I ended my last post for Baptist News Global, one month ago, with this quote from the 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross: It is better to be burdened and in company with the strong than to be unburdened and with the weak. When you are burdened, you are close to God, your strength, who […]
On the Spiritual Value — and Danger — of our trials
Friends, today is International Holocaust Memorial Day. The Holocaust must never be forgotten. This was not just an eruption of hatred against the Jews by the Nazi regime. It was a systematic government-sponsored genocide, and one that found willing collaborators all across (Christian) Europe — along with a heroic minority of resisters and rescuers. We
History Shows the View Is Best from the Margins
I am in the midst of an excruciating period of personal suffering. I am not at liberty to describe what is going on. Suffice it to say that it is a relational matter; it is awful; I have no idea how long it will last; I have no ability to fix it; and, whenever I think the
On Radical Acceptance and Crap Sandwiches
I am an old-school calendar guy. While I do use an Outlook calendar, my default calendar is a monthly planner. I use a color-coding system to write events on the calendar and tasks on the “Notes” column on the side. I am looking at my December 2021 calendar. It has been shot to hell by cancellations
New Year’s Resolutions When You Can’t Count on Anything Except COVID
Dietrich Bonhoeffer always brings me up short when he emphasizes the indicative rather than imperative voice in Paul’s thought and in Christian ethics more broadly. For example, in terms of Bonhoeffer’s work on image Christology, he emphasizes that the work of Christ in restoring the image of God in humanity is an accomplished fact, a reality
Christ Came to Make Us Truly Human: Social Ethics and the Image of Christ
This is the second in a three-week Advent series. In six places in the New Testament, five of them in the (probable) writings of Paul, the image of God is reinterpreted in light of Jesus Christ. The imago dei becomes the imago Christi. This Pauline theme is sometimes called “image Christology.” It takes us closer to our exploration of
Christ Came to Make Us Truly Human: Remade in the Image of Christ
Advent is upon us, and in my house, at least, we are already awash in Christmas decorations, music and movies. The peppermint bark candy is already on hand. The Christmas plates, cups and glasses are out. Our tree was up by Nov. 29! My wife, Jeanie, does Christmas right. At Catholic Mass on the first Sunday of
Christ Came to Make Us Truly Human: Human Sinfulness and the Image of God
Many readers of this column will know that in my religious practice I am by now something of a hybrid, attending both Catholic and Baptist churches every week when possible. This is time-consuming, for sure, but it does offer me access to developments in both these traditions. I want to tell you about something that I
A Conservative Resurgence in U.S. Catholicism?
Christians should support democracy. This should not be a shocking statement. It should not even need to be said. U.S. Baptists, at least, used to be fairly clear about it. But today, it is becoming increasingly clear from looking around the world and at our own nation that Christians need to make a fresh case for
Conservative Christianity as a Threat to Democracy
We are witnessing at this moment the intellectual deconstruction of a religious group that has been called “evangelicalism.” Illusions about this community are being destroyed left and right. Of course, those illusions first eroded in practice, through the contradictions and failures of U.S. white evangelicalism itself. Today, however, the intellectual underpinnings of evangelicalism are being deconstructed
The Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism