Unemployed Theologian

I have had it up to here *holds hand over head* with those who use the Bible, and worse still, the Gospel, to justify their hate and bigotry. I have HAD IT. To think the good news of Christ, of God's redemption of His beloved world would ever become a weapon used against His children, to think the cross would ever become a sword , it makes me sick. It repulses me.   When did the story of a God who stooped down low to love His children, specifically  those most outcast among their peers, become a tool of subjugation and oppression in the hands of the powerful and pious? When did we give the keys to the Kingdom back to the Pharisees? I'm afraid I know the answer: almost immediately. A few hundred years into Christendom, as soon as Christians got a little political power, we started rounding up and casting out all those on the fringes. We started neglecting the poor and equating prosperity and military victory with divine favor. When the church betrayed Her Bridegroo...

Prologue: The Jesus Prayer goes like this: "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me." Remember that. It will be important. Act 1: Delilah I have officially decided to name my new car Delilah, because she is on the one hand beautiful and on the other a harlot who has betrayed me. The list of pickles she's gotten me into is getting longer and more maddening by the day, and the memory of one of the more harrowing of said pickles is still fresh, having taken place not two months ago on the way back to Newberg from an interview in Portland. You guys tried that picasa photo editor? Really easy way to make your car look like it's in a comic book. The interview was for a position in Young Life's Associate Program, a dream job of mine except that it would require me to live wherever they might place me, rather than in Springfield where I had resolved to go after graduation. My interviewers and I reached this impasse at the end of the interview, them telling me I wo...

There's a type of person who doesn't feel comfortable at church. There are several actually, and these people, these beloved children of the Most High God, feel so ill-at-ease around our judgmental eyes and caustic tongues they stop coming to church altogether. And we blame them for it. "Get over it! God loves you anyway, come to church!" we say, as if it's fear of God which keeps them away. Perhaps sometimes it is, fear of the hateful God of heretical doctrine, but it's clear to me that far more often it is not God who drives them out, but His children. We claim grace, God's grace, His unmerited favor for us weary sinners with all our breath. We speak of Christ's compassion for the other, for the marginalized, for the "freaks" of His day, then we preach a very different sermon with our gossiping whispers and hostile glares. "Did you hear who she's  sleeping with?" "Can you imagine showing up at church in that? ...

It's the most wonderful time of the year, or so they tell me. I've said it too, sang it, and I believe it mostly. To be perfectly frank, though, I'm not sure what it means anymore. Why is it the most wonderful time of the year? Peace on earth, good will toward men and all that? But I'm afraid those things don't seem terribly true right now. No, the Christmas spirit has been kept at bay by the cold specter of tragedy as the television screen paints a picture of hell on earth and ill will toward all. Americans taste and see that all is not right with the world as each image from the Newtown massacre flits before our eyes: lives taken at the hands of a deranged killer. The most innocent among us (young children), as well as some of the noblest (teachers), gone too soon. It is maddening, sickening, and unbelievable yet tragically true. Newtown is only the epicenter of these tremors, however, as unfathomable loss and unshakable terror ripple across our country. Bomb th...