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.
The Lion, the Witch and the War
sandy Poore via Compfight
Red Letter Christians featured some of Greg’s thoughts in their recent article entitled The Lion, the Witch and the War. The author of the article talks about the C.S. Lewis story and the subtle ways that it reflects his bias and has encouraged Christians to embrace a wrong-headed view of war. Really excellent.
From the article:
One of the biggest stumbling blocks in following the teachings of Jesus is our tendency to do whatever we want, and to then convince ourselves that Jesus supports our agenda. This is especially true when it comes to His peace teachings. I’ve talked to church leaders who really want to speak the truth about peace but are afraid of repercussions from people in their congregations who are either in the military or related to someone in the military. There are a couple of things I’ve learned from thinking through this issue. The first is that we can love and respect people without agreeing with all of the choices they make. Many Christians do join the military, or support going to war, but I believe that there are much more Jesus-focused paths that we can take. The second is that none of us is perfect at following Jesus but we do need to be honest with ourselves about what He taught. He is the Prince of Peace and His teachings on this topic are incredibly clear, so if for some reason we don’t want to follow Him in all situations, let’s just admit that and not pretend that He didn’t actually say what He said.
Category: General
Tags: C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Peace, Peacemaking, Red Letter Christians, War
Related Reading
“I’m Angry, Too”
A reader (thanks, Jen!) sent us this blog post by Rachel Pieh Jones, an ex-pat from Minnesota living in Djibouti. She has some incredibly insightful and sad thoughts about the hateful responses to the recent protests and threats going on in other countries (and our own). We hope that as Christians we can contribute thoughtful…
True Serenity
Andrew Sullivan pointed readers today to this meditation on two sources of spiritual serenity. Rather than relying on the absence of conflict or our own privilege, the writer asks us to go deeper to the source of all real peace. From the article: Such reliance knows God to be a rock that enables us to…
What I – a Pacifist – Would say to Obama About the Crisis In Syria
Over the last week many of you have written ReKnew asking me to weigh in on the crisis in Syria. Does being a pacifist mean that I am opposed to America violently intervening to keep Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people? And if so, what would I say if Obama asked for…
What is the Kingdom of God (Part 1)
We all know what the Kingdom of God is, right? But this is precisely the problem. Since we are all to a large extent products of our culture, what seems obviously true and right to us will be at least influenced, if not determined, by what seems obviously true and right to our culture. This,…
Sermon Clip: How Christians Should Respond to Ferguson
In this clip from this weeks sermon, Greg Boyd comments on how Christians should respond to the events in Ferguson St. Louis and how that response should always be in love and to help heal both sides. The full sermon is here: http://whchurch.org/sermons-media/sermon/heart-smart-qa