal in deceit and denial and half-truths. Yes, encounters with Truth are hard and require you to step into something that feels like it might just crush you. But the instant is crushes you it also puts you back together into something real. Only the Gospel can do that. The good news is not that you can possess the truth, but that the truth can possess you, making you real and making you free … perhaps for the first time. And as frightening as it might feel, as much as it might feel like it’s going to crush you, the light of the truth is something you can live in because the love of God has freed you and indeed every human being from the need to live in any lies. Step into the light. You’ll be fine. You’ll be real. And you’ll be free. Nadia Bolz-Weber ☀
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