A Fresh Perspective

There are many viewers of "American Sniper" who consider Chris Kyle an American hero. Some of these, who are also Christians, even see him as an example of Christian heroism. These are folks who collapse obedience to God into obedience to country, making one inseparable from the other.                         Chris Kyle was a much more complicated individual than the one portrayed in the movie. Nicholas Schmidle  wrote a profile  on Kyle for the New Yorker where he noted, in addition to Kyle’s work to help veterans suffering from P.T.S.D. (which Kyle also suffered from), his propensity for bar fights, his deep disdain for the people of Iraq whom he called savages, and his bravado tales of killing looters in the aftermath of Katrina and two carjackers who tried to steal his car. Also, there are passages in Kyle’s book that reflect a passion for killing that...

Most Christians, I think, think about the good news and Christian salvation the way they were taught to think about it. Isn’t that true? I know I did, for many years. I was taught in the church of my upbringing and in my early Christian training a particular version of salvation. I was taught: “this is what it means to be saved.” And for many years I never questioned it and when I read the Scriptures I read them, I interpreted them in light of what I was taught. In other words, what I was taught about salvation became the filter through which I read the whole Bible. And even though what I was taught didn’t really fit in a lot of passages, I somehow made it fit. The fact is, however, there is no single, unified picture of salvation in the Bible. And the fact is, that some images and depictions of salvation are more helpful and transformative than others . Several years ago, former Baptist leader, professor, and author John Killinger wrote a book titled, The Changing Shape of our S...