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.
A Christ-Follower’s Alternative to New Year’s Goals
Richard Dahlstrom over at Fibonacci Faith offered an alternative to setting New Year’s goals that can steal peace in our lives. What if we committed to attending to all the little revelations God gives us and made space to absorb these God-moments in order to respond well? Let’s all make this a year where we open ourselves to what God is doing. Who knows what God will do with this kind of openness and willingness to respond?
From the article:
I’m close to throwing all these in the trash though, because I keep adding more and more goals to my life, and the end result is an erosion of peace, especially the kind of peace that is promised by Christ here. I’m beginning to wonder if all this goal setting isn’t just another carnival, tailor made for type Americans to distract us from things that really matter. It’s appropriate, of course, to pursue health, and to hone one’s craft, be it writing, music, art, programming, or whatever. But I’m convinced that the somewhat random objectifying of every pursuit, setting a bar and going after it, is mostly a big distraction. The truth is that I can meet all those goals and still find myself on the summit of accomplishments, only to realize that I’ve climbed the wrong mountain. To put it another way – I can reach all my goals, and still be far from the life God has in mind for me.
Related Reading
Do You Need to Starve a Little?
Sarah (Rosenau) Korf via Compfight Here’s a challenging reflection on Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent by Kurt Willems. He notes that Lent is a season where we choose to starve ourselves of our little idols in order to join Jesus in the desert, and he lists several benefits of this particular kind of…
Atonement: What is the Christus Victor View?
Most western Christians today understand the atonement as a sort of legal-transaction that took place between the Father and the Son that got humanity “off the hook.” The legal-transaction scenario goes something like this: God’s holiness demands that all sin be punished, which in turn requires that sinners go to eternal hell. The trouble is,…
What Does it Mean to be “Holy”?
Image by much0 via Flickr People today frequently associate the word “holy” with a list “do’s” and “don’ts” that “godly” people are supposed to adhere to. The concept of “holiness” in the Bible, however, is not primary about behavior. It rather refers to something that is unique and set apart from more common things. God is…
Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part II
Waiting For The Word via Compfight To prove that “Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist,” Driscoll by-passes the Gospels (understandably, given what Jesus has to say about the use of violence) and instead cites a passage from Revelation. This is a strategy Driscoll has used before. In an interview in Relevant Magazine several years…
Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part I
I’m sure many of you have read Mark Driscoll’s recent blog titled “Is God a Pacifist?” in which he argues against Christian pacifism. I’ve decided to address this in a series of three posts, not because I think Driscoll’s arguments are particularly noteworthy, but because it provides me with an opportunity to make a case against what I’ve…