The word “scapegoating” originated from an ingenious ritual described in Leviticus 16. According to Jewish law, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal....
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are. from The Cost of Discipleship
A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relationship with God. We read our chapters, have our short...
The proof of the resurrection is not in rational argument but in the community of the resurrected people. The church is called to be a sign, a witness to the Easter message that Christ has overcome the powers of evil (Eph 3:10). from Ancient-Future Time
The attempt to divide the world into tidy categories of oppressor and oppressed or victimizer and victim oversimplifies the more complex realities of histories and habits of sin and evil. While it is undeniably true that many people have suffered--and continue to...
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness...
Public good doesn't automatically follow from private virtue. A person's moral character, sterling though it may be, is insufficient to serve the cause of justice, which is to challenge the status quo, to try to make what's legal more moral, to speak truth to power,...
To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And, like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is, it is...
Money has power out of all proportion to its purchasing power. Because the children of this world understand this, they can use money for non-economic purposes. And use it they do! Money is used as a weapon to bully people and to keep them in line. Money is used to...