Today’s post explores the Big Idea of Essential Kenosis and what it tells us about the nature/character of God.
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God Must Love
Still Becoming: Renovation
Open and Relational Theology has been a life saver for me, To be able to engage God and the world in ways that are consistent with my experience and intuitive sense of the God-who-is-love via the new eyes of good history, scripture, anthropology, philosophy, science and cosmology. It is affording me a way towards a more whole, very human life in the ongoing journey of becoming love.
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The Dark Night
We are raised to work harder, strive, stretch, brutalize the flesh and get what we want. Activity, or more accurately, productivity has become a sacred virtue in our culture.
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The Slap
Rock’s ‘joke’ at Pinket Smith expense prompted her husband (and that nights Best Actor winner) Will Smith to leave his seat, walk onto the stage, and slap Chris Rock. Returning to his seat, Will Smith told Rock in no uncertain terms that he was to stop the cruel jokes at his Jada Pinket-Smith’s expense.
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Why Hate the Sin and Love the Sinner Doesn’t Work
It surprises many to learn that the phrase hate the sin and love the sinner is not in the Bible. This idea seems to have originated with St. Augustine (c.424) in one of his letters when he used the phrase "Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum" which translates as "with love for mankind and hatred…
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Pluriform Love – A Review
I enjoyed an advanced copy of Thomas Jay Oord’s latest book, Pluriform Love—a more academic read than Oord’s recent works, but that shouldn’t scare you off. Oord writes in such a way as to be accessible to a wide swath of interested readers. In Pluriform Love, Oord pushes back on some well-entrenched theological sacred…
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Seed to the Wind
Conversion Therapy is the discredited practice that attempts to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity by various modalities, including different kinds of prayer. The harm of such practices is well-documented, and the stories of those who have endured such are dreadfully painful. Conversion Therapy Flagship ministries who had claimed to successfully "pray…
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‘Been There’, “Done That’ from a little further along the Way
Continuing my journey from deconstruction to reconstruction, it's interesting to recognize how I seem to have come full circle on things like giving, leadership, structures, scriptures, and mission... But this time from a different vantage point, recognizing that the “issue” wasn’t the issue per se, but rather the culturally-inherited and significant misunderstanding/misapplications of Love resulting…
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Ditches of Religious Deconstruction
God takes us out via the desert to bring us into something new. For the love of God, don’t make your home in the spaces of transitions and aridity. Resist the urge to build your cottage industry ministry in the transitional spaces - because, truth be told; you will gather the lost, the bitter and the angry. And the only help you can be to them is being lost and angry together. All the while cheering each other on in self-righteous snark- throwing rocks as you cheer each other on.
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We need Updated Stories
In his book Doubt after Faith: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It, Brian McLaren notes that sixty-five million US adults have quit going to Church, and this number grows by 2.7 million every year.[1] These numbers should serve as a wake-up call for churches, indicating that something is not connecting with people.…
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