Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Already broken them? Join the club. Odds are you’re vowing to lose weight, get more exercise, get a handle on your finances, etc. If those haven’t worked in the past, here’s a better resolution,…
I imagine Jesus saying to Trump: ‘Not everyone posting a sketch of me with them will enter the kingdom of heaven’
An anonymous fan of ex-president Donald Trump produced a sketch of Jesus sitting in court with Trump, which Trump then posted on his Truth Social platform. The closest I can come to understanding this travesty is to admit the desire…
The real religious crisis in America
In a recent NPR interview, Russell Moore, author of Losing Our Religion, told a story about a pastor who preached a message from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. During his message, the pastor quoted Jesus saying things like “Turn the…
Embracing the slippery slope
I was that kid. You know. The one who asked questions. Questions the teacher really didn’t want to answer. Questions like, “Did God really create the world in six calendar days? Don’t you know science tells us that it took…
‘Woke’: I don’t think that word means what you say it does
I have been bumping into this strange word, “woke,” a lot lately. I wondered what it meant. Digging around, I found “woke” means to be alert to racial and social discrimination and injustice. Why is this considered such a bad…
If Jesus wants us to forgive everybody, why is he always talking about hell?
I recently highlighted the Jesus-Joshua problem: Jesus wants us to love our enemies. Joshua wants us to slaughter them. Both can’t be right. But what about the demand for justice that reverberates throughout Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation? If we…
Jesus and Buddha are talking with me about loving and blessing my enemies
I seem to have a larger list of enemies these days, those I find it harder to love and bless. But Jesus is insistent about how we relate to our enemies: “You have heard it was said ‘You shall love…
The church must show the world a more excellent way of nonviolence
The Monterey Park shooting was the 36th mass shooting in the USA in this young year. Reporters have trouble covering all the violence in our culture. Some of the violence stands out in graphic and horrifying detail. A 6-year-old child…
Solving the Jesus-Joshua Problem
When I was an early adolescent, I decided to read the Bible straight through. I had been exposed to carefully curated snippets of Joshua, but the full genocidal thrust of the narrative was a revelation. I couldn’t help feeling sorry…