Here’s what I’ve learned since then. The people who scan the heavens and pore over the Bible looking for the return of Jesus aren’t any more faithful, any more Christian, any more privy to the will of God, than the rest of us. Continue reading A Miraculous Intervention…
The more I learn, the more I think for myself, the more I question everything, the more I realize I know nothing. Of course, this is one of the primary lessons from a guy called Socrates. He lived about 2,600 years ago. What I mostly get from Socrates is that even though there is way more to learn than we have years on the earth, we must never stop learning. The more we learn, the more we can contribute to allowing future citizens of earth to have a better life than we had. This finally brings me to the main … Continue reading We Don’t Know The End, Until We Get There…
There are now over 40,000 different versions of Christianity around today. To this “Avowed follower of the teachings of Jesus”, Stephen Mattson’s version is perhaps my favorite. He concentrates on Jesus as a divine teacher who tells us how to … Continue reading Couldn’t Have Said It Better…
Some cling to traditions as if it were life itself. I am not one of them. To me, traditions are too often used to cling to prejudice and a fanatical resistance to change, any change. I saw that on display … Continue reading Some Cling To Traditions…
For this Sunday’s Look Back let’s look at the MAGA/Evangelical cult. I never would have dreamed that U.S. Christianity would have taken the fatal hit it has when I wrote the above words five years ago. Yeah, we had the Tea Party back then that was identified as a radical right fringe but for the most part they were not identified as a primarily Christian organization. The phrase “Make America Great Again” and “Evangelical” are now combined into MAGA/Evangelical and are irrefutably joined at the hip. I’m sure the roots of today’s cult were from the Tea Party but it … Continue reading Looking Back – U.S. Christianity
For my winter 2018/2019 project, I have decided to study the topics of philosophy and spirituality and how they intermingle. I am starting out this study by reading a book entitled “Belief without Borders” by Linda A. Mercadante. I will be putting out numerous Sunday posts about it in the coming weeks. Associated with that study, I have also been visiting some of my more than 500 posts over at one of my other blogs at RedLetterLiving.net This post was originally written on February 18, 2013. ======================================================= All of this makes me wonder if pews are misleading in churches. They trick people … Continue reading Churches Are Misleading….
My conservative Evangelical friends would like me to believe that you can’t be a humanist and also be a follower of Jesus. From what I have discovered in the last few months, that is categorically false. The two beliefs align very well with one another. Yes, there are differences in beliefs for different versions of humanism, but since there are over 39,000 versions of Christianity that kind of seems a lame argument to me. I’m sure some humanists are more aesthetic in nature just as there are Christians who basically ignore the teaching of Jesus. Jesus was about caring for … Continue reading Humanism And Jesus…
I just love this Facebook entry on my friend’s page. It says it all on what being an American should be about. You can do your thing but don’t try to prevent me from doing mine. Diversity…… Continue reading About Being American
When I came across this post a while back it got my immediate attention as the topic is probably one of the primary reasons that more and more people are declaring themselves spiritual but not religious. There is just too much baggage attached to too many of our religious institutions today. Too many twist the words of Jesus to match their current view of the world. It is kind of surprising that the author of the words above is a Baptists professor. Flat- Bible advocates, of which many Baptists are a part, believe that every word in the Bible comes directly … Continue reading Wicked Theology
Some of the biggest problems today are caused by religious certainty. People who are very certain that their religion is better than all the others tend to want to impose the rules laid out in their Holy Book on everyone. They have little respect for the fact that some people are guided by other Holy Books, and other equally valid types of ideals based on values instead of beliefs. Unfortunately this concept has spread into the political arena where religious literalists often try to impose their religious standards on our nation. They fight important social trends, like the acceptance of … Continue reading Religious Certainty…
That is the moral-ideological core of conservatism today. It presumes that life is a competition or race, that people are unequal in talent, drive, and ambition, and that those who end up on top deserve their victory and rewards — and those who come out on the bottom deserve their failure and hardships. Any attempt to overturn or even mitigate this moral order — whether through government regulation or changes in habits or assumptions in school or on the playground — amounts to an offense against justice itself. Source: What defines conservatism today? I want to spend a few posts … Continue reading They Deserve Their Failure….
Last week, Jeb Bush told an audience in California, “It is strength, and will, and clarity of purpose that make all the difference.” This is the Tinker Bell school of foreign policy that has spread over most of the Republican presidential field. Clap if you believe in a stable Middle East where Syria is rid of ISIS, Al Nusra, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and any Iranian influence. Clap if you believe Iraq will be safe for religious minorities and free of undue Iranian influence, too….. As an electoral strategy, it is absolutely nuts that Republicans would preemptively tell the American … Continue reading Like a Death Wish… I Can Only Hope….
This is a continuation of the post about two distinctive worldveiws so prevalent in our society today. Let me say up front that even with violating my self imposed 500 word limit on posts this will only very lightly touch on the matter of good or evil. Lets pull a couple of quotes from yesterday’s post to concentrate on here. Still, the distinction is real and important — and its implications touch on areas of our cultural life far beyond criminal justice. It helps to explain, for example, the very different ways that Platonic liberals and Pauline conservatives approach sex — with … Continue reading Paul or Plato – Part II…
Of course the title of this post came from the Sermon on the Mount found in the Christian Bible. Many, if not most Christians, believe that these teaching called the Beatitudes are fundamental to their faith. They are one of the primary lessons that Jesus left us on how he wants us to act. Here are all eight: Blessed are.. ….the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. ….those who mourn: for they will be comforted. ….the meek: for they will inherit the earth. ….those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled. ….the merciful: for they … Continue reading Blessed Are The Peacemakers….
Despite a loud minority, most of the U.S. has moved on. Last year, seven states accounted for 80 percent of all executions. And it is even more evident when you look at counties. More than half of death penalty convictions originate in 2 percent of the counties in the U.S. More and more Christians are troubled that 85 percent of executions take place in the Bible Belt. A 2014 poll showed that millennial Christians are overwhelmingly against the death penalty, and only 5 percent of Americans think Jesus would favor it….. It feels like we have death-fatigue. Perhaps it is no surprise that … Continue reading Despite the Loud Minority…
Surprisingly, many people don’t reject Christianity because they’ve given up on God. Instead, they’ve given up on the people and things that represent God. They don’t hate Jesus, they just become tired of not finding Him within Christian culture. As Christians, we sometimes mistakenly try to compensate for God by presenting our faith as easier than it really is. We cover up the ugliness and hardship of authentic faith.But while following Christ is beautiful and worthwhile, disappointment, pain, suffering, betrayal and hurt are also a part of life, and Christians aren’t immune or excluded from these horrors. Contrary to a … Continue reading Christianity is Harder Than We Pretend it is….
1) Christ is perfect but “Christianity” is not. Don’t mistake Christian Culture as God, they aren’t the same thing. Churches, pastors, theologians, and other believers will inevitably fail you, but Jesus never will. 2) It’s OK to change your beliefs. You’ll never have Christianity fully figured out. You won’t have an answer for everything. Theology is a journey, a Pilgrim’s Progress. Life, relationships, and experiences form, shape, and change the way you see, experience, and understand God. The disciples didn’t understand God much of the time, and you probably won’t either. 3) Christianity Isn’t Easy. It doesn’t magically fix things, … Continue reading Before Becoming A Christian…
“Now, just suppose, for a change they preach to you about the Lord and not about the other fellow’s church, for every religion is good. There is none of it bad. We are all trying to arrive at the same place according to our own conscience and teachings. It don’t matter which road you take.” – Will Rogers March 11, 1923 Since Will Rogers is a hero of mine, of course I get a daily dose of his Facebook page. Here is one that strikes me as typical of his wisdom. Will was not particularly a religious person, his mom … Continue reading All Trying To Arrive At The Same Place…
Christians have a presumption against war as well as an obligation to help heal those who suffer its consequences. The above title and words come from a Sojourners Magazine article by Gregg Brekke in the April 2014 issue. I have made it clear on most of my blogs that I am pro-peace in almost all regards and of course that makes me anti-war. All the wars and conflicts that the U.S. has fought in my lifetime have not had any long, or even medium term, consequences. If they had not been fought at all nothing much would have changed. The … Continue reading Wounded Souls….
2) It’s Not a Sin to Be Poor In a culture obsessed with consumerism, money is seen as the ultimate form of power and success, but it’s not a sin to be poor. For Christians, especially middle-class Westernized believers, it’s easy to assume the worst of the poor. We blame them for not working, being lazy, having drug addictions, making poor choices, and not trying hard enough. We often equate financial worth with personal value, and we place the poor in the lowest system of our preconceived (often subconscious) human caste systems. We treat them accordingly—bad, and are continually blaming, … Continue reading Helping The Poor – Reason 2
I know there are those out there who despise the phrase “Happy Holidays”! They say the phrase takes away the Christian meaning of Christmas. I am just not one of those. I don’t have any trouble recognizing that other faith traditions, and even those without any strong faith, also celebrate events this time of year. I say the more the merrier…. Since it has been pretty well documented that Jesus was not really born of December 25th and that much of the Christmas story is likely a myth passed down from one generation to another I don’t think we Christians … Continue reading Happy Holidays…
Morf Morford considers himself a free-range Christian who is convinced that God expects far more of us than we can ever imagine, but somehow thinks God knows more than we do….. As he’s getting older, he finds himself less tolerant of pettiness and dairy products. SOURCE: Morf Morford: It’s NOT the economy, stupid | Red Letter Christians. I am going to do a rare cross post here between two of my blogs. I am doing so because I think this post has a spiritual as well as general message. While the referenced source above is about life being more than just … Continue reading God Knows More Than I Do…….
One of the current foundations of the Christianity is the atonement. Generally that is thought to be Jesus taking the wrath of God for us with his substitutional crucifixion in order to appease God wrath toward man’s sinfulness. I, like many others I’m sure, thought that atonement was a foundational issue with Jesus and the early church. In reality it was post-Constantine theologians who gave us the doctrine of original sin and the blood atonement, the belief that Jesus came to earth solely for the purpose of dying for our sins, was a doctrine not fully developed in the church … Continue reading Atonement….
April 15, 2013 — The rise of the so-called “Nones”—the increasing percentage of adults who claim no religious affiliation—has been a much-discussed trend in American religion. Is the nation moving away from Christianity and other forms of conventional faith? To provide insight on this topic, Barna Group analyzed 42,855 interviews conducted in recent years, looking at 15 different measures of non-religiosity. In other words, the research explores the emerging post-Christian landscape of the nation. The above words are from an email I recently received from the Barna Organization. For those of you who might not know Barna is a Christian … Continue reading Shame On Us…….
Lets continue on with some more quotes from the book by Tony Jones entitled The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier “I’m humble,” an emergent might tell you, “because I don’t know what I’m wrong about today. I’ll speak with confidence, and I’ll speak with passion, but I won’t speak with certainty.” Being humble/uncertain in any area of theology is very intimidating to some within the church. They say we must believe everything in the Bible comes from God. They say we will invariably go down the “slippery slope” if we question anything in that document. They say if we … Continue reading Humble Emergents vs. Absolutists….
Anyone who has read much of this blog knows how I feel about the slippery slope. I believe that the very concept has damaged us theologically, politically and personally beyond anything good that could come out of it. The very concept that everything we believe about a subject becomes worthless if we come to believe that any small part of it is questionable. Here is what Tony Jones says about the slippery slope in his book The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier: That theology is local, conversational, and temporary does not mean that we must hold our beliefs without conviction. … Continue reading Skiing The Slippery Slope
This is a continuation of our study of Thomas Jefferson to discount the belief that he intended the United States to be a Christian nation. He started out and spent much of his life as a deist. That is he believed in the presence of God in the world but did not proclaim it as a Christian presence. Later in life after he was president he undertook a serious study of the Christian Bible and other religious documents. He took this study to the point of making his own version of the New Testament. Many are confused by the Jefferson … Continue reading Jefferson And The Gospels….
This is a continuation of my mini-project to strike down some of the myths around Thomas Jefferson. The myth at hand is that he intended the United States to be a Christian nation. If anything can clear up the misconceptions of Jeffersonian history, it must come best from the author himself. Here are some of his words about things religious: About Heresy Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782 Anyone who has visited … Continue reading Being Told What To Believe……
Being a Christian I was taught to be very much offended when I ran across the words “Happy Holidays” as that somehow diminished the real meaning of the season. But after I came across a blog post recently I have changed my opinion on those words. I wish I had kept the explanation as I’m sure the original author explained it much better then I can but since I can no longer find it I will have to do the best I can in justifying his idea.
This is a continuation of the previous post about the words of Jesus taking front and center in Christian living. Last time we talked about how the red letters came about in our Christian bibles and about an organization dedicated to putting them back in their proper place in Christianity. This time I want to tell you about a couple of books that put the red letters front and center. The first is a book by Phyllis Tickle entitled The Words of Jesus. This book which was published in 2008 was the first time I have come across something dedicated … Continue reading The Words of Jesus….
I think most people, especially those who call themselves Christian, are at least a little familiar with the third great rummage sale in Christianity which was the Reformation. I will only give a very brief look in this post. Martin Luther, a monk with an incredibly low self-image, started it in 1517 when he nailed his list of 95 complaints about the workings of the church on the Wittenberg church door. Martin’s initial goal was to try to turn the church from corruption of its day. But, due to bruised egos he ended up causing the second great schism in … Continue reading The Third Great Rummage Sale — The Reformation
This is a continuation of my review of the book Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus by Robin Meyers. Here are the quotes we will look at on this post: Adoration of the post-Easter Christ so dominates the language and liturgy of the church that the wisdom of pre-Easter Jesus is all but lost. We know that Saul of Tarsus, who never met Jesus, became the apostle Paul through a completely mystical experience and seemed to care nothing for the earthly teachings of Jesus, only his “adoption” as the Son of God … Continue reading Saving Jesus — (Part 2) Post-Easter Jesus
This is a post that I have carried over from my other blog at RedLetterLiving. It is about an epiphany I had several years ago about my spiritual beliefs. I wanted to share it with my readers here.In 1997 Richard Carlson wrote a very popular book entitled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…. and it’s all small stuff. In that book he listed one hundred things to make our lives more peaceful. Some of those topics that I took to heart included: Continue reading “And Its All Small Stuff…..”
Source: Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them | Alternet. Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping “moral philosophy” that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well. Her books provided wide-ranging parables of “parasites,” “looters” and “moochers” using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes’ labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O’Connor (her … Continue reading Ayn Rand – Mr. Ryans Hero….
This will probably be my last post about the early christians for a while. Next time I will begin to concentrate on some of the early theologians,bishops/historians/leaders or whatever you want to call them, and how they influenced the direction of the church. Closing this chapter, at least for now, it is important for you to remember what “faith” was to the early Christians. Here are a couple of quotes from Harvey Cox in his book The Future of Faith that I think summarizes this important topic. At its outset “faith” meant a dynamic lifestyle sustained by fellowships that were … Continue reading How Faith Changed….
I am going to jump ahead a little here so that I can put something into your mind before we tackle early church leaders. To illustrate my point I want to once again use a quote from The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox: Thus, it is now clear that the “official Christianity” that eventually emerged was only one among a range of “Christianities” that thrived during the earliest years. The distinction we still make today between “orthodox” and “heretical” movements did not exist. There was nothing inevitable or preordained about which version, if any, would predominate. It is very … Continue reading Official Christianity….
The title of this post came to me as I was recently reading the book Falling Upward by Richard Bohr. In this book the author says each of us has two distinct parts of our lives. The first is making the container and the second is filling it with what we were meant to do. Although I don’t necessarily agree with some parts of this book the thought of having two distinctive parts of your life is thought-provoking for me. It just makes sense. How much of your life you spend building the container and how much filling it with … Continue reading It’s Hard To Make a Fine Wine When All You Have Is Sour Grapes….
Nothing makes a man broad-minded like adversity – Will Rogers I can certainly understand this quote from Will. The adversity in my life, although coming more frequently than I would like, has certainly made me more broad-minded. Coming from humble beginning has made me sensitive to the daily plight of the homeless and financially challenged around me. Going deaf in mid-life has made me more aware of the challenges others face with handicaps every day. Being asked to leave a church because I didn’t have the “right” beliefs has made me aware of all those who are gun-shy about anything … Continue reading Being Broad Minded….
After an almost one year hiatus I will soon be posting again on this blog with this new format and a new direction. Where I Have Been: The first three years this blog examined how current day churches are doing in following Jesus’ words as found in the red letters of most Christian bibles. That study was concluded in August of 2011 and is still available here for your review. If you want to know more about the results of this study click on the “About This Blog” button above. Where Am I Headed: Going forward besides studying the red … Continue reading Welcome to the Re-Purposed Red Letter Living Blog
Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week – Maggie Kuhn I guess I am old at least as far as this saying goes. But it does seem as though when you get some years under your belt you have seen more of this world that warrants getting outraged about. Let’s face it most of us have seen some pretty stupid things in our lives. We let our government spend our tax dollars for some pretty dreadful things like our obese military establishment while denying healthcare … Continue reading Outrageous Things
I am going to put on my teacher’s hat now. Although I have never been an official teacher I have taught at several seminars in both the professional arena and the religious arena. So here is a lesson about altruism. On the right side of my blog I proudly proclaim that I am a passionate altruist. But what does that really mean? As usual there are varying definitions of the term. Here is what Dictionary.com defines as an altruist: altruism (ˈæltruːˌɪzəm) 1. the principle or practice of unselfish concern for the welfare of others 2. the philosophical doctrine that right action is that which produces the greatest benefit to others While this short answer gives you an idea of what altruism is let’s … Continue reading What Is An Altruist??
After watching the ending of a movie about Leo Tolstoy the other day I got interested in his life and writings. It surprised me to learn that he like Thomas Jefferson had written his own version of the Bible called the “Tolstoy Bible”. He again like Jefferson believed that the Christian church had strayed too far from the words of its founder Jesus Christ. I also learned that much of what Gandhi practiced come from Tolstoy’s writings. Here are some words about that from Wikipedia: Tolstoy’s Christian beliefs centered on the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the injunction to turn … Continue reading Tolstoy and Christianity….
I want to get back to our study of the Book of James in the Bible. To me this is one of the most important books in the Bible as it tells us most directly how to live our lives. Here is an extended quote from the second chapter for our discussion today. I have underlined a few places that I will be discussing further. You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless ? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You … Continue reading James The Brother of Jesus – Faith Without Works is Dead…..
Source: Column: You can’t reconcile Ayn Rand and Jesus – USATODAY.com. The source article is about how many conservatives have put Ayn Rand on a pedestal lately. It goes into how much of her philosophy runs very contrary to espoused conservative values. The graphic I attached here from that article is pretty neat. It does a good job of showing the broken link between Ayn Rand and supposedly Republican party principles. Here are some words from the reference article: Turning the tables on traditional Christian morality, Rand argues that altruism is immoral and selfishness is good. Moreover, there isn’t a problem in the … Continue reading Conservatism and….
I heard an interesting sermon this Sunday. It was about waiting for God. As you know this is a topic dear to my heart. Some examples given in the sermon were all the prayers to stop the BP oil leak and the many amber alerts that take place in the U.S. nowadays. The sermon thread seemed to be that we are always disappointed in the silence of God when it comes to our prayers. Why didn’t God stop the leak earlier? How can he allow children to be molested and murdered when there are so many prayers coming to him … Continue reading Waiting For God…
