A Fresh Perspective

John Pierce, the executive editor of Baptist Today , shared a story his friend told him about a coworker who was enjoying a visit from her sister and her two young nieces. They began running and screaming more so than usual so their mother went into the guestroom to check on them. The excited little girls shouted that a bug was after them and they were afraid of being bitten. The false alarm was over a small moth, floating lazily around the room. Their mom assured them, “Moths don’t bite people, they only eat clothes.” The next morning the girls were found sleeping peacefully in their bed – and naked. Their clothes were piled together away in the corner.  Our fears obviously affect our attitudes and actions. And this is true of all of us, not just little kids. Isn’t it obvious today how much our fears shape our attitudes and actions? Fear is guiding a lot of political speech today and bringing out the worst in people. When the angel first appears to Mary the angel sa...

The idea that God is somehow directly engaged in the tearing down and building up of nations was a common view in ancient Israel (see Jer. 18:7–10), but a view that progressive Christians cannot accept. It seems to me that God has ordered life on this planet with an inordinate amount of freedom. The number of children who die daily due to malnutrition and preventable diseases is staggering. Many of these deaths are due to the systemic injustice that results in the disproportionate distribution of resources in our world. God does not intervene to make things right, nor does God intervene in natural disasters, genocides, brutal killings, torture, etc. God’s method of creation (evolution) and the time and context required for life to emerge and evolve to its present state suggests that God values freedom over power. The very nature of creation limits God’s power. God does not micromanage the planet or our lives; God loves freedom too much. Whenever I come across the word “Al...

Jesus says to his disciples in his farewell discourse in John’s Gospel, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and not let them be afraid” (14:27). This bestowal of peace occurs in a context where Jesus promises the gift of the Holy Spirit (14:26). The Johannine community (the church/community out of which the Gospel of John emerged and to whom it was primarily written) clearly associated God’s gift of peace with God’s loving, dynamic presence. On our part, the gift of God’s peace is inseparably connected to our capacity to trust in the provision and sufficiency of God’s loving presence. The phrase in our passage where Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid,” recalls an earlier statement by Jesus at the beginning of this chapter, where he says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” (14:1). Can we trust in the provision of God’s love? ...

Warning: Not to be read by the doctrinally certain. These thoughts reflect where I am right now in my thinking on the incarnation of the divine in the person of Jesus. This could change next week. An incarnational theology probes into the nature of God’s presence in the world and in particular the degree to which God’s presence became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The Apostle Paul and the Gospel of Mark, the earliest witnesses to Jesus’ life, say nothing that would suggest that there was anything miraculous about Jesus’ birth. Mark’s Gospel was the first Gospel to be written (probably around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.) and he begins with John the Baptist. Either he wasn’t familiar with the tradition of a virgin birth (probably because it had not yet appeared) or he deemed it irrelevant. The seven authentic letters of Paul (1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, Philippians, and Romans) were written even earlier (likely in th...