The UmBlog

Jesus said. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18 The United States is known as a Christian nation. The united States has the highest incarceration rate in the world . Both of these statements cannot be true at the same time. Cuba and Russia and China have lower incarceration rates than the US. Post genocide Rwanda has a lower incarceration rate than the US. Racially-divided South Africa has 1/2 the incarceration rate of the US. Post-Christian Europe, the bogeyman of fundamentalist preachers has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Egypt has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Indonesia has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Non-religious Japan has 1/10th the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Pakistan...

Three of the things I'm really grateful for from my experience in the Vineyard churches was the emphasis on the unconditional love of God, the grace of God, and the loving, fatherly heart of God. These principles undid a lot of the spiritual damage I had acquired in my upbringing. However, one of the things I had to hold with cognitive dissonance was the condition placed on God's unconditional love. Here are a few analogies I was told to explain this. It's a free gift, you just need to unwrap it. It's a blank check, you just need to sign it. Will you consent to be loved? I turned to Calvinism for a while to break this log jam in my brain. Today's Calvinists will say something along the lines of, God knew I would unwrap/sign/consent from eternity past so I really had no choice it was all God's work. But Calvinism creates so many more problems than it solves and I eventually dropped it. One of the pushbacks from non-Calvinists is the analogy of divine ...

Today is April 2nd and 5 inches of snow fell in my yard today. At least half of it has melted away this afternoon. An April snow storm does not mean that global warming is a hoax, played by mean scientists on poor Americans. But I think an analogy would be helpful for dubious Americans. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is used as a representative gauge of the economy over many decades. Today the DJIA fell 458 points. However, that is only a 2% drop. In ten years the stock market index has grown over 300%. The impact of 2% on one day is massive for someone just starting out, but for someone who has been invested over 10 years, it's merely a hiccup. Today's spring snowfall is like today's drop in the stock market. The temperature of both fell, but the upward trend is undeniable. A heated up stock market can be a good thing for most people. A heated up planet can be a good thing for a few people. But for most people a hotter planet will be a bad thing. And it's n...

farewell discourse John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love . 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love . 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you . 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other . Unique to John's gospel is the upper room discourse. As I prayed t...

DaVinci's Ultima Cena At the last supper, recognized today during the Holy Week before Easter, Jesus ate with a dozen friends. He knew 10 would flee into hiding after his arrest, one would betray him for money, one would deny him for safety, and only one would follow him all the way to the cross, where his women friends would not abandon him. Anticipating all of this, he not only dined with them, he took on the role of a house slave and washed each of their feet, saying this is what leadership looks like in the kingdom of love. The church has an unloving history of table fellowship. It continually tries to keep "bad" people away from the table. Some of the bad people it tries to keep away are those churches who keep adding another leaf and pulling up another chair. If Jesus welcomes to the table two cowards who denied him for profit or for fear, abandoning him to a torture then a lynching, who is worse than Peter or Judas? Are you not-white? Neither were the discip...

The judgment of the sheep and the goats Definition of  worship from Merrian Webster worshipped   also   worshiped ;  worshipping   also   worshiping transitive verb :  to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power 2 :  to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion  a celebrity  worshipped by her fans intransitive verb When one worships, one regards another being with respect, honor and devotion. Now consider this parable of Jesus. Matthew 25:31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left. 34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you i...

Equally Wed Luke 6:22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. I am reading Richard Beck's book, Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted . As a progressive believer and professor of psychology, Beck reconciles the concept of the devil/Satan/Old Scratch with the evil systems in this world and our own selfish ways. One of the outworkings of his thinking, as I read last night, is the falsehood of separating Jesus' two commands, love God and love your neighbor as yourself as two loves, instead of one. He writes, ...loving human beings is loving God and loving God is loving human beings. Only one love is at work, with n...