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myth of a christian religion

Quotes to Chew On: The Church vs. Religion

“It’s time for the Church to free itself from the religious holiness of the Pharisees and begin to manifest the holiness of the Kingdom. It’s time for us to realize that our calling is to serve people sacrificially–including prostitutes, tax collectors, and enemies–rather than judging them. It’s time we ceased getting Life from the rightness of our beliefs and behaviors and return to getting it from the one true source of Life.”

Boyd, Gregory A., The Myth of a Christian Religion (p. 65). Zondervan.

Related Reading

Remembering the Myth During Election Season

Given the current political furor in America right now, we thought we would post an extended quote from Greg’s book The Myth of a Christian Nation. This book was originally a reflection on Christian political engagement during the 2004 election, and how conflating “America” with Christianity is devastating to the mission we’ve been given in the…

Sermon Clip: Tough To Love

Learning how to love the people in our life that we find challenging to deal with is often very difficult. This week in Heart Smart Greg Boyd looks at some biblical examples and instructions on how to love our enemies in the same way we love our friends. Full Sermon Here: http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/tough-to-love

Giant Jesus

Yesterday’s post featured a video of Greg sharing about the role of the church in manifesting God’s character to the world. Here are some follow-up thoughts on that topic. The NT often uses the metaphor of “the body of Christ” to describe the church. When Jesus walked the earth, he did so in an ordinary…

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Quotes to Chew On: Conflicting Depictions of God

“This is something like the way I believe we should respond when we encounter biblical narratives that depict God doing things we can’t imagine Christ doing. For example, I can’t for a moment imagine Jesus—the one who made refusing violence and loving enemies a condition for being considered a child of God—commanding anyone to mercilessly…

Generous Grace

Michelle Brea via Compfight Mark McIntyre wrote a piece on his blog called Selective Grace that highlights the ways in which the church tends to more easily demonstrate grace with some than with others. It’s a call to a more generous grace that does not distinguish between particular sins or particular differences in belief. How…

Quotes to Chew on: Racial Reconciliation

Jesus perfectly embodied God’s heart for racial reconciliation. For example, most Jews of Jesus’ day despised Samaritans as racially impure and as heretics. They avoided physical or social contact with them if at all possible. Yet Jesus went out of his way to have contact with them, even touching some who were lepers. Moreover, he…