A matter of framing
In the Christian tradition, it’s really easy for us to get all hung up in the emotional juice of: Woe is me, I’m so broken! Look how broken I am! I’m a pitiful creature with little more to offer than a worm in the nearest dunghill! Woe is me!
Give us something to judge
Ezra Klein recently interviewed the brilliant author Zadie Smith for the New York Times. You can read/listen to the whole thing here, but Smith likens us to amorphous selves who, in our current age, are pressured to solidify into finite identities such as “protesters, activists, marchers, voters, firebrands, impeachers, lobbyists, …
Wonderfully made
It’s pretty great when it sinks in. And it doesn’t always sink in. In most distracted moments, I’d say it slides right off the back. It drifts directly over our heads when we’re caught up in our thinking, our anxieties, our obligations, etc. But sometimes, it hits you…
A totally different paradigm
The disciples thought that Jesus came to be a militaristic savior. They thought his goal was to set them free from Roman oppression. (I mean, that was the most glaring and expedient problem in the headlines of Jesus’s day.)
The dependent God
It’s easy to carry a narrative that God wants us to be independent and self-sustained beings.
Holy Jesus
I don’t know what’s happening… I’ve long declared that the only kind of Christian music I like is stuff that is at least 100 years old. You can keep your Elevation Worship, Hillsong, and Jars of Clay. Give me JS Bach and Martin Luther.