Not cut out for religion

I ask you, what’s the answer, and you just ask me questions, and I’m like, “hello, I thought you were God?” Can’t I just download you, pay-as-I-go to decode you – a quick fix listen on my iPod?
 
 

Icons and Truth

…There is much more to this than the mere act of seeing. To see an icon requires that we also be in relationship with that which it represents. To read the Scriptures rightly is to encounter the Truth and, in some measure, to be changed in the encounter.

My church or The Church?

Ray Ortlund at Christ is Deeper Still writes:
“My passion isn’t to build up my church. My passion is for God’s Kingdom.”
Ever heard someone say that? I have. It sounds large-hearted, but it’s wrong. It can even be destructive.
Suppose I said, “My passion isn’t to build up my marriage. My passion is [...]

The Bible is not a bible

The great power and theological depth of the Scripture is found within these points of tension, and again within the tension between our lives today and the various parts of this ancient collection of books. The Bible is like a stringed instrument in this respect. It only works because of great tension. Stop trying to take the tension out of the Bible. If you take away the tension, smoothing over and dumbing down and making everything instructions and promises, all you get is a poorly tuned instrument and really bad music.

A Baptist asks a good question

What are the actual historical evidences, before Zwingli, for the Baptist view of the Lord’s Supper? Long story short: No answer. If there are evidences, then someone needs to write a book, asap. It’s long overdue.

On “the communion of saints”

“All the company of heaven” means everybody we ever loved and lost, including the ones we didn’t know we loved until we lost them or didn’t love at all. It means people we never heard of. It means everybody who ever did – or at some unimaginable time in the future ever will – come together at something like this table in search of something like what is offered at it…

Rob Bell and Don Golden on eucharist and the new humanity

A church is not a center for religious goods and services, where people pay a fee and receive a product in return. A church is not an organization that surveys its demographic to find out what the market is demanding at this particular moment and then adjusts its strategy to meet that consumer niche. The way of Jesus is the path of descent.

So, I Read Matthew 25. Where do I begin?

From the experience of one Orthodox parish (St. Brigid Fellowship)

Prepare. Go to confession and Holy Communion. Then go forth…
Look with fresh eyes. “Who are the people in your neighborhood?…”
Meet your neighbors one at a time. Learn their names. This effort is person to person, not group to group.
Come near to the suffering to find [...]