Christian

Flying the Tuesday after Memorial Day I overheard a conversation between a man and a woman behind me; these were chance seatmates for this flight. He was a geologist, perhaps 50+ years old, and she was perhaps late 60s or 70s.

This morning’s (well, yesterday’s by now) Gospel was Luke 17:5-10; click the link to read it in a new window. Talking about that through the day we found it perplexing. What is the causal relationship between faith and the self-effacing … Read More

I recently found that the Italian national radio station is publishing some of its material in podcasts. Listening to one yesterday (Uomini e Profeti) on the evaluation of current actualities in the light of received traditions, (unfortunately no longer linked online) I heard a fascinating variant on the well known “faith, hope and love” themes of St. Paul’s concluding verse of I Corinthians 13.

Regarding Christianity and the death penalty, I propose an experiment. Open a public microphone in every church in the US and invite anyone that feels convinced of its truth to state to the rest of the church this one unqualified sentence: “I have committed no sin worthy of death.”

About three years ago, pondering I Cor. 6 about judging angels, over the space of a few days this is what I worked out. It was a curious process, one in which I distinctly felt that insight was being given to me that was not my own.

One of my principal difficulties with the Church of Christ is in their normative hermeneutic of 1st century practice. By that I mean that the practices of the first century are to be continued without change as immutable Law of God, world without end, amen. This quickly devolves, and I think without much possibility of exception, into a rigid, legalistic quibble just as we see it today, as if propagation of the form will somehow reproduce the same results. It cannot possibly do so.

After writing on the immigration theme, I find myself increasingly preoccupied with the knowledge we have of the hungry, the cold, the naked: how disparately, how inequitably, we live and think nothing of it! In particular I John 3:16ff returns again, as it has for years when I consider this topic.

In a recent conversation regarding immigration with one I know to be Christian, I mentioned that the local paper had run an article about a discussion whether one could love one’s neighbor and deport him. The response startled me: “For him to be my neighbor he must be near me, and he isn’t supposed to be near me.”

I received an invitation to a breakfast laid on by a Christian business group; the title of the presentation is “How to Lead a High Performance, Kingdom Building Company.”