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.

God in Our Image
We came across this piece written by Jonathan Storment earlier this month and we had to share it here. The title of the piece is Everyday Idolatry: My God. He does a great job of outlining the ways that we twist God into whatever we need him to be to prop up our own agendas. Very insightful.
From the article:
I like the way N.T. Wright talks about how to deal with letting Jesus stand on his own:
“My proposal is not that we know what the word ‘god’ means, and manage to somehow to fit Jesus into that. Instead, I suggest, that we think historically about a young Jew possessed of a desperately risky, indeed apparently crazy vocation, riding into Jerusalem in tears, denouncing the Temple, and dying on a Roman cross–and we somehow allow our meaning for the word “god” to be re-centered around that point.”
In other words, the scandal is not that Jesus is like God. The scandal is that God is like Jesus. He’s a God who picked a certain place and time, and entered into it. He came to show us who he really was…and who he really wasn’t.
Category: General
Tags: Bible, God, Jesus, Jonathan Storment, Religious Idolatry, Religious Violence
Related Reading

Why Did Jesus Curse The Poor Fig Tree?
Why Did Jesus Curse The Fig Tree? One of the strangest episodes recorded in the Gospels is Jesus cursing a fig tree because he was hungry and it didn’t have any figs (Mk 11:12-14; Mt 21:18-19). It’s the only destructive miracle found in the New Testament. What’s particularly puzzling is that Mark tells us the…

Still Forming
Hi Everyone, The Open Theism conference was a huge blessing for us. We’ll be talking more about that in the coming days and giving you information on how to access video of some of the speakers. But today we wanted to share something about spiritual formation and a very old way of reading the Bible…

Loving God With All Of Your Mind
Rebecca-Lee via Compfight David D. Flowers posted this essay on loving God with your mind that reflects our stance on intellectual integrity as we approach Scripture. It even features a video clip of Greg talking about maintaining humility when we encounter ideas that are new to us and challenge our current understanding. It’s well worth…

The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim to be “Christocentric.” The confession that Jesus reveals what God is like is simply too abstract, for it leaves too…

For the Bible Tells Me So?
Oh, those pesky fundamentalists are at it again. Should it be legal for parents to execute their rebellious children based upon Deut 21:18-21? This guy thinks so. And he’s a Bible-believing Christian who is a candidate for his state’s legislature, so it must be true, right? Of course, under this proposed legislation, parents would need to…

Typhoon Haiyan and “Natural” Evil
Greg recorded his thoughts a few days ago on Typhoon Haiyan and the reality of “natural” evil that’s not really natural at all. “This an enemy has done.” (Matthew 13:28)