1. “Father, you are father of us all, and above us all.” * We address God as our father (or elsewhere even “daddy”), because he has chosen to have an intimate, familial relationship with us. * He is not just my father, but our father. Throughout the entire Lord’s prayer, the singular pronouns “I, me,
The Lord’s Prayer – Modern Paraphrase
Several years ago I was at a retreat which focused on “the Lord’s prayer”. I believe I had already begun to pray through it regularly, but either way, it made me want to rewrite the prayer in modern language. I have continued to pray through this prayer regularly, and have learned from it by meditating
The Problem With (some) Christians: Funeral Illustration
Today I attended a funeral with my friend Dan. The funeral was for the cousin of a friend of ours, who had committed suicide. Funerals are generally tough anyway, but this one was just downright painful in ways it shouldn’t have been. This mainly had to do with the minister who was “doing” the funeral.
Church, Inc.
There is a reason that The Office, Office Space, and Dilbert are so popular. A large percentage of people work in a corporate environment, but there are some real quirks and issues with it. People have many honest complaints, and they are expressed in the previously mentioned media. My view of corporate culture, and why
Narcissistic Church
Starting with my last blog, I am intending to do a short series on issues with church. The last blog was about churches not seeing or being honest about what they are really about in practice. This blog is about one of these issues. One problem most churches fall into is being almost entirely self-focused.
Blind Church?
I was involved in a discussion tonight, which made think about the following. It seems like many churches (and some christians too) are semi-blind to what they are. People seem to have this idea that if you’re honest about a problem, your somehow insulting the Son of God. If we’re not honest about problems, we
Alyosha
In The Brothers Karamazov, I identify the most with Alyosha.
Formula for Emotion
As people, we all experience emotions to various degrees and in a variety of ways. Though this is so, it seems like we generally don’t have a good grasp on why we feel the way we do. We typically externalize our emotions, seeing them as the inevitable result of events outside of our control: other
A Response to the Argument for Early Marriage
Yesterday I happened to run across the cover article for this month’s Christianity Today magazine. The title caught my attention a bit, so I decided to read it. The article supports a view point which I’ve ran across before. There seems to be two opposing camps on this issue, while most “average” people probably fall
A Jesus Manifesto
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola have written a document they’re calling “A Jesus Manifesto”. It has been creating some buzz around the web right now. At the very least, it is something good to consider, though I think it is more than that. It makes me think of