Humor in News

Now, I don’t know what’s funnier. Fox News blatant bias, or MSNBCs. It was a good speech, but I just cannot believe the fawning that occurred afterwards. See for yourself…

Jesus Manifesto

I am increasingly loving the Jesus Manifesto webzine (or whatever you might call it). It seems that the Editor reads my mind, and has also read more scholarly work than I have, and then writes smart articles such as this one. You’d do well to check it out.

Wow

The son of one of the leader’s of Hamas in Palestine has recently converted to Christianity. Notice in the article that the thing that struck him most was the idea of loving ones enemies. I wish more Christians in America took that seriously.

Just another reason Joel Osteen is an embarassment to Christians

Unbelievable.

Why I Believe In The Resurrection

Not a resurrection into heaven, but a resurrection of people into a recreated earth… NT Wright sums it up pretty well.

I’d Love Your Thoughts

This guy, in my opinion, has pretty much put to rest the whole AGW argument. He admits that CO2 does have negligible effects on temperature, but he also makes the case that because of the new solar minimum that we are moving into, that slight amount of warming is going to help us offset the fact that its gonna be freakin’ freezing. He’s projecting that by 2030 world temperature will have dropped at least 1.5 degrees Celsius. And just in case you were wondering, dropping that much is gonna make much of the northern plains difficult if not impossible to farm. I will enjoy getting more snow here in Nashville, but I wonder if its worth it.

Regardless, this isn’t something we can stop. Its just something we have to deal with. But I’d love your thoughts.

How The Church Can Grow

There’s a lot of talk about how the church in America can begin to grow again, or at least stop losing members in droves. If you’re a twenty something, you probably know better than most that there’s a large group of people who are leaving the church when they leave college. If you aren’t a twenty something, next time you step into church, look around for people in their mid twenties, those who used to fill young marrieds and singles classes. There aren’t many of them.

Many believe that the problem lies in the style of our worship services not being appealing enough to a younger generation, one that grew up with computers, the internet, and, well, pretty much whatever they could have possibly wanted. But I don’t believe that is the source of the problem. People my age are very interested in God, Jesus, the spiritual realm. The problem is not the worship services, or how cool the preachers or pastors are. The problem is, church no longer has anything of relevance to say, at least in generation y’s opinion. The thing is, they are wrong. The church does have something to say, and a whole lot to do. Its time that they stood up and became what they were always intended to be.

The way that the church can once again gain relevance is simple. Preach the Gospel. You might think that the church is all ready preaching the Gospel, that yes, they have got the whole substitutionary atonement thing down. They’ve read Paul backwards and forwards and argued about every possible paragraph he penned. But the church has forgotten that the Gospel is shown in full in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Gospel is the life of Jesus. And unlike our traditional interpretations of Paul, ones based entirely in how redemption works, the Gospels show us salvation in action. They show us how we are to live our lives, which is the true mission of the church. Today’s church focuses on getting people to Heaven, which, if one reads the Gospels honestly, was never the focus of Jesus. His focus was on telling people how to live like God intended, which brings salvation from something, but not from hell. It brings salvation here and now, salvation from the ways of the world which leads to death. And Jesus’s resurrection is the foreshadowing of our own resurrection, with real bodies, into a real world the way God intended it from the beginning. This promise of resurrection gives us the courage we need to follow Jesus, to take up our own crosses, literally, to be willing to lay down our lives rather than die protecting them.

And this is what my generation is looking for. We’re looking for meaning. We look around at a world where we seemingly have everything, yet, things are still drastically wrong. Progress has certainly alleviated some problems, but it has brought on a whole new set. And we look to our faiths to find answers to our problems, but we’re taught private piety, and little else. There is no social ethic to the church, but there is a definitive social ethic to the gospel… and the hypocrisy drives us away. We read, “love your enemies” and hear praise for warriors in church. We read “true religion is taking care of the widows and orphans” but we see bigger and bigger buildings, more and more programs designed to benefit us, and well, we don’t really see any of the least of these sitting in church buildings.

This all comes back to how we teach salvation. If the church continues to focus on an other worldly heaven, with a mansion, robe, and crown… they will continue being irrelevant. If the church decides to teach salvation as its found in the Bible, salvation which shows up in our lives, that distinguishes us from the world, the church will continue to flounder.

Private Property Rights Eroding…

Well, Barack has finally done it. He’s brought socialism into the mainstream. Singling out oil companies, confiscating their wealth, and redistributing it to the American people.

When did stealing become a Christian value Sojourners folks? I know some of you, like Jonathan, don’t buy the income tax as stealing ideas that I lean towards, but I think this is a clear case of government overstepping its bounds, and using its power to destroy a group of people that, at the current time, is being blamed for our problems. And then on top of that, bribing the American people into accepting it. Unbelievable.