People: The Vision As we read earlier, Dallas Willard writes that personal change or growth takes place in three steps summarized by the letters V,… Read More »Ten Minute Mystic: Part 3: Growing in People Through Service (1)
The Power of a Life Well Lived In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus focuses on three broad areas of life: people, piety, and… Read More »Ten Minute Mystic: Part 1: Your Sentence for Their Sake
During the first half of this year, newspapers and newscasts were filled with reports about potential abuse occurring within the Catholic Church. Allegations have poured in from half a dozen countries, including 300 accusations from Germany, the home of the current Pope. Many Catholics and non-Catholics are fed up with the Catholic Church.
Many more people are fed up with church in general. Dan Kimball has written a book entitled They Like Jesus But Not the Church.[i] In it, Kimball reports that many today find Jesus attractive but not the church. They feel that the church is too politically motivated.
And, in his book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything Christopher Hitchens writes about the ills of all institutional religion.[ii] He states that religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.”
There’s a lot of hostility these days toward religion in general and toward the church in particular.
This is nothing new, of course. Even in Jesus’ day there was ill-will toward religion. Mark, one of the four biographers of Jesus’ life, focuses on this ill-will. His Gospel includes 10 occasions during which Jesus and religious leaders got into conflict. This summer, we’re using these 10 conflicts to reflect on the difference between being religious and following Jesus.
Chris Altrock – April 11, 2010
In his book Surprised by Hope N. T. Wright warns that some of the classic Christian hymns about heaven may be misleading.[1] He cautions that some hymns can be misunderstood to teach a kind of escapism. They can be misconstrued and make us so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. For example, the 1920 hymn “Where the Gates Swing Outward Never,” states: “Just a few more years with their toil and tears, And the journey will be ended.” The hymn states that life is filled with toil and tears. And thus it might lead someone to think that we’ve got to escape this toil-filled and tear-filled life as quickly as possible and get to heaven. The 1876 hymn “Beyond This Land of Parting” sings: “Beyond this land of parting, losing and leaving, Far beyond the losses darkening this, And far beyond the taking and the bereaving, Lies the summer land of bliss.” The hymn states that all this life offers is parting, losing, leaving, taking, and bereaving. And thus it might lead someone to conclude that the only thing to do is escape this life and get to that heavenly summer land of bliss.
Read More »Courage From Above: The Hope of Heaven on Earth (2 Cor. 4:10-12)