Here’s a recent text exchange with a good friend of mine… My Friend: Does a lack of persecution in one’s life mean there is a lack of boldness for the gospel? Me: I’d say that boldness (as embodied by Jesus of Nazareth) is primarily a radical commitment to be weak, vulnerable, and ‘powerless.’ Boldness is […]
Jesus of Nazareth said, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.” What’s Jesus talking about? Jesus is talking about the super […]
I was recently reading some ancient literature about Jesus of Nazareth, and to be perfectly honest there were some things that made me uncomfortable. For instance, Jesus of Nazareth was from NAZARETH! That place was seedy! It’s hard to imagine anything good ever emerging from Nazareth! And it seems like anyone from Nazareth should probably […]
A guy named Solomon stopped by my office last week. Solomon is from Nigeria, and he’s currently enrolled at Harvard Divinity School (45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138). We got to talking about the allure and deceit of consumerism, palatability, aggressive appeasement, and salesmanship. We spent a lot of time talking about the emphasis of […]
Once upon a time there were some very traditional churchy people watching Jesus. They winced as they saw Jesus sinning! Could that be right!? Jesus is God! …but there He was doing it all wrong! They saw that Jesus WAS NOT holding to their time-tested, cherished, conservative, traditions. So they asked Jesus, “Why don’t you […]
If I’m being perfectly honest …Jesus intrigues me. I find Him inescapably fascinating! I realize that many of you reading this right now would tell me that I must simply believe in Jesus, and regard Him as Right!; and to say that I’m intrigued with Him endangers orthodoxy and conventional submission. My fascination with Jesus […]
I decided to schedule an afternoon appointment with Jesus, and we met up at Matthew 10 at 3p. It was intense. There’s really no way around it. See yourself. Here are some direct quotes: “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as […]
Someone recently told me, “Jesus is great!” I said, “Really? What’s so great about Him?” This person said, “My pastor is from Scotland and he has an amazing accent, and he’s really smart! And the music at my church is so good!” And I said, “But what about Jesus? You said that Jesus was great. […]
Yesterday we had a big meeting to imaginatively inhabit some of Isaiah’s prophecy. We envisaged an itsy-bitsy fragile shoot growing out of a rotting stump. We assumed that nothing good could ever come from this stump, and this tiny sign of life did not in the least persuade us that wholesale redemption was going to […]
Things started out really rough for her. Her father was an Amorite, and her mom was a Hittite; and she was born in the land of the Canaanites. On the day she was born she wasn’t washed or swaddled; she was cast out and deserted in an open field. She wasn’t just abandoned, she was […]