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 … 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 … 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” … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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 … 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. … 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 … 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 … Continue reading Waiting For God…
RJ's Corner 