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

harvey's kkk bb

zen Sutherland via Compfight

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.

Related Reading

5 Differences Between The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of the World

Image by matthijs rouw via Flickr The kingdom of God looks and acts like Jesus Christ, like Calvary, like God’s eternal, triune love. It consists of people graciously embracing others and sacrificing themselves in service to others. It consists of people trusting and employing “power under” rather than “power over,” even when they, like Jesus, suffer because…

Our True Eternal Home

In becoming our sin and bearing the death-consequences of sin, Christ has opened the way for us to participate in the fellowship of the triune God. Because of the cross, we are now free to abide in Christ and to have Christ abide in us (John 15:4-10). The word “abide”(menno) means “to take up residence.”…

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…

When the Law Demanded the Death Penalty

The Sinai covenant is significantly structured around violence. It motivates behavioral conformity by promising rewards and threatening violence. Without the threat of violence, the law looses its “teeth.” If the law is an acquiescence to sin, then the divinely sanctioned violence that is associated with it must also be considered an acquiescence to sin. The…

Jesus and the “Favored Nation”

Nationalism lies at the heart of the Old Testament narrative. This concept is intimately wrapped up with the law-oriented covenant God made with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, for at the heart of this covenant is the promise that obedience would bring national security while disobedience would bring national disaster (Deut. 27-28). What we shall…

Sermon Clip: Twisted Scripture – Job

The Book of Job has often been misused as a way to explain the mysterious ways of God in suffering and pain. The truth is that the Book of Job is there to teach us that God does not inflict pain and suffering, rather it is the cosmic warfare that we cannot see which interferes…