A look at the prodigal son parable through the medium of music.
I am compelled by a phenomenon that I see in modern culture. Maybe it is not a new phenomenon, but the current expression of it is new (because it is happening now). The video above is an example: Jesus, Jesus, is a haunting ballad of the unbeliever by Noah Gunderson. Continue reading “Do We Stand in the Way of the Prodigal”
Though every man be a liar, yet God is true.
I can not count how many times I have heard someone say that they would go to church but for the Church, or would be a Christian but for Christians. While that sentiment may be a legitimate indictment on the state of the Church and the faithlessness of Christians (or not), what should we really expect? We have all sinned and fallen short. There is no one righteous, not even one!
That people are people, however, has no bearing whatsoever on God.
We trust in our churches.
We trust that the nursery will tenderly care for our babies.
We trust that the Sunday School will lovingly teach our children about God.
We trust that our teenagers won’t be bullied in youth group.
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Take a moment with me and consider: what if God was cruel, completely unpredictable and wholly uncaring towards us.
Take a moment with me and consider: what if God was cruel? What if God was completely unpredictable and wholly uncaring towards us? What if God was arbitrary, uninterested and unkind?
Some might say that God seems to be that way… if there is a God… pointing to passages in the Old Testament that portray God as angry, wrathful, retributive and seemingly callous about human life and suffering. Some say that they cannot believe in a God like that.
But, hold on a second. Why should God be the way we think He should be? Why should God be the way we want Him to be?
If God is God, and there is no higher authority, who are we to demand God be anything other than whoever He is and wants to be?
Indulge me a little here. Continue reading “What If God Is Cruel”
“We just can’t continue to look into the filter of our politics at our spirituality. It’s got to be the other way around ….” (Spoken by Andy Stanley speaking at Catalyst West at Mariners church, Irvine, CA April 17, 2015 as reported in Christian Post)
Are we, Christians, more identified by our politics than our faith? If it is the former, we have terribly missed the mark.
It may not be completely “our fault”. Political pundits are constantly categorizing and labeling Christians and determining our political leanings. Political analysts and prognosticators are continually defining and redefining Christians and their politics.
But, we do play along and allow ourselves to be pegged by political affiliations and positions and, thus, allow ourselves to be defined by them. We allow ourselves to go with the flow and become indistinguishable from the world around us. Continue reading “Through a Glass Darkly”
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I understand a blog post has gone viral around the Internet called “Bake for them Two”. The blogger suggests that, when asked to bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage, Christians should not just bake one; they should bake two, even if they believe gay marriage is wrong. The basis for the blog article is this statement in the Sermon on the Mount: if someone forces you to walk a mile with them, walk with them two. (Matthew 5:41)
The back drop to the short parable is that Roman law required people to carry a Roman soldier’s equipment up to a mile if demanded. Such a request of a Jew in that time of Roman occupation of the Promised Land would have been anathema. It would have been a difficult thing for the religious Jews of Judea to stomach – to help their occupiers by carrying their equipment. The suggestion by Jesus that one should be willing to go two miles if required to carry the equipment for one mile was a radical idea (like turning the other cheek, praying for your persecutors and loving your enemies, which are also part of the Sermon on the Mount).
The Bake for Them Two blogger suggests that the same principle should be applied to the current controversy over wedding cakes for gay marriage. Even if a person believes that gay marriage is immoral, if asked to bake one wedding cake for a gay marriage, we should bake two!
Before I even read the first blog, I came across a video blog (Stand to Reason) in which the blogger questions the idea that baking two wedding cakes is the proper response of the Christian who believes that the union of same sex couples is sin/immoral. The speaker poses these questions: if someone asks you to steal a man’s cloak, should you steal two? If someone asks you to make one pornographic movie, should you make two? Going back to Jesus, who was a carpenter: if someone asked him to make one idol, should Jesus make two?
The video blogger obviously concludes that the Christian should not bake one wedding cake for the gay couple, let alone two. The argument might seem compelling to the Christian who wants to do the right thing and not endorse what is believed to be an immoral act. But does the argument logically follow? Is that what Jesus would really say?
Continue reading “To Bake or Not To Bake a Cake”
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