If there was a top 10 list of reasons why people reject Christianity, the idea of its being a “patriarchal religion” would make the top 10, probably even the top 5. No one accuses Jesus of misogyny, but He’s been caricatured as not being a manly man anyway. He gently holds lambs and no macho […]
Suffering. It’s awfully hard to explain in life. In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker asked, Where was God when the mass shooting happened?” It’s as if God doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or revels in mass murder. Questions of that sort provide no comfort whatsoever to grieving […]
If people have a sensitive queasy-factor, parts of the Bible can be a tough read. All the blood makes their stomachs turn. Most of us don’t like blood a whole lot. We’re glad we have it pumping through a working heart to operate a functioning brain and entire pulmonary and vascular system. We get a […]
In the Life of Pi (the movie we’ve been using for our 40 days of hard questions “Why?”), the young boy Pi asks the priest, “Why would a god do that? Why would he send his own son to suffer for the sins of ordinary people?” For an evangelist or a pastor, this is the […]
Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips.” (Hosea 14:2) Hosea 14:4 “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. 5 I will be […]
Couldn’t Jesus have come just as a spiritual being or a vision and been everywhere, all at once? In the movie, Life of Pi, that we have been using as our launch pad for 40 hard questions of Why for Lent 2018 devotionals, the priest elaborates on his Sunday school answer: “Because He loves us. […]
We’re living in a day and age of “identity politics.” A time in which people gather with affinities for those who are like them and pinpoint others by their affiliations. In one sense, this labeling is terribly wrong, making the assumption that everyone who identifies with a certain category, organization, or ethnicity is the same. […]
Do you get tired of waiting? Do you wish Jesus would just come to take us all home now? Do you feel like a perennial child asking from the back seat of the station wagon, Are we there yet?” In the movie Life of Pi that we’ve been using for our Lent 2018 devotional series, […]
One of the most interesting points from the movie Life of Pi (which our Lent 2018 devotional series is using to ask Why?) is the way it can remind those of us in the Christian West or in Judeo-Christian America–at least what remains–that we’re a privileged sort. Most of us don’t have a whole football […]
The young boy Pi (whose questions we’re investigating during Lent 2018) is talking with the Catholic priest who seems genuine and kind and soft-spoken and has one answer to every question: All you need to know is that He loves you.” How often do we underestimate God? (All the time!) We wonder, “Why Couldn’t a […]
