rebelling against low expectations
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. (Isaiah 61:1) At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus read this passage in a synagogue when he started his ministry. It’s a striking summary of...
Culture is everywhere. Literally. Culture is everywhere. It’s wherever people are. We’re a part of it, and it’s a part of us. It’s inescapable and wonderful. But it’s also true in the sense that everybody’s talking about it. Culture is everywhere in the Church: books, sermons, teaching series, conversations, mission statements. Everywhere we turn, we’re...
We know God calls us to do justice. In the last article, we discovered what justice is and why we need to respond. But still the question is: how? How do we do justice in an effective, biblical way? We need to recognize that there are both right and wrong responses to injustice. Let’s start with considering the wrong response. The Wrong Response In responding to injustice and trying to set...
If I could recommend one book to read in 2021, it would be The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I picked up a copy last summer when the library reopened, and even though the book was published in 2017, it felt like it was written yesterday. It felt like it was about now. About the Book The Hate U Give is about a 16-year-old girl named Starr Carter who, at the beginning of the book, is living in a...
The bus was just four yards away. They were so close! But between them and the vehicle stood a chain link fence topped with a coil of barbed wire. A Nazi soldier guarded the only gate. So close and yet still so far away! Havilah bit her lip until it bled. When she didn’t it quivered. Her hands trembled too, so she tucked one into her pocket and Martha squeezed the other tightly. “Take a deep...
I saw an advertisement recently claiming, “Unbiased News from a Christian Perspective.” In the comments, more than a few people pointed out the irony of that statement. We understand ourselves in the contexts of stories and narratives. This is how we make sense of the world. This “sense-making” takes place as we interpret our experiences in the context of the world around us. When we...
It’s been talked about by philosophers for centuries. It’s been defined, re-defined, then defined again. It’s spoken of in movies by rogue vigilantes who claim to take the law into their own hands and by protesters on the street corner calling out for change. Today, it takes on many forms–economic justice, reproductive justice, social justice. But what is justice, really? Is there a reality...
Election 2020. The next huge decision on our calendar we all needed this year. The one we’ve been looking forward to all year. Not! 2020 has been a crazy year, for sure. The election has, in no small part, only added to the craziness for those of us in America. Election Day is yet another thing to deal with this year after a long line of tense and exhausting processes that have at times...
As Election Day approaches, I hear many friends and family members name-calling their rival candidates. Although it’s not surprising, the saddening part is that some Christian’s echo the world. There’s nothing wrong with desiring a good leader, especially in times like this. But this desire does not permit us to disrespect others who are “fearfully and wonderfully...
We don’t get to choose the world we’re born into. Society doesn’t pause to offer us our choice of the cultural values, global issues, or historical events that will characterize the version of Planet Earth we’ll be a part of. We inherit the world as it is. It’s a lot like a family heirloom. Each generation passes down a world–sometimes dusty, sometimes broken...
rebelling against low expectations
