A Fresh Perspective

In my book, Being a Progressive Christian , I have a piece tilted, "God's Loving Judgment." I argue that God's judgment, whatever it may consist of, is restorative and redemptive, not punitive and retributive. I never speculate on how God judges and what that may involve or look like. A spiritual growth group using my book presented me with the question, "How do we know God is correcting us?" Below is my response: Your  question actually must be addressed in light of a larger question about how God actually works in the world and in our lives.  I don’t see God intervening in “judgment” or “blessing” the way the prophets sometimes envisioned. The Jewish view of God tended to see God as the transcendent "Other." Over and separate from the creation. I think when we get to the revelation in Jesus that view of God begins to shift. God is here and now. In God we “live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).   According to Paul we are indwelt by Go...

John, the Baptizer drew people from the villages and towns out into the desert to hear his message and to be baptized. As he baptized people he pointed them to Jesus, who would come after him, whom he said would baptize them in the Holy Spirit. What does a baptism in the Spirit of Christ look like or feel like? What does it involve?   Luke describes John’s baptism in v. 3 as “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” It seems to be that any baptism that represents in some way a new beginning or chapter in our lives must include repentance and forgiveness. I think it is often assumed that forgiveness of sins is the receiving of forgiveness from God, but the text doesn’t specifically say that. In reality, forgiveness is never just a one-way street. If you look at the teachings of Jesus regarding forgiveness in the Gospels Jesus inseparably connects receiving forgiveness with extending forgiveness. The model prayer makes this connection clear. We pray , “forgive us ...

We are wired in such a way that we find our greatest joy when we become a blessing to others. We are created in God’s image. We are stamped with divine DNA. And because God indwells us, because we share in the divine life and divine nature, we will never find true happiness apart from consciously living out of our oneness with God. We are at our best, and we are most joyous and fulfilled, when we allow God’s Spirit to flow through us – when we allow God’s love to fill our lives and overflow into the lives of others. When we bless others, we bless ourselves, because we are doing what we have been created and called to do. Whatever happiness we may have as a result of self-serving actions is always fleeting and temporary. And once it runs its course it leaves us feeling empty, because it’s not real happiness. It doesn’t reflect who we really are. Repentance then, is a realigning of our actions and attitudes and desires with who we really are as God’s children and that brings joy.  ...

What Matters Most (a sermon from Matthew 25:31-46) This parable is not really a parable – it is but it isn’t. One scholar calls it an apocalyptic drama. Scholars who have studied Matthew in detail see the author’s hand all over this. Some argue that the author probably composed it. Of course, there is no way to prove that. What we can say for sure is that the teaching of this apocalyptic story strikes a theme that is dominant in Matthew’s Gospel, namely, doing the will of God, expressing mercy and justice, engaging in acts of lovingkindness. These are the things that Matthew’s Gospel emphasizes and these are the things that matter most. I hope you know not to take this judgment scene literally. This is an apocalyptic story. Apocalyptic literature is full of symbolism, sometimes rather strange and bizarre symbolism, like the Beast with ten heads or the great red dragon in the book of Revelation. In apocalyptic symbolism everything is exaggerated; it’s full of hyperbole. And whe...

This parable is found in all three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew, as usual, adds to it some details that give it a particular flavor unique to Matthew. In its original setting in Jesus’ ministry, it is likely Jesus tells a shorter form of this parable in anticipation of his death. He has already been rejected by the religious leaders who are now plotting a way to get rid of him. In the narrative Jesus tells this parable after he stages a protest in the Temple overturning the tables of the money changers. That prophetic act of Jesus sealed his fate. Now it’s just a matter of time. The parable is based on Isaiah’s song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5. This passage in Isaiah 5 is called by the prophet a love song. In that love song the owner and caretaker of the land diligently prepares and plants a vineyard with tender-loving care. But instead of producing good fruit, it yields sour grapes. And so the caretaker decides to let it be. The result is that the vineyard g...

Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan argues in his book, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now , that in the biblical tradition, both Old and New Testaments, two incompatible and contradictory explanations of God’s final victory over the evil and injustice of the world run side by side, often in the same biblical books. One explanation is extermination. It is reflected in the Noachic solution to evil in the world, namely, the complete destruction of the wicked.  Crossan writes, "In this vision, God’s solution to the problem of human violence is the Great Final Battle in which good triumphs over evil—and triumphs, let us be clear, by divine violence. The symbolic place of that cosmic cleanup as cosmic slaughter is at Har Magiddo in Hebrew (hence our English “Armageddon”), the mountain pass where the spine of Israel’s hill country cuts westward toward the coast and skirts a great plain suitable for battle." Examples of this approach can be found in Mica...