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.

Xmas

Do you like my Zine?  Dicken's Village by Mary

Kevin Dooley via Compfight

Zach Hunt brings a huge challenge in this article about the ongoing lament about the “liberal attack on Christmas.” Maybe the real problem is not with the media or the “liberals” or the merchants, but with us. There’s an opportunity here for us to remember who we really are and what really matters. If anyone needs to put Christ back into Christmas, it’s us.

From the article:

If we can begin to reimagine Christmas as a season for changing lives, rather than a time to change out our old TV for a new one, then not only will Christ find his way back into Christmas, but the kingdom of God will be incarnated on earth, just as it was in a manger so long ago.

Related Reading

One Word

While I’ve lately been pretty distracted finishing up Benefit of the Doubt (Baker, 2013), my goal is to sprinkle in posts that comment on the distinctive commitments of ReKnew a couple of times a week. I’m presently sharing some thoughts on the second conviction of ReKnew, which is that Jesus Christ is the full and…

Myth Become History

The Gospel of John tells of the coming of Jesus in an unusual way. John writes: In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Everything came into existence through him. Not one thing that exists was made without him. He was the source of life, and…

Participating in God’s Love

Greg took a slight detour from his reflections on free will in this video in order to talk about Jesus’ prayer in John 17. He discusses the idea that God desires the kind of unity among his children that the triune God enjoys. “He wants our love to participate in the triune God.” In order to…

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,…

Nothing but Christ Crucified

One of the most remarkable expressions of the all-encompassing nature of the cross is reflected in an incidental, but extremely important, comment that Paul made in his First Letter to the Corinthians. He noted that when he brought “the testimony of God” to Corinth, he hadn’t come “with eloquence or human wisdom”. He instead “resolved…

Gospel “Contradictions” and Orality Studies

* This essay has been adopted from G. Boyd and Paul Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007). One of the standard tests historians put to ancient documents to assess their veracity is self-consistency. Generally speaking, fabricated accounts tend to include more inconsistencies than truthful accounts. Hence, the absence of inner contradictions contributes to a positive…