[The Kingdom of God] is a complete totalitarianism in which, when you obey it totally, you find total freedom. I do not argue. I only testify: When I belong to Christ and his Kingdom, I am most my own.
— E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person
Now that my former boss Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, it’s become easier to think of him as a ruthless criminal instead of a Baptist Sunday School teacher. It’s more comforting that way. Continue reading “Safer to separate the sinners from us nice people”
The early disciples had little ritual but a mighty realization. They went out not remembering Christ, but experiencing him.
–E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of Experience
The problem with loudly claiming the Bible as your only guide to faith and practice is that, at the same time, you may be quietly claiming your own intellect as your only guide to the Bible. If you aren’t, what other guide to the Bible do you claim? Can’t think of one? I suspected as much. Continue reading “Worship the Bible and worship yourself”
My 93-year-old, blind, deaf, arthritic grandmother hates to be helped. We finally learn to stop replying to comments such, “Don’t go to any trouble!” “I hate to have you wait on me,” “I’m just a lazy bum.” I wonder if, when she arrives at the gates of Heaven, she will say to Jesus, “Now Lord, please don’t go to any trouble for me! I can help myself.”
There is a fair amount of humor on the Web at the expense of conservative Christians, but Lark News is the funniest I’ve seen – funnier because it’s written by folks who know conservative Christians. And who love them, apparently.
I haven’t seen the latest edition, but some of my favorite fake headlines included:
Jack Chick buys popular comic strips
Man resigns job to listen to talk radio
Smells of Palestine enhance Christmas dramas
Originally, about one hundred years ago, some people wanted to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, so they tarried and prayed and repented until they felt themselves immersed with the power of God, and spoke in tongues. Continue reading “A flippant history of the charismatic movement”
My family heard about the gospel of salvation and the authority of the Bible around the same time. Like many evangelicals, we assumed that they always go together. Then I observed that people can be orthodox but lost. And I learned that in previous centuries of American history, almost everybody believed the Bible had authority and that Jesus was the Savior of the world. The Deists believed that too, but didn’t claim to have experienced personal conversion.
A controversy during the Reformation was whether a priest could properly serve the Lord’s Supper if he was living in sin. Continue reading “The perils of leading worship”
One of the most transforming concepts for me is that people are body, soul and spirit, not just body and soul. The soul has been defined as the mind, emotion and will. The spirit is the part of us that related to the spiritual world. I don’t want to confuse emotion or intellect with the movement of the Spirit.
Do the powers of our soul compete with the spirit? Because they can compete, they do compete. If we have the skill to pretend to be spiritual or powerful when we’re not, we constantly have to refuse to do that.