Is the celebration of the national holiday called Thanksgiving a time of reflection and thanksgiving or merely the sound of the starting pistol in the race for buying stuff? The answers to this question vary and will be wide ranging. For some these days will be very difficult. I received news early on Thanksgiving Day that a friend’s husband had unexpectedly passed away earlier that morning. The season will be difficult for the family even though they are believers. A few days earlier a friend of my daughter and son-in-law was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. He is about 40 and to the best of our knowledge, not a believer. We do not know yet if he will survive.

For some the holiday is one of a series of firsts. My mother passed away this year, as did Joy’s older brother and my sister’s husband. For us and other members of our families, this was the first Thanksgiving without someone who was special to us. For those of us who are believers and whose family members whom have passed from this life were believers, we have our feet firmly planted both in the present and the future. While we grieve we recognize that our current feeling of loss is temporary and for that we are thankful. The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18: Continue reading …

Just for fun, let’s put Crossan’s method to work on Mark Twain’s book, Huckleberry Finn. If we merely read the book at face value, we will easily understand that it is the story of a boy that floats down the Mississippi River on a raft with a runaway slave named Jim. But once Crossan illumines Twain’s book with his postmodernist “searchlights,” Huckleberry Finn becomes the tale of a Japanese automaker who goes on an African Safari. Which story line would you think the author intended? The one that comes by a plain reading, or the convoluted, deconstructed one that comes out of an overactive imagination? If you believe the “Safari tale,” it certainly wouldn’t be Mark Twain’s fault, but your own, for putting some other person’s interpretation above the book itself. We might shorten it up a bit and call it a “fari tale.” “Fari tales” are for children . . . adults should just read the book for themselves.

The above quote comes from our 1998 MCOI Journal article The Hysterical Search for the Historical Jesus and is a tongue-in-cheek attempt at demonstrating the need to read literature in its historical grammatical context. John Dominic Crossan Continue reading …

Ah, spring is in full swing. Flowers are in bloom, the trees have leaves, lawns are in full growth and, the dreaded mosquito is on the scene. Even as I thought about this last week, Joy and I were listening to an audio book while on our route to and from California. The book, A Rule Against Murder: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny . It is a well done murder mystery set in Canada, at a large log built resort building in the woods by a lake with no internet. What does that have to do with mosquitoes? Well, everything. With the wonderful setting also comes Continue reading …

Would Jesus be involved in politics? What would Jesus say about the TEA Party? That is one of the questions we have been kicking around here as we are talking about the politically incorrect Jesus. Many groups have differing views on this and of course reasoning that to them makes sense. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach non-involvement. They point out that Jesus and his immediate disciples were not involved in politics and therefore, we should not be either. Some Christians and Christian groups hold a similar view. Political office is often seen as compromising with a corrupt system and includes the sorts of compromises they don’t believe Christians can make. Some, such as Islam, are of the view that their religion should take over the government and subject citizens to Sharia Law. They would argue that Jesus would support such a thing because he was a prophet who was a Muslim. They assert that Jesus is important in their religion and even agree that he is sinless. But then they also teach that all prophets are sinless. Of course, they also teach he is not God, was not crucified and therefore not resurrected. There are some Christian groups which hold to a similar view that it is our task to create a Theocracy which subjects society to the Old Testament Laws and regulations. Some, such as Barack Obama’s home church for 20 years, hold to views rooted in Black Liberation Theology as we pointed out in Barack and the Borg. Black Liberation Theology is essentially Marxism using Christian terminology and promotes Continue reading …

Since 1971, homosexual activists have worked hard in the courts trying to have marriage redefined. In our 2006 article Whose on First … First? we looked at the history of marriage and the law in the United States. Prior to 1971 thechallenge to traditional marriage was bigamy and polygamy. Could a man be married to 2 or more women at the same time? The court cases typically ended with the general affirmation of one man, one women constituting marriage but as far as the Constitution was concerned the courts held that:

“… every civil government had the right to determine whether monogamy or polygamy should be the law of social life under its jurisdiction.” 1

The Federal Courts left the final determination on monogamy vs polygamy to the states. It wasn’t a Federal issue. The question of sex and sexual partners and governmental restrictions is not limited to the United States. It surfaced overseas in 2006 when the Dutch Court OKs Pedophile Party Why did they do this? Their thinking is consistent with what we are finding in the U.S. Courts:

“It is not illegal to try democratically to change the system – which is what these people are trying to do,” said a Hague spokesperson, summarizing the ruling of Judge H. Hofius.

“They are exercising their freedoms of speech and association, and as such cannot be banned by the state.”

These stories are related. Continue reading …

Last week, Jonathon rightly pointed out in last week’s blog Christian Scandal (the good kind) that:

… all of these distinctly Christian stumbling blocks have been questioned by the Culture Driven Church. Grace and Hell have long been disparaged. Grace has either been watered down into universal salvation or thickened with concepts of good works. Hell has been disparaged by even venerable dons of theology. Evangelism has been abandoned in favor of a social gospel and Brian McClaren’s religous pluralism. And sexual ethics have been simply and quietly ignored in favor of discreet trysts or transformed into political debates. All of this in an effort to remove the skandalons that offend.

As we have continually emphasized through the series on the Culture Driven Church that nothing happens in a vacuum. We got to this point through processes in the past which bring us to where we are at today, in culture and the church as well. A physical analogy may be helpful. Continue reading …

 In our discussion about the Culture Driven Church, I keep coming back to one major question. You should know how questions affect me. Questions are the hobgoblins that niggle my brain. On more than one occasion my good friends have heard me begin a two hour conversation with the words, “There’s this question that’s been bugging me.” Questions are the launching pads for inspiration. And often I find if we let some questions simmer and bubble without rushing to a judgment, they tend to yield some useful insights. So here’s the question that been crawling up the side of my mind throughout the last year.

“What Christian critiques of the culture are truly scandalous?”

By “scandalous”, I don’t mean which ones fit the Pulitzer Prize nominated National Enquirer’s definition of scandal. I mean those aspects of our proclamation to the culture that are stumbling blocks that non-Christians Continue reading …