The point of Christian faith is not to descend into the depths of the darkness and get lost there, but neither is it to ascend only into the glory of hope and possibility and deny the very real experiences of pain and challenge. Christianity is the rejection of that kind of duality, and instead asks us how we might find God present to us in the midst of the human experience.
Read More“Paul’s mixed metaphors of trumpets blowing and the living being snatched into heaven to meet the Lord are not to be understood as literal truth, as the Left Behind series suggests, but as a vivid and biblically allusive description of the great transformation of the present world of which he speaks elsewhere.” - N.T. Wright
Read MoreThere’s an empire that is doing everything it can to make you fall in with the system, to play by the rules of power, oppression, violence, economic superiority… to follow their narrative. Are you going to fall in, or are you going to follow a different path? Will you follow the way of the lamb that was slain, the way of life in which true and lasting power comes from sacrificial love?
Read MoreIf God is a God who tortures people forever for not getting their religious choices correct, then God is a monster, God is Molech and I have no interest in following that kind of God. That kind of God can be used to justify violence and war and oppression. That kind of God sets us up for tribalism. Instead, Jesus asks us to forgive, and when we say ‘how many times?’ he says ‘again and again.’ So does God do the same?
Read MoreEvery single time the New Testament talks about the ‘future’ it is to challenge, inspire and enliven the way we are living in the present. This all has implications for our relationships, the work we do, for the art we create, the things we do that give order and shape to God’s creation in the present
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