We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
On Hacking Off Our Own Limbs
Nadia Bolz Weber posted this weekend on The Sarcastic Lutheran, and we thought you’d enjoy her thoughts on hacking off our own limbs for Jesus. Don’t worry, you won’t have the urge to find an axe after you read this. Or at least not a real axe.
From the post:
And here’s the thing…that story? The story of God’s redeeming work for all of creation that happens in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we tell every single week …that story? It’s an axe. And the Eucharist is an axe. And to be sure, the confession and absolution is an axe. And any thing that you would put in the center, job, relationship, money, status, pride, accomplishments, politics, security…. these things that seem to lure you with promises that can really only be given by God…these things that lie to you and cause you to stumble…well the promise of this text is that all that would stand in the place of God and all that would keep you from God will be burned away.
Image by viZZZual.com. Sourced via Flickr.
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living
Related Reading
Racism: Why Whites have Trouble “Getting It”
I’m a member of a special task group on racial reconciliation that consists of a dozen or so pastors from around the Twin Cities. We’ve been meeting periodically for the past year or so in order to strategize how to help the Church of the Twin Cities as a whole move forward in racial reconciliation.…
Responding in Love
The world is full of conflict where evil begets more evil. Violence produces more violence. Arguments produce more arguments. It’s a tit-for-tat world. What is God’s strategy for stopping this conflict? How does God respond to evil, and how does God call us to respond? This strategy might even come in handy during heated conversations…
The Cost of Holding On
Given Greg’s recent Twitter comments on the question of how we view what we own, we thought this article in the New York Times was particularly timely. What is the cost of holding onto things? As we accumulate more and more possessions, do we pay a price beyond the actual price tag? Although this piece…
What the hell are we doing here?
Meet Collin Simula. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is a part of Central Vineyard church. He is a 30-year-old graphic designer, and a happily married father of three. Collin has spent his whole life in the Church, in every denomination imaginable, from Calvinist/Christian Reformed churches, to a Baptist high school, being a part of…
Cheap Grace and Consumer Christianity
The “cheap grace” Gospel sells well in America. We live in a culture of consumerism that conditions us to habitually look for “the best deal.” We’re more or less trained from birth to live in the question; “How can we get the most for the least?” We think this way about our houses, cars, clothes,…
God and Our Political Platforms
Rachel Held Evans posted a blog today on the stir created when Democrats booed the passing of “an amendment to the party platform reinstating language that identified Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel and that referred to people’s “God-given potential” in its preamble.” Of course this fed into the belief that if you’re a…