Jesus doesn't save us from a monstrous God who damns people to hell for coloring outside the lines. Jesus saves us from being monsters who draw normative lines that make life hell for others. The lines that matter are the boundaries required by human dignity. Those...
04216 – The Body of Christ
... whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world, or the Christian world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they’ve been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts...
04036 – Saved from…..
Jesus didn't come to save you from an angry God, but to save you from believing He is.-------------------------------------------Gender-neutral version: Jesus didn't come to save you from an angry God, but to save you from believing God is.
03961 – Good News vs. Propaganda
If your Gospel dehumanizes people in order to save them, it's not Good News, it's propaganda. Not in service of their well being, but in establishment of your privilege. Not to give cause to love them, but to give reason for your hatred.
03512 – Tame God vs. Wild God
I, too, am tired of the tame God and boxed-in-Christ, distorted by control-seeking humans who use religion to maintain the status quo. I'm yearning for a wild God that compels me to full participation in this miraculous dance of life, deepening the meaning in a core...
03267 – Scripture, Not Feeling
A genuine experience of the Lord is based on Scripture, not our feelings, but that does not mean that our feelings are unaffected. We are so afraid of feeling these days that it has become almost the unpardonable sin to say 'Amen' [in church]. We are not saved because...
03173 – Grace Has to be Drunk Straight
The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace--bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one...
03089 – Saddest and Hardest
The saddest thing in life and the hardest to live through is the knowledge that there is someone you love very much whom you cannot save from suffering.
03029 – Faith, Trust, and Love
The word faith is often understood as accepting something you can’t understand. People often say: “Such and such can’t be explained, you simply have to believe it.” However, when Jesus talks about faith, he means first of all to trust unreservedly that you are loved,...
03013 – Our Obsession with Being Right
Our obsession with being right in our eschatological and theological arguments is an idolatrous impediment to sharing the gospel (which is meant as good news for all people in the here and now). The fear-induced pressure for us to somehow “save” people from a...