Category: Faith

To Bake or Not To Bake a Cake

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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” →

Does Truth Matter?

Truth exists whether we see it, know it or acknowledge it

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“Truth ain’t something you can just out run.” (A line from the song, Truth, by Steven Moakler) I was mulling over the title to this piece when the song, Truth, came on Spotify as I was listening to a playlist. Sometimes “life” happens like that, so I am running with it.

It certainly seems trite to speak of truth, especially when we speak of Truth with a capital “T”. How often do we think of Truth? Does Truth matter?

Truth (small “t”) is certainly something that we want to depend on in our everyday lives. Courts of law are designed to get at it. We seem to have a hard time finding it. “He said, she said” is the story we often hear, and it is hard to know what the truth really is, even in our everyday lives. Continue reading “Does Truth Matter?” →

The Bible That Makes You a Scholar

I am truly excited to share some things that are revolutionary for people who want a deeper, richer understanding of the Bible. Ask yourself, what if….

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bookstoreI am truly excited to share some things that are revolutionary for people who want a deeper, richer understanding of the Bible. Continue reading “The Bible That Makes You a Scholar” →

The Historical Christ

Perhaps, the most significant of the New Testament statements of the resurrection comes from Paul’s recollection of the events that occurred after the death of Jesus on the cross (1 Cor. 15:1-8).

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Once a year people remember the death of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. Few historical facts are as well-documented as the death of a man referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah (Hebrew) or Christ (Greek) around 33 A.D. The claim that he was resurrected from the dead is a different matter. The modern mind, influenced by many centuries of science and discovery and the relatively recent (200 hundred years) of ascension of materialist thought, is highly skeptical.

Looking back at the Gospel accounts with a modern, skeptical filter, the implausibility of the story colors our view. Some modern thinkers conclude that the story was manufactured by the followers of Jesus.

For what end, one might ask. What did it gain those early followers? If they knew it was a lie, why would they die for that lie?  Continue reading “The Historical Christ” →

Devotional Artifice and Didactic Crap Reprise

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Devotional Artifice and Didactic Crap. I wrote this article in response to statements made by Sufjan Stevens and the fodder they were for an uninformed, shallow critique of music that more overt Christians make couched in a fawning review of Carrie and Lowell, Stevens new album.

Maybe there is something to fawn over, as this article in Christianity Today suggests. The article suggests the following options: 1) accept him as “one of our own” who has found the key to the inside of popular art culture (a response that Stevens would pointedly protest); 2) reject him as one who does not want to be associated with “us”; 3 or) worship at the feet of the altar of his art. I do not claim these are the only options, but they seem the most obvious.

Is there another way to look at this? For the Christ follower who cannot easily dismiss the invitation to pick up the cross and follow, is there a compromise? Is there a way to honor God above all else without compromising the art? Is there a way of making uncompromising art without making an idol of it?

Sufjan Stevens has written:

To objectify art is to measure its commercial value and squander its transcendental powers of benevolence. Reciprocity demeans art; or, rather, it functions to incarcerate its powers, to judge it for its charity. Like putting Mother Teresa on trial, or in prison, for the crime of compassion. On the contrary, perfect art, as a perfect gift (without ulterior motive, without gain, without compensation) courageously gives itself over to the world asking nothing in return.

Do I engage with my work as a father cultivates his child, with loving-kindness, with fierce enrichment, with awe and wonder, with unconditional love, with absolute sacrifice? I make this my impossible objective.

Is art transcendental in and of itself? Must art be without ulterior motive to be pure? Should art demand the unconditional love and absolute sacrifice of the artist? I am having difficulty finding the harmony with faith in a Holy God. I have not head the album yet, but I assume it is everything I have read.

For another take, here is an interview with Bono.