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You Realize We Only Have A Few Billion Years

Careful, this cup is hot. This is a new blend and it’s really smooth. So…if you ask me, “Why Jesus?” here is my answer: first, to show in the life of Jesus and his teachings the potential we have in how we live and that we have denied the very best of the potential God has placed in us. Second, in Jesus we see the ultimate picture of God setting right our relationship through love and forgiveness offered without price. Third, in the crucifixion of Jesus we see our human nature that blindly rejects and denies that God’s way will get us where we desire to be. And fourth, the power of goodness witnessed in the resurrection is an emphatic statement that nothing in life or death can defeat God’s desires to achieve for creation the highest good. Now if you were to ask of me, “What would you like to see in the Church of tomorrow?” I’d say for starters, let’s seriously rethink some key elements of what church goers hear sung, preached and taught in most churches every Sunday. Anselm’s 11th cen...
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Enlightenment

We can talk while the coffee's brewing. Not quite a century later Peter Abelard objected to Anselm’s 12th century interpretation of how it is that Jesus’ death saves the world. Abelard thought he had a better idea and believed what Jesus did was show that we could live at a higher level of human kindness than previously accepted. The love of Jesus portrays not only the supreme love God has for us but becomes the inspiration for the love we can have for God and for our neighbor. Abelard’s “moral influence” theory has been judged by history as being a bit too optimistic as the following centuries did not produce the inspirational change in lives it proposed. So even though Anselm’s theory of Jesus being our substitute was slightly wounded it lived on as the most prevalent view of how Jesus saves. Not until the 19th and 20th century when cultural influences from the enlightenment spurred renewed debate have other weighty theories begun to emerge. Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulen challe...
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Violence and Judgment

Well, been off visiting youngest daughter who has a new coffee pot you’d have to see to believe. So while drinking fancy coffee I started thinking about why all of my contemplations of the past few months have been so important, i.e., the ideas of evil and forgiveness and how these things are represented in the life and death of Jesus. When I look at what I see and hear of Christianity in our modern world it seems to be dominated by the idea of judgment and violence. Old ways of thinking about why Jesus died and how that suffering has set things on the proper road towards rescuing all of creation paints a violent, helpless picture of God held hostage by a vaporous power of evil. In such I find little redeeming value. If Jesus is the symbol of God’s love and compassion how can we say then that such a God would require suffering and violence? Thinking that violence can in anyway lead to peace now or eternal peace later just doesn’t equate in my thinking. The violence committed against J...
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