Category: Everyday Theology
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What Does it mean to be Patriotic in America Today?
I was driving through a small town in Alabama yesterday and couldn’t help but notice the truck in front of me proudly exhibiting a Confederate flag. It had to be over twenty feet wide. For a split-second I wanted to confront the driver, calling out his egregious cloth monument. But, being at least slightly a […]
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The Green New Deal: Come for the Stolen Hamburgers, Stay for Saving the Planet
Just the other day I saw an quote from a prominent preacher that went something like this: “If you have a problem with Genesis 1, you’ll have a problem with the whole bible.” A few things popped into my mind immediately. First, I honestly don’t understand how you can read any of the bible without […]
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A Few Words on Income Inequality
10 You people hate anyone who challenges injustice and speaks the whole truth in court. 11 You have oppressed the poor and robbed them of their grain. And so you will not live in the fine stone houses you build or drink wine from the beautiful vineyards you plant. 12 I know how terrible your sins are and how many […]
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On How I Became a Lefty
A Bit of Background Up to that point I had only examined my own views regarding anything remotely political in passing. The majority of my thought had been concentrated on things holy. Theological. Important. Oh, and baseball. But as I sat in my seminarian apartment examining my inherited view of the death penalty for an […]
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The Demons and The Pigs and the Greedy
The story of Jesus driving out a herd of demons into a herd of pigs has always fascinated me. Matthew, Mark and Luke all three record the story or a variation of it, so apparently it stood out as remarkable and in some way essential to the gospel story. And while the story in and […]
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Charlottesville, Violence and a Vision for a Way Forward
This past weekend, Neo-Nazi demonstrators- including a number of terrorists armed militia-style gathered under 150 miles from the nation’s capital. They assembled to protest the city of Charlottesville’s decision to cease the practice of venerating a well-known leader of a violent contingent that once attempted to destroy the United States of America. Only after 1.2 […]
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Faith, Insanity, Elijah and the Ravens
The plan was to drink from a brook- not a spring, not a river, not a lake. The plan to eat was even more dubious- the ravens have been commanded to bring the food. Perfect.
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From Idealization to Reality: The Church as a Body
The church is the body of Christ, not as a metaphor, but in reality. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer I used to have high hopes for the church. Idealistic even. But a curious thing happened to me on the way to idealizing the church. I spent some time in it. And I became jaded. I suspect in this […]
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Mundane Suffering
A prophet is not without dishonor except in his own hometown. If I ever get put in charge of making editorial changes in the bible, you can bet that the first story that would hit the cutting room floor is the story of Jesus’ rejection in his hometown. The story is a serious downer. And […]