This one comes to us from Jason Micheli. You would never guess it from the way they greet one another along the sidewalk in the morning or wave as they jog their dogs after work, but just about everyone in my neighborhood believes America’s partisan cold war is about to ignite with fire and fury. […]
No Sense: Love Across the Political Divide
Life is not politics. That has not been so obvious in these months. Everything is qualified (or disqualified) by whether you want the President to be our president or not. There is less and less tolerance, more and more nullification of any validity of any credibility depending on what you believe is best for our […]
Running with Scissors: on Polarization and God’s Love for Sinners
Amazon Prime is currently streaming the bulk of the Star Trek canon, so I’ve been nostalgically revisiting some of my favorite episodes from The Next Generation and also working my way through Deep Space Nine for the first time. Besides a cast of characters who have become household names, Star Trek is famously rich with […]
The Folly of the Cross in Our Divided World
Crucifixes are kind of everywhere, if you look closely enough. We wear them as necklaces, earrings, or tattoos; we use them to decorate our houses; and most churches usually place a cross front and center. Athletes make the sign of the cross when they excel in competition. Vampires are repelled by the mere sight of […]
#GospelResistance
Thankful for this post by our good friend, Jason Micheli: On Twitter today, the hashtag resist trended in dizzying directions, linking causes as disparate as police brutality, cancelling Tucker Carlson, and even cancelling cancel culture. #Resist was also linked to standing up against “oppressive” mask orders in localities hit by surges in the coronavirus. Given […]
Pancake Syrup & Justification
I could hardly believe it when my wife informed me that the Aunt Jemima brand was being retired amid the recent protests and concern over the perpetuation of racist caricatures in pop culture. The murder of black men and women by the police is an unspeakable tragedy to be sure, an unspeakably horrific injustice representative […]
When Justice is Unjust: The Death of Jesus in First Corinthians
John Barclay on the Foolishness of the Cross to the Gentiles
Caught in the Current of Current Events: The Difference Between The News and the Good News
“The newspaper is the second hand in the clock of history; and it is not only made of baser metal than those which point to the minute and the hour, but it seldom goes right.” – Arthur Schopenhauer There’s a story that when Napoleon’s army was abroad at war, his mail would come only sparingly. […]
Among the Other Gods: A Christian Air Force Chaplain’s Weird Work
Thankful for this distinct perspective from Clifton Hanson. At the beginning of Advent, I found myself leading a tree lighting ceremony. I’ve been part of tree lighting ceremonies before—this was no ordinary one. Sure, we did the usual stuff: important people addressed the crowd, we read the Christmas story from St. Luke’s Gospel, and of […]
Are We the Romans?
I remember purchasing Botch’s We Are the Romans at Earwax on State Street in Madison in October of 2003, and I remember buying along with it Dying Fetus’ latest record, Stop At Nothing. This was a time in which I not only listened to bands with names like Dying Fetus but also took perverse delight […]
Preaching Politically in Turbulent Times
Was Rudolf Bultmann a Nazi sympathizer? Short answer—no. And yet…the accusation is commonplace within some sectors of scholarship. In his recent Gifford lectures, the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright said as much, accusing Bultmann of Lutheran “quietism” in the face of the Third Reich because he was a “friend and philosophical disciple” of the infamous Nazi, […]
