We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

tumblr_m9pcj8TJpB1r48hglo1_1280

Smack Talk on the Idolatry of the Family

Ben Ponder doesn’t pull any punches in his article Idolatry of the Family. He argues that, contrary to some evangelical claims, “Jesus didn’t die on a God-forsaken cross to preserve your horn-rimmed vision of 1950s Americana.” Can a marriage or a family become an idol? Ben thinks so. What do you think?

From the article:

When I read the Bible, I get the distinct sense that Jesus wasn’t interested in saving the nuclear family from a windy onslaught of liberal opinions. I rather get the impression that he was concerned with diving headfirst into the unvarnished messiness of the human condition and saving us—as individuals, as families, as communities, as people—from our own unhinged self-absorption and festering lovelessness.

Image via Media Rostra.

Category:
Tags: , ,

Related Reading

What Motivates Torture “In Jesus’ Name”?

Why has the church, at times, tortured and murdered people? What motivates killing and persecution “in the name of Jesus” or “for the glory of God”? (See the post from yesterday about how the church has tortured people.) A variety of political, social, and theological explanations could be offered, and they might all be valid.…

Is there Archeological Support for the Reliability of the Gospels?

One of the many tests historians typically submit documents to in accessing their historical reliability concerns the extent to which archeology supports or undermines the historic claims the document makes. So we need to investigate the extent to which archeology confirms, or refutes, aspects of the Gospels. Before we address this question, however, a preliminary…

We Are All Weird Adopted Kids

Russell D. Moore wrote a thoughtful response to Pat Robertson’s recent comments on various men’s refusal to get involved with a certain woman because of her  internationally adopted children. As a people who are all beneficiaries of adoption by God who have also been commanded to lovingly care for the “least of these”, this is…

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…

Part 4: An Alternative Cross-Centered Approach

Image by Karl Pang via Flickr As I mentioned in Part II of this review, I am deeply appreciative of the fact that Flood grasps the centrality of enemy-loving non-violence in Jesus’ revelation of God. And while many, if not most, of the depictions of Yahweh in the Old Testament are consistent with this revelation, I…

How the Anabaptists Emphasized the Cross

Because the Anabaptists have generally emphasized faith that is evidenced by works and thus on Jesus’ life as an example to be followed, it may prima facia appear that the saving work of the cross was less central to the early Anabaptists than it was to the Reformers and to Evangelicals. In reality, I would argue,…