The moment we Christians feel justified abandoning love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control for the sake of preserving and enforcing our own power is the moment we find we are being led by something other than the...
Nationalism keeps telling us Christians to take up our swords and make nations "Christian" by any means necessary. Jesus keeps calling us Christians to take up our crosses and be like him, serving the world through grace, humility, compassion, and self-sacrificial...
Christianity should sound like, "my beliefs continue to deepen my love for others," not "the depth of my love for others is contingent on how deeply they conform to my beliefs."
One lesson that we Christians have not learned in the last 2,000+ years is that Jesus had no political control over the Roman Empire and he still changed the entire world. We keep trying to change the world the way the Roman Empire did, instead of the way Jesus did.
Our public witness as Christians should cause our world to say, "look at the power of their love," not "look at how much they love power."
When we refuse to have nuanced conversations about deeply complex issues and choose instead to impose our narrow categories of right and wrong upon others, we become incapable of ever moving forward to work together for a better world. We must do better.
When our theology and politics as Christians is completely preoccupied with how other people might be sinning rather than how our own sin contributes to the problems of our world, that is when we know our religion is about control rather than redemption.
If Jesus wanted a Christian nation, he would have established one, but he didn't. He established the church. Whenever we Christians forsake our call to be the church for a "Christian empire," the results are always catastrophic. We are called to be the church, not an...
Our Christian religion is being co-opted for the sake of power and control over our culture. Where Jesus chose to save us by his grace and mercy, Christianity is being used to coerce and control people into conformity. This is what it looks like to take Christ's name...
We Christians can be sure that we are listening to Caesar more than Jesus when our political witness looks more like a sword and a gavel than a washbasin and a cross.