While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia; and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
—Acts 13.2-4
Nice. I love that.
Over the past couple of posts, we’ve been looking at Acts 4, to see if it has any lessons to teach us about how Christian engage with the political realm when they disagree with what the government is doing.
So far, we’ve talked about three things: (in Part 1) how Christians should engage with a political realm that comes in conflict with their faith; what is worth Christians disobeying the civil authorities over; and (in Part 2) the cultural and societal work we are called to that facilitates our Christian living and possible disobedience.
Today, we’ll finish this up with some principles and applications for moving forward.
Some Personal Contraceptive Conclusions
Continue reading
Okay, I lied. This will be three posts, not just two.
Last week, in light of Catholic institutions moving more towards Civil Disobedience in light of certain provisions in the Affordable Care Act, we looked at Acts 4 to see if there was any guidance we could get in this. We talked about how (1) Civil Disobedience is not warfare against the laws of your geographic home, but simply living in light of your spiritual home–the Kingdom of God. We also pointed out (2) that the State is not around to comply with our every theological preference and whim, and therefore some discretion needs to be used to evaluate what’s “worth” Civil Disobedience.
Today we keep going. I want to offer some summary conclusions, but first let’s point out the last thing the Acts 4 passage helps us see: the work we do in society prior to our Civil Disobedience.
Continue reading
With the Affordable Care Act kicking in, it has certainly stirred up its fair share of controversies. It’s regulations are pretty far-reaching and have started to encroach on some territory held pretty sacred by some major parts of our Christian family. The biggest friction has been with the ACA’s requirement that non-church and ecclesial organizations still have to cover contraception coverage for their employees. Catholics who run non-ecclesial organizations have not taken too kindly to this. NPR recently had an interesting profile about this intersection of faith and politics.
Catholic leaders have vowed Civil Disobedience in response to these regulations, insisting on a religious exemption, even for private companies. In the past, religious organizations have done similar things in response to abortion regulations as well as gay marriage statutes.
Reading through Acts 4 the other day, I read again the account of Peter and John being arrested in Jerusalem and thought it had some powerful things to say about this and how Christians in America have been acting towards their government recently. So, I thought we’d walk through that passage over a post today and on Monday, and discuss some principles behind when and how Christians should fight their government tooth-and-nail for their convictions.
Continue reading
This is for those of you that subscribe to the blog by RSS feed or through a WordPress subscription. Earlier, I put up a new post, but because I had started writing it several days ago, the date on the post is from then, not today. So….I don’t know that it went through on your subscriptions. You can find the post here. Let me know what you think!
… it has increasingly become my conviction that the primary task of theology must be concerned with ‘substance’ and ‘content’ rather than mere ‘system’ of thought. The splendor of the content of the gospel makes everything else lose color.
–Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God
This is a post in our on-going series on Women in the Church.
As I wrote last week, I was at my in-person seminary intensive the past two weeks. While there, I met a woman who is about to be ordained a minister in my denomination. We were all sharing our stories and I told her I was raised a Southern Baptist. Having been raised in area where they have little to no foothold, she had only had one experience with a Southern Baptist.
She was working a table at a conference where an older gentleman carrying a large briefcase approached, telling her how excited he was about the next speaker–a “fellow Southern Baptist”. Not being familiar with the speaker’s work, this woman asked the gentleman what the work was on. He put his briefcase on the table, opened it up and pulled out a large tome, saying “this is his book, and it is wonderful.” He almost began to summarize its contents, but stopped short, instead pulling out a much smaller paperback, saying “but that book may be too hard for you to understand. Here, look at this one. It’s much simpler.”
He then realized he had no idea why a woman would be at this conference in the first place. He asked, “and so what do you do?”
She told him that she was at seminary studying for her Masters of Divinity.
This gentleman quietly put the books back in his suitcase, shut it, locked the clasps, looked at her, and solemnly said, “you know you’re going to burn for that, right?” And he walked away.
If you’re just looking for the mixtape, click here for the official Epiphany Mixtape page.
From now until Lent, the Church Calendar is in the season of Epiphany.
Basically, this season seems like it’s sort of a Church Calendar “junk drawer” to meditate and celebrate on all the other parts of Jesus’ life that happened between his Advent/Birth and his Death.
And don’t misread that. In describing it that way, I hope that doesn’t diminish this season for anyone.
Perhaps the most precious doctrine of the Christian faith for me is that of the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness. That’s a fancy way of saying that Jesus lived out a righteous life, and his very own righteousness is given to me as my own. And so, with a complete and perfect righteousness in hand, I don’t have to bear the weight of shame or condemnation. This is so beautiful to me.
But this Righteousness in which I am dressed was not created out of thin air, nor was it created by Christ at the Cross, or even at his Resurrection. It was built throughout his life of obedience to His Father, as the light of his character and life grew brighter and brighter in the midst of our darkened world. It’s this part of his life that we celebrate and meditate upon in this season.
And this is amazing. As I’ve written before, if Herod had been successful in killing the infant Jesus, there would be an essential aspect of our salvation that’s missing. This is why Epiphany is so important.
And so, to try and help me spend some time meditating on this season, the best way I knew to think deeply about all this was to re-post Epiphany mixtape I first posted last year.
To read more about the specifics of Epiphany, the mixtape, and to listen/download it yourself, you can either read below or just go to the official Epiphany Mixtape page.
[cover image credit: the photo on the mixtape cover is used with the gracious permission of photographer and friend of the blog, David Schrott]
For the next week-and-a-half more, I find myself in Holland, Michigan. I’m here for an in-person intensive in my otherwise distance seminary program. It’s two weeks of Hebrew for over 5 hours a day and two other classes in the afternoon and evenings.
I’ve been here since Sunday and it really has been amazing. There was tons of snow here causing travel hiccups for a lot of people, though I came in just before the worst of it. I’m staying with some guys from the program in a house right on Lake Matacawa (see picture above).
I still don’t know how to relate to these sorts of times. Going into it, I expected it to be a time appealing to my introverted self; mainly sitting and staying to myself (and happily so), keeping my nose in books. I wasn’t looking forward to taking this much time off from work, and I wondered why these classes couldn’t continue being online. I didn’t need to know these other people in the program. Why was I being forced to spend time with them in person?
Instead, it’s been hard to get a moment to myself (and–surprisingly–happily so). These guys I’m staying with are all amazing men, and the classes have been learning experiences unlike anything I’ve seen before. I get to have conversations that are so refreshing compared to my previous seminary experiences. Yes, the talks are still all about those things most normal people don’t (and shouldn’t) spend much time in thought over (theories of lapsarianism, the mutability of God, the influence of Western philosophical models on classical theology, etc.).
And yet, these talks have been marked by two big differences from their prior college and seminary iterations. First, few of these talks have stayed there in the ether for their entire duration. Eventually they get to talks about how it affects how we do ministry, serve others, how we communicate these ideas in helpful ways, and how we can peaceably coexist with others that disagree with us on any particular niche issue. It has challenged my pastoral sensibilities and has really connected high theology with the mundane in really beautiful ways.
And that leads to the second thing. In my particular program, there is so much diversity in opinion on even major parts of theology and church life. This school is a denominational school with lots of beliefs about lots of things–and they don’t hide it–they’re anything but wishy-washy on doctrinal issues. And yet, those that are here have such a beautiful sense of what’s essential and not. To see the most theologically conservative members of our group joking around with and living life with those that would be considered some of the most rebellious “liberal” theologians in the Church today truly is a beautiful thing.
So many of our theological conversations have simply been exploring what one another thinks, why they think it, what led them there, and how it affects their lives. It’s not debate or argument. Just sharing and, in a sense, playing in the playground of theology.
And when theology becomes that–not a battle ground with God as our theological General, but a playground with our loving Father watching on, kissing boo-boos, and bandaging scraped knees–theology becomes an exercise in freedom, worship, beauty, and invitation unlike anything the rest of the world has to offer.
Would that all of our brothers and sisters felt the same way.
Perusing around, I ran across this response to an article by Dana Milbank from 2003 on the anniversary of 9/11. The article originally appeared in The Washongton Post, but I could only find it at this odd site. Here, the commenter offers a summary of the article and an opinion:
This article is about recent comments President Bush made recently on expanding the Patriot Act of 2001. These are surprising comments due to the fact that the Patriot Act is already one of the most controversial Acts ever passed by Congress. The act extremely expanded federal police powers by severely restricting the civil liberties of terrorism suspects. Under the act, federal officers need less than ever before to find “just cause” in apprehending, detaining, and punishing those accused of terrorist acts. The “Patriot 2” as it has been dubbed, would contain clauses allowing for the issuance of subpoenas without grand juries, holding of suspects without bail, and the pursuance of the death penalty in a broader spectrum of cases, still involving murder. Many politicians are telling the media that the Bush administration is trying to fight sudden “Anti-Patriot Act” feelings by going on the offensive: Talking of expanding the original Patriot Act.
In my opinion, the comments made by Bush were so logical and fair. As a strong supporter of the original Patriot Act, I see nothing wrong with Bush asking Congress to give federal officers the exact same powers to apprehend terror suspects as they do to apprehend embezzlers or drug traffickers. Many of the politicians are also putting these negative feelings on John Ashcroft, when he has apparently been doing an incredible job. Ever since September 11th, there has not been a single other terrorist attack on American soil. In my opinion, he needs to be given the ability to continue whatever he is doing.
The person that wrote this was me. I wrote it over 10 years ago as an assignment for my High School AP Government class, where we had to read and respond to current event articles.
If you have ever stumbled on any political post on this blog (after 2007 or so), you know that I am not of this same mind at all. In fact, this was my “one-issue” that determined my Presidential vote this year. (Hopefully, you can also see that my writing has somewhat improved–yikes!). Shortly after this was written, I sat deciding on whether to go to a large urban university or Liberty University. My decision was made when my dad told me that he thought I “grew better in thorny soil”. That’s where I went, and that’s what molded me.
So let this be an encouragement that neither the environment you’re raised in nor the zeal with which you hold an opinion can close you off from change and growth. Always keep your mind open, pursue knowledge, and doubt your doubts. And spend some time in thorny soil. Happy New Year!
This is the meditation I wrote that appeared in this weekend’s reading and reflection in Liberti Church’s Advent 2013 Prayerbook, which can be downloaded for free.
Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.
If you’ve been keeping up with this Prayerbook (or any Advent guide), then congratulations! I hope it’s spoken to you and you have experienced God in its readings and meditations.
That being said, you might be wondering: why is this Prayerbook continuing after Christmas Day?
It was only a couple of years ago I found out that in the Church Calendar, Christmas is not just a day—it’s an entire season! Advent Season leads into Christmas Season. Why is this? Advent has a similar relationship to Christmas that Lent does to Easter: it’s meant to be the time of reflection, preparation, and repentance that prepares us for the unbridled, no limits, over-the-top celebration and joy of Christmas. Our spiritual ancestors knew that celebration takes time and preparation. That’s what Advent has been.
But now we’re in the Christmas Season—the time of complete unfettered celebration. But why?
Continue reading
For Advent this year, I wanted to put up a few posts looking at Matthew and Luke’s Nativity stories as they were meant to be read: as two separate stories with their own purposes and themes. We often just mush them together, and I think we lose something in that process. Last week, we sat with Matthew’s Nativity story. Today, we turn to Luke’s Christmas.
Matthew’s Nativity focuses on how Christmas plays right into Israel’s own story; how this is exactly how the Jewish Messiah should be expected to have come into the world. Luke’s Gospel, on the other hand, emphasizes Jesus’ significance to the entire world, all parts of society, and the entire cosmic order.
In other words, Jesus’ mission in Luke is much larger than simply Israel. These and other Lukan themes are brought out quite strongly and explicitly in his Nativity narratives. Today we’ll see how he does this through signs of the universal mission of Jesus, the story’s emphasis on the lowly and powerless, and his stories of Spirit-filled joy.
This is the meditation I wrote that appears in a reading and reflection in Liberti Church’s Advent 2013 Prayerbook, which can be downloaded for free.
There is an incredibly profound way in which we don’t feel at Home in our own humanity.
Too often, Christians see their own personal spiritual growth as a loss, a lessening, or an abandoning of their own humanity. This can lead us to subtly use people and things to try and find our soul’s Home. And so we awake to find anxiety, manipulation, doubt, guilt, and self-loathing ruling and reigning so many parts of our lives and relationships. (Am I alone in this?)
We can sometimes think of Christianity as a process of our souls leaving the “Home” of their weakened humanity and finding a “new, spiritual Home” in Jesus. The logic goes that you were originally one way, then Jesus “saved” you, and now you are able (and are commanded) to be something else, now that you are His.
But Advent radically flies in the face of this.
Continue reading
For Advent this year, I wanted to put up a few posts looking at Matthew and Luke’s Nativity stories as they weren’t meant to be read: as two separate stories with their own purposes and themes. We often just mush them together, and I think we lose something in that process. Today, we look at Matthew’s Christmas Story.
It’s well-known that the Gospel of Matthew portrays Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic expectations. But the path Matthew takes in doing this moves against the way most messianic expectations played themselves out at time. Matthew recalibrates these expectations to show how even in Jesus’ infancy and birth, his “Messiah-ness” includes a retelling of Israel’s own history, both good and bad.
You can see this especially clearly in the way Matthew crafts his version of the Nativity story. Today, we’ll look at three particular aspects of this story that show his unique thematic and purposeful crafting of the birth story: his use of people and names, geography, and the fulfillment of the Old Testament.
Continue reading
Sorry, this post isn’t about the pessimism and critical irony that can sometimes mark how we engage in this time of year. When I use the phrase “biblical criticism”, I’m referring to (as Wikipedia says) the “[scholarly] study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning judgments about these writings”.
Last year, I wrote about how the story of the Wise Men can inform our doctrine of the Bible. This Advent, I want to do a brief series where we use the tools of scholarly observation to look at each of the two Nativity compositions (yeah, only two out of four gospels have them) and see each of them on their own terms.
For millennia, the birth narratives of Jesus Christ in the Gospels have captivated readers both within and without the Christian faith. Their reading and meditation form the beginning of the Christian Church calendar, and their theological implications of Incarnation form the foundation of nearly all of the distinctives of the Christian faith.
Continue reading
the long way home 