Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could anything be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of...
A friend does not sacrifice another for political reasons whether the politics be secular or religious. Jesus certainly doesn't. To do one in the name of the other is not just fraudulent but slanderous.
Christian nationalism relies on a theology of control, asking us to take up our swords, gavels, and politicians to secure and enforce our own power. Christianity relies on a theology of self-sacrificial love, asking us to take up our crosses and love others in the way...
Don't sacrifice who you could be for who you are.
At the heart of our faith stand not a preoccupation with our own welfare and comfort but the concepts of service and of sacrifice as shown in the life and teachings of the one who made himself nothing, taking the very form of a servant.
We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present...
We too have a priestly calling to the world. Like Christ, we are called to serve and to sacrifice, through a ministry of presence and through prayer. In every leadership situation, there is and ought to be a priestly dimension to our care for others…What burden has...