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description=10 posts published by Paul during August 2012;

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Text of the page (random words):
thanks maybe you ll find something you missed or forgot you liked or maybe the fact that these posts are the most viewed here will make you once again wonder why you ve wasted so much time reading this blog without further ado continue reading one year and counting posted on august 27 2012 categories bible study book reports current events hard questions learning worship tags bible blog business books church faith grad school homosexuality jesus literalism new testament old testament parenting politics prophets religion the poor women worship leave a comment on one year and counting the theology of paul ryan a friend asked me on facebook the day mitt romney tabbed paul ryan to be his running mate in the presidential race what my personal theology based thoughts were on the pick so here goes as prologue i recommend reading some of my posts on amos from earlier this summer should you not have the time or inclination i ll sum them up this way a reading of the prophets in a christocentric manner makes clear that god calls christians living in society to above all care for others and have particular care for the voiceless marginalized powerless and impoverished among us that s probably not terribly controversial but the american system of government is set up in such a way that every christian by virtue of the vote is a member of the powerful and that we therefore are judged by god on how we exercise that power either for or against the powerless this does not mean that we create a christian nation that outlaws all the vices god doesn t like doing so does nothing to help the powerless it doesn t mean that we legislate a so called christian morality and impose our chosen moral lifestyles on those who do not accept them jesus didn t do that and the prophets say next to nothing about personal morality what it means is that we christians all of us members of the government and more so we christians who seek and hold public office have a duty to govern in the interests of the voiceless and powerless it should not be surprising moreover that governing in this way is a proven winner america s economy has grown most when inequality has been minimized note i don t say eliminated and its growth has been tepid over the past decade when inequality has skyrocketed by inequality i mean the gap between the economically powerful and powerless which is now at alarmingly high levels all of that means that by voting or by holding office christians exert considerable pressure on the political system to mold our society in the ways we choose we can mold that society in a way that is in line with the call of god for societies to be just or we can do so in a way that enriches the powerful at the expense of the powerless a condition against which amos isaiah and jesus to name just a few railed what kind of society does paul ryan envision continue reading the theology of paul ryan posted on august 24 2012 july 2 2013 categories bible study current events tags amos bible faith jesus old testament politics prophets religion the poor 1 comment on the theology of paul ryan joining jesus story right on the heels of my post on monday about rethinking our approach to salvation daniel kirk said something very similar raising an issue of scholarship i ve mentioned here before the question over whether paul talks about salvation through faith in christ or salvation through the faith of christ one of those is the foundation for classic soterian thought have faith in christ and you re in no followup necessary the other calls us to a real lasting response as kirk writes the idea that we re justified by our own faith in christ is part of a larger way of construing christian identity in terms of believing the right things about god on the other hand if our justification is completely outside of our ability then perhaps counterintuitively the question becomes how do we respond to this overwhelming act of grace continue reading joining jesus story posted on august 22 2012 july 2 2013 categories bible study tags bible books faith gospel of luke jesus new testament religion the poor leave a comment on joining jesus story the importance of doing i m powering my way through the king jesus gospel by scot mcknight trying to finish it before i start reading for my class next week and as i reach the end a lot of the points at which mcknight spends much of the book hinting finally become clearer one of the nagging questions as mcknight tries to sketch out a more apostolic gospel than our modern obsession with who s in personal salvation based christianity is well where does doing fit in at some point you have to do something to be saved right which is probably part of the problem when you as i suspect most or all of us did grow up with the specter of hell hanging over those who aren t saved it makes being saved the important thing you need assurance of salvation and if you ve sad the magic words the sinner s prayer then you re ok you re saved even though we talk about how we can t do anything to be saved we all have to do something even if it s simply saying a few words that way no matter what else happens you aren t going to hell and that s what s important never mind that jesus didn t seem to think that s what was the most important never mind that the apostles preaching the gospel after jesus didn t seem to think so either as mcknight notes neither peter nor paul focuses on god s wrath when they evangelize in acts nor do they describe the saving story of jesus as an escape from hell which isn t to deny a judgment just that it s not emphasized and it s certainly not the central part of the gospel message the way it is today but recognizing this intellectually is a far cry from being able to recognize deep down where it s hard to shake the fear that if we re wrong we might just end up in the flaming depths for all eternity so while mcknight details how jesus and peter and paul described the gospel as the story of israel being completed in the story of the messiah and lord jesus i still couldn t help but think where does salvation come in continue reading the importance of doing posted on august 20 2012 july 2 2013 categories bible study book reports hard questions learning tags acts of the apostles bible books faith jesus new testament religion 1 comment on the importance of doing our postmodern god this post is a response to tony jones call for progressive theological bloggers to write a post about god so here goes that postmodernism is indefinable is a truism however it can be described as a set of critical strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference repetition the trace the simulacrum and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence identity historical progress epistemic certainty and the univocity of meaning the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy it s struck me lately that the best way to think of god is to compare him to an elephant specifically i think of god like the elephant in the old south asian tale of the blind men who each grab hold of a piece of him and describe the animal they think they have one has the trunk and thinks he s holding a snake another has an ear and thinks he s holding a fan etc each of them is attempting to accurately describe what they know and some do a better job than others but none of them is exactly right indeed being exactly right would have been impossible if they had never seen or felt a whole elephant before which is why i call god postmodern and why it would serve the church well to stop running in fear from the notion of postmodernism perhaps no era in the history of the world better suits the god we worship than the one that openly and completely questions the ability for anyone to fully grasp and explain truth continue reading our postmodern god posted on august 14 2012 july 2 2013 categories bible study hard questions history tags bible books evolution faith gospel of mark history isaiah law love new testament old testament pentateuch prophets religion revelation science 3 comments on our postmodern god these books will change your life or more important your faith apologies once again for the light posting last week the family was out of town which meant late nights for me and the consequent late mornings as well but last week also featured the semiannual or a little more often tradition for us grad schoolers the ordering of the textbooks i m not sure if anyone else gets as excited as i do about ordering textbooks but let s just say it s definitely a highlight in my year you mean i have to order these books about a subject in which i am intensely interested well if you insist i ve now been in graduate school for a year a lot has changed in those 12 months and a lot of it has been because of the books assigned by my professors some of the best most challenging most worldview changing have been continue reading these books will change your life or more important your faith posted on august 13 2012 categories bible study book reports hard questions history tags bible books faith grad school new testament old testament pentateuch prophets religion the flood 1 comment on these books will change your life or more important your faith was mary really a virgin part 17 the verdict well here we are the end of the whole business if you re just tuning in check out the last post for a recap of all the ground we ve covered the upshot of it all is that we need to reevaluate the virgin birth it plays an outsize role in our churches and culture yet paul mark and john all leave it completely out of their writings it simply isn t necessary for the development of a robust christology or theology and it s possible we have overemphasized it to the extent that it s actually weakening our view of who jesus was and what god did through him that doesn t mean however that we need to discard it completely two texts matthew and luke do in fact describe a virgin birth though they do so in much different ways and we should treat those differences seriously because they teach us something about what matthew and luke were doing when they told the jesus story forcing them into the straightjacket of harmonized literalism does them a great disservice let s accept the texts for what they are not what we want them to be in that spirit i d like to offer two scenarios i think are equally plausible based on our studies thus far continue reading was mary really a virgin part 17 the verdict posted on august 8 2012 categories bible study hard questions history learning tags bible faith history jesus literalism new testament religion 2 comments on was mary really a virgin part 17 the verdict the other side of the story here s a story about jesus you probably haven t heard before on another day jesus came up to them the disciples said to him teacher we saw you in a vision for we saw some great dreams at night we saw a great house in which there was a great altar and 12 men whom we say are priests and a name but there was a crowd persevering tenaciously at the altar until the priests finished receiving the offering as for us we too were tenaciously persevering jesus said what kind of priests were they they said some abstain for two weeks yet others sacrifice their own children others their wives all the while praising and acting humbly toward each other some are lying with males others work at slaughtering yet others were committing a multitude of sins and injustices and the men who stand over the altar are invoking your name and so in all the labors of cutting up their sacrifices the altar stays full and when they said these things they were silent for they felt deeply disturbed jesus said to them you are the ones you saw receiving offerings at the altar that is the god you serve and you are the 12 men whom you saw and the domestic animals you saw being brought for sacrifice are the multitude you are leading astray upon that altar the ruler of chaos will establish himself and this is how he will make use of my name and the race of the pious will where tenaciously to him needless to say you won t find this story in the new testament yet none of it is quite foreign to us either continue reading the other side of the story posted on august 3 2012 categories book reports history learning tags bible books church faith grad school history jesus new testament religion leave a comment on the other side of the story why chick fil a s donations are important within a few minutes of each other two facebook friends whom i greatly respect and admire posted variations of a single theme there are a whole lot more important things going on in the world than fighting about chick fil a one focused on the 25 000 people who die every day because they lack adequate nutrition the other focused on a number of friends who face terrible even hopeless fights against cancer without denigrating the significance of either of those very real very awful problems i cannot agree now to the extent that we re simply fighting over dan cathy s rather uninteresting views on gay marriage news flash southern christian opposes gay marriage then i can see where they re coming from but cathy s views have shone new light on chick fil a s contributions to various groups some of which are repulsive and reminded us that discrimination and injustice remain very much alive and well in the united states i don t think we do ourselves any favors by downplaying these real concerns no matter how serious the problems to which we compare them in fact they remind me a great deal of the now famed jen hatmaker post the well written poorly considered call for christians to get into the basement to ride out the latest storm in the culture wars except apparently hatmaker s basement serves chick fil a which means she completely missed the point she writes if you are weary of the storm come on downstairs we re going to get on with the business of loving people and battling real injustices and caring for the poor and loving jesus we re going to go ahead and offer mercy to one another even if it is viewed as soft or cowardly or dangerous emphasis hers that sounds good except that to thousands of gay men and women there are real injustices going on upstairs as well alise wright put it far better than i could i really want this to be enough but here s the thing for a lot of people this is a real injustice somewhere up to 40 of all homeless youth identify as lgbt and of those almost 80 left because their families rejected them when they came out that s a real injustice there are more than 1100 federal benefits denied to same sex couples that s a real injustice lgbt youth are five times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers that s a real injustice dan cathy s comments contribute to this injustice and that is a problem and it is an important problem but an even bigger problem is chick fil a s monetary support for injustice in the form of its contributions to groups that ...