The UmBlog

 I've written a couple other posts on this topic before, here and here . Jesus and his followers, in the footsteps of the Jewish prophets before them, chose which writings to elevate and which writings to minimize. Jesus did this to Moses when he said an eye for an eye was not God's way in his sermon on the mount. But Jesus also does this in his temptation. His accuser shows up and says, "yo, you can get a lot of followers by doing this miracle based on the Psalms by jumping off this high place, because the Psalmist prophecies God won't let you foot dash against a rock. Maybe you'll levitate or something." And Jesus, who must have stubbed his toe multiple times in his life is like, "you is a fool, why you gotta take poetry literally like that, also the book says don't test God like that, Fool." Jesus pointed out to my younger fundamentalist self that some things in the scriptures are more important than others. If you use the lenses of love is G...

I used to have an abundance of pro-life blog posts on here. I took them down because I no longer think my male opinion carries even the weight of electrons on this blog. I do consider myself pro-life, not just pro-birth, and believe the church and the government should support not only pregnant mothers but post-natal mothers and children. Please see my post from last year. " policy proposal: pay pregnant women and at home parents ". If you are an evangelical woman who has had or is considering an abortion and if wracked with guilt, I'd like to offer a minority report on the biblical exemption for abortion. We start with Exodus 21 . The first eleven verses fall into the category I've written about many times here under the label, "not everything biblical is Christian", meaning these slave laws are awful and not Christ-like at all. Starting at verse 12 though we get to the capital crimes. Again, I'm pro-life so I don't think a Christ follower should be...

source Luke 16 The Message (MSG) The Story of the Crooked Manager  1-2 Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’  3-4 “The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do . . . then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’  5 “Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 “He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ “The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here—quick now—write fifty.’ 7 “To the next he said, ‘And...

I read with joy and anger the comments under Gabrielle Union's tweet introducing the world to her gender non-conforming child Zaya. Meet Zaya. She's compassionate, loving, whip smart and we are so proud of her. It’s Ok to listen to, love & respect your children exactly as they are. Love and light good people. pic.twitter.com/G2lLVdD2VT — Gabrielle Union (@itsgabrielleu) February 11, 2020 I wish every kid could have such supportive parents. But out came the bible verse quoting trolls among others. But don't christians believe in an immaterial soul? That the mind is greater than the brain? That there is a spirit as well as a body? If people are truly materialists, then certainly they can make the argument that chromosomes determine who Zaya is. But christians do not tend to be materialists. So if Zaya asserts her identity as distinct from her chromosomes, wouldn't this be a proof for christians to say, "there is something more to us than our materials and...

Matthew Fleischer did a great job surprising me with his previous book, The Old Testament Case for Non-violence . He follows the same methodology of considering New Testament texts of violent nature in their context and against the explicit teachings of Jesus in this new book while fairly considering other interpretations and following them to their logical ends. I may have much in common with Fleischer especially being a big fan of Jesus. However, I'm no longer a fan of verse by verse argumentation. I used to do that. Not only am I tired of it but I can no longer ignore the humanity beset by time bound mores and prejudices wrapped up in these texts. Fleischer carries a burden I won't, which is every verse is God-breathed, even the terrible ones, while he tries to defend Jesus' pacifism. I arrive at the same conclusion, but my route is shorter than his. If the reader is of the "biblical christianity" background and persuasion, this is a book to wrestle with. I...

Consider this story about the founder of the Abrahamic faiths. Genesis 16:1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. from the Met A couple of things we know from later on in Genesis is that Abraham outlives Sarah and takes other concubines and has children with them. The story of Hagar and Ishmael is not direct from Sarah. It's hard to believe Sarah would volunteer her slave to be raped by her husband. In fact, it's much easier to believe Abraham got frustrated waiting on Sarah and, on his own initiative, impregnated Hagar. In fact, the relationship could have even been...

Orbis books I've known about this book for a few years, but I have not been emotionally healthy enough to read it until now. I don't think I ever really began to understand the depths of white supremacy in the evangelical church until the Black Lives Matter movement started. When I used that hashtag and advocated against police lynchings and found myself not only removed from my church's opinion in general, but actively pushed back against. Michael Brown's lynching by a policeman in 2014 was the beginning of my steep slide into depression and out of the evangelical church. Somehow, I was still surprised when 80% of white evangelicals voted for an fascist racist. I was surprised by African-Americans were not. African-Americans like James Cone, who grew up in Jim Crow Arkansas, were all too familiar with white christians who did not see the paradox of going to a lynching Saturday night and a worship service Sunday morning.  The white supremacist christians did not ma...