{"id":279,"date":"2007-02-04T10:02:15","date_gmt":"2007-02-04T16:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homecomers.org\/weblog\/index.php\/dont-get-specific-with-me\/"},"modified":"2007-02-04T10:02:15","modified_gmt":"2007-02-04T16:02:15","slug":"dont-get-specific-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/dont-get-specific-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t get specific with me."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What makes the gospel offensive is sometimes not its message but its specificity. We aren&#8217;t bothered by generalities about spirituality, but we bristle at specifics about our own lives. <!--more-->Some of us love old-fashioned preachers who rail against sin, as long as it isn&#8217;t our own sin.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking about what people said about Jesus in his hometown, in Mark 6:3: &#8220;Isn&#8217;t this the carpenter? Isn&#8217;t this Mary&#8217;s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren&#8217;t his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What he said amazed them, but the fact that they knew him offended them. Not the truth of his message.<\/p>\n<p>Is God merciful if he doesn&#8217;t care any specifics? Is grace equivalent to apathy? We can co-exist with God as long as God keeps his distance. But when he decided not to &#8211; and still decides not to -that&#8217;s another story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What makes the gospel offensive is sometimes not its message but its specificity. We aren&#8217;t bothered by generalities about spirituality, but we bristle at specifics about our own lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desperate-suggestions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homecomers.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}