Galatians 5:5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (ESV)

Galatians 5:5 But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. 6 For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. (NLT)

My head is rattling around with about a hundred ideas related to Jesus shaped spirituality, and one of them has occupied me in various ways the past two days.

In short order, Jesus shaped spirituality is a spirituality Jesus would recognize as what he gave us; what he taught, lived and began in the experience of his followers.

Jesus shaped spirituality is about a “Big Picture” of truth (God, the world, creation, etc,) but it is especially about what Jesus means for relationships (God and others) and human life (yours and others.) If you are a follower of Jesus, your life, your relationships and your participation in this world are deeply affected by him. [Continue reading]

MODERATION is on.

1. Don’t harmonize the Gospels. That’s like taking four paintings and combining them into one. You come up with something no one painted and no one intended to paint. Let each Gospel author be an artist in his own right. However, a Gospel synopsis, such as those available from UBS, are very useful and important in comparing Gospel texts to one another WITHOUT harmonizing them.

2. When you interpret anything in the Gospels as if the words were spoken or the incident happened in the contemporary world (especially the west), you are almost certainly headed in the wrong direction. The Gospels come to us from another time and place. They aren’t inaccessible, but they require us to let them be what they are and not attempt to contemporize them.

3. Jesus did and said a lot of things that he didn’t explain. Ever. At all. I don’t believe there are special keys to understanding difficult sayings laying around for us to find in some spiritual treasure hunt. If Jesus first century hearers were often confused, then we will probably be confused too some of the time. [Continue reading]

Luke 14:15 (ESV) When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” 16 But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. 17 And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ 18 But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ 20 And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ 23 And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple….. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

A friend asked me to comment on Luke 14:26, Jesus’ statement that anyone who comes to him must “hate” mother, father and his own life. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: The county backs down.

A few years ago, I posted a story here at IM about a church that refused to do a funeral for a guy, and it was pitched in the media as a mean church refusing to do the funeral of a homosexual. I posted, ranted…..and then found out a few more facts.

The story was quite different than my first impression. Of course, the beauty of the internet is you don’t have to know anything to post in the blogosphere. Just how to type. Not how to check sources, get perspective, etc.

So I’ve been waiting to hear the other side of the San Diego Bible Study story. If you haven’t heard this one, you can find the story here at San Diego Channel 10. Check the videos. [Continue reading]

This week: My L.I.A.R. Rating (More on technology.) A critique of Driscoll. A first class rant on priestly celibacy in the RCC.

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Information-Action Ratio. Marva Dawn got this from Neil Postman.
My Two Cents on Mark Driscoll.

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This particular open thread is going to be a bit unusual.

I am limiting participation to only those readers who are either trained in some area of the sciences or currently work in a science related field (either teaching or practice.)

This thread is for this question: How have you resolved the tensions in your own life and thinking between science and your faith? What has been your journey? What was particularly significant in that journey?

I’m especially interested in those who were brought up in conservative Christian environments with typical conservative assumptions about the Bible.

Please keep “sideline comments” out of this thread.

UPDATE: Interesting column on the paradoxes of Calvinism.

Udo Middleman on “The Islamization of Christianity.”

This post is, without a doubt, an experiment in exploration and articulation. Many won’t care for where it goes, but I think a basic question must be answered, not just for the sake of answering atheists, but for understanding our own faith as “Christian humanism.”

A Facebook friend just asked me if I wanted to become a “fan” of Jonathan Edwards.

Too bad there’s isn’t a “NOT a fan” option, because I’m not a fan.

One of my consistent critics- who is also a respected friend- called to mind a statement I’d made in the past about the problem of being “too God-centered.” He was obviously wondering it, with time and reflection, I’d thought better of that phrase and wanted to repent.

Answer: No. It still concerns me. Not whether all things are centered in, related to, dependent on, destined for and exist to glorify God, but whether some expressions of Christianity can become so God-focused that the significance of what is not God- including all things in human experience- are devalued and even distorted to the point of confusion in the minds of God loving/God believing people.

I’ve sensed, as long as I have been around my intensely theological Protestant (mostly reformed and evangelical) brothers and sisters, a kind of clumsiness with the subject of the significance of anything in human experience. By clumsiness I mean that these matters are handled, but the constant pressure to be singularly God centered and God focused makes it difficult to handle both God and human life at once without one overwhelming the other. [Continue reading]

We’ve been talking about how the Gospel and good works that aren’t the Gospel line up over at the Boar’s Head. With the announcement that St. Francis never said “Preach the Gospel. Use words when necessary,” but the discovery that Peter told wives to win their husbands “without words” in I Peter 3:1-2, it would be good to think about the topic of this essay: the Gospel always applies. (From March of ‘07.)

Studying Acts with my students, it’s freshly clear to me that the immediate struggle of the early Christians was not only, or even particularly, theological, but practical.

How do we live out, in the church, family, community and world, the significance of Jesus NOW?

What kind of behavior, actions and community appear in “”the Kingdom of God” as Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit create it on earth (and as the church is a “demonstration plot” of the Kingdom?) That is what we’re praying for…right?

What are the relevant issues where the application of the way of Jesus will make an immediate difference? [Continue reading]

Some of you may not know that I moderate and contribute at Boarsheadtavern.com, one of the longest running group blogs in the blogosphere. Often, we will have a question addressed to the group as a “Question of the Day.” Yesterday, one of the “fellows” asked a question about how a Christian married couple could resolve what seemed to be an irreconcilable difference regarding how many children they should have.

It’s not a question I’ve eve experienced, but I’ve faced similar issues in counseling, so I jumped in with some comments, as did several other contributors, but upon reflection later, I posted again. Here’s that post. [Continue reading]

I’m thinking about grace a lot today after a bit of a mystical experience in church Sunday.

As we were preparing for communion, I was praying. The Spirit brought to mind a series of dark incidents from my own life where God was miraculously gracious to me. I’m not talking about small matters. I am talking about incidents and character failures- most of which I’ve exiled from my mind and memories- where God alone is responsible for the fact that I was not fired, humiliated, divorced, dead or immersed in grief and suffering. Incidents that, if God had allowed them to be, would have been life defining in consequence.

These are moments and situations I know about. Only God knows the very many I don’t know about. These are crossroads moments where my life could have easily gone the route of people whose names we all know for their failures and mistakes, but God graciously intervened or overruled. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: An absolutely great resource on technology and the many ways Christians are affected by it: Don’t Eat The Fruit. Be sure and listen to the Is Technology Neutral? presentation.

A bunch of things that occurred to me today, all related to the internet and what we do on it and with it.

1. It strikes me that the predominant sins in this medium are narcissism and waste. We need to differentiate narcissism from various kinds of legitimate self-revelation, but we need to proclaim that narcissism is a sin many of us are absolutely exulting in.

And waste is waste. Time. Affections. Work. Mental energy. Significance. [Continue reading]

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;
break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than those of the one who has a husband.”

Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (The Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians, English Standard Version) [Continue reading]

The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning

Justification by grace through faith is the theologian’s learned phrase for what Chesterton once called “the furious love of God.” He is not moody or capricious; he knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us: he loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods — the gods of human manufacturing — despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept. Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by his mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of his beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of grace.-Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel.

I have owned every book that Brennan Manning has ever written.

As Christian books go, they are among the most divisive and provocative you’ll ever read or discuss. A reviewer of the current book at the discernment blog The Discerning Reader is typical of the kind of assessment Manning elicits from the Knights of Reformed Orthodoxy. I could use up blog space, but there’s no real point. You can read it for yourself. If you’ve spent much time around Manning, you’ll soon be able to write this kind of criticism in your sleep. It’s been going on for years.

I remember when one of my co-workers asked me for something good to read. I’d just finished Abba’s Child, a book quite similar to The Furious Longing of God, and I passed it on to her. In a couple of weeks, the book was returned with a note in between the pages. The note was angry, and like the review cited above, pronounced the book a waste of time.

Brennan isn’t for everyone. I learned that long ago. But he sure is for me, I can tell you that. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Alan Creech has added his answer.

Welcome to IM’s popular feature, “The Liturgical Gangstas,” a panel discussion among different liturgical traditions represented in the Internet Monk audience.

Who are the Gangstas?

Father Ernesto Obregon is an Eastern Orthodox priest.
We have a new Gangsta! Rev. Joe Boysel is an AMiA priest and professor of Bible at Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio. (Ask him about famous alumni.)
Dr. Wyman Richardson is a pastor of a First Baptist Church (SBC) and director of Walking Together Ministries, a resource on church discipline.
Alan Creech is a Roman Catholic with background in the Emerging church and spiritual direction.
Rev. Matthew Johnson is a United Methodist pastor.
Rev. William Cwirla is a Lutheran pastor (LCMS) and one of the hosts of The God Whisperers, which is a podcast nearly as good as Internet Monk Radio.

Here’s this week’s question: What is the relationship of the gathered church, especially in worship, to the work of personal evangelism? (Especially of adult unbelievers.) [Continue reading]

The Next Evangelicalism by Soong-Chan Rah

Soong-Chan Rah is assistant professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. He has been a church planter and a consistent voice for recognizing the cultural captivity of the evangelical movement and recognizing the contributions of an ethnically and culturally diverse present-future evangelicalism.

I was interested in this book for two reasons. First, it intersects with some of what I have written in “The Coming Evangelical Collapse.” Secondly, it was cited by Leith Anderson in his criticisms of that article. [Continue reading]