As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures,...
To read the Gospels in the spirit with which they were written, it is not enough to ask what Jesus did or said. We must ask what Jesus meant by his strange words and deeds. For example, whenever the subject of poverty comes up in some circles, someone is bound to...
I suspect that Western individualism has done more than any other single factor to anesthetize and even euthanize the power of the Gospel. Salvation, heaven, hell, worthiness, grace, and eternal life all came to be read through the lens of separate ego, crowding God's...
If religious patriarchy was true, the angel of the Lord would have spoken first to Manoah about the miraculous conception of Samson. Instead, he spoke to Manoah’s wife—a woman—alone (Judges 13:2-24). If religious patriarchy was true, the angel Gabriel would have...
God forgive us for selling out our great intellectual treasure—the gospel of God with us—for a mess of psychobabble and pragmatic, utilitarian, self-help triviality.
All four gospels witness to Mary Magdalene as the premier witness to the resurrection - alone or in a group, but in all cases named by name. . . All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run, she does...
Eastertide and an Expanding Christ If Silent Saturday belongs to those grieving the death of the only Jesus they have ever known, Eastertide (the fifty days following Easter) belongs to those who are open to experiencing Jesus differently than they ever have....
"Prosperity gospel" is saying certain principles, behaviors, practices, and obedience is necessary for God's blessing. If it's essentially "God wants you to do X and you (or your children) will be Y," that's a transactional relationship with God.
Western churches continue to think about "going to heaven" or "going to hell" as the framework for the Gospel, but the Bible Story is not about us going somewhere but the Creator God coming to live with us.
That is why Jesus criticizes hypocrisy more than anything else. Jesus is never upset with sinners, but only with people who pretend they are not sinners. Check this out, story by story, in the Gospels. This is surprising and even shocking!" from Things Hidden -Richard...