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.

Following Jesus from the Margins

Free Daddy and His Little Shadow Girls at The Skate Park Creative Commons

D. Sharon Pruitt via Compfight

Kurt Willems posted a reflection today entitled From the Margins: Following Jesus in a post-Christian culture. I hope everyone will read this. It’s a perspective from the anabaptist tradition that finds inspiration from the same data that evangelicalism finds alarming. May we all follow Jesus from the margins and offer something unique and beautiful to a world that is tired of a Christianity bogged down by politics and religion-as-usual.

From the reflection:

Shifts like these discourage many Christians—but should they? As an Anabaptist, I welcome them. In today’s post-Christian culture, Christians would do well to see these changes as opportunities to re-embrace our subversive roots and follow Jesus from the margins. The natural outcome could be a witness characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, enemy love, and justice for the poor. Perhaps, for people like David, Christian credibility will be revived afresh.

Related Reading

Podcast: Autism and the Church

Greg shares his thoughts on the challenges of Autism, and offers reflection on how God works in the world to bring good out of it.  http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0198.mp3

Will Violence against ISIS Root Out Evil?

Image by arbyreed via Flickr Fallen humans tend to identify their own group as righteous and any group that opposes them as evil. If they were not evil, we tend to believe, no conflict would exist. Hence, the only way to end the conflict is to rid the world of this evil. This is the age-old “myth…

Swords into Plowshares

Eneas De Troya via Compfight Kelley Nikondeha over at SheLoves wrote a penetrating essay on the work of peace and the prophet’s dreams of replacing the work of war into the work of feeding people. Peace isn’t passive. It’s hard work. From Kelley’s essay: Beating swords into plowshares is hard work–hammering, melting, reworking and shaping new…

God’s Dream for the World

One of the grandest expressions of non-violent nature of God is found in Isaiah 11. Here God is dreaming of a time when his creation would be entirely free of violence. “The wolf will live with the lamb,” Isaiah says, and “the leopard will lie down with the goat.” So it will be with “the…

Do the Gospels Promote Anti-Semitism?

Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at various passages from the Gospels that have been used by some to argue that Jesus condones violence. Here is a link to each of them: The Cleansing of the Temple and Non-Violence Was Jesus Unloving Toward the Pharisees? Violent Parables? Why Did Jesus Curse…

Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 7

This is the seventh of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? In this segment, Greg argues against Ehrman’s claim that the Roman census in the birth narrative was fabricated. If you missed the first six installments you can find them here, here, here, here, here and here.