Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read

A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .

So we invert the purpose of work. Instead of working as a way to love and serve others, we turn work into a way to be loved and served by others. Instead of longing to hear the “Tov!” of God, we work for the “Tov!” of people. And this is only the beginning of our brokenness; sometimes we actively labor to hurt people. Not only is the world complex and hard to manage, but evil abounds. Whether it’s a competent bookkeeper working in the field of sex trafficking or an otherwise talented manager writing an email specifically intended to produce guilt and shame in an employee, often human work actively cultivates evil instead of love.

The Common Rule

Justin Whitmel Earley

Indeed, our consumer society is grounded in the generation of artificial desires, readily transposed into urgent needs. The always-emerging new desires and new needs create a restless striving that sets neighbor against neighbor in order to get ahead, to have an advantage, and to accumulate at the expense of the other. The power of such a compulsion to “get,” of course, negates neighborly possibility.

Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition With Study Guide

Walter Brueggemann

Jesus is more than an example to be followed; he’s a Savior to be trusted. This is why we miss the point if we see Jesus’ wilderness temptation as only how to overcome temptation, with advice like “Jesus used Scripture, so you should too.” This focuses on a flea and misses the elephant in the room. The point is not, “He did it; you can too!” The point is, “You don’t do it; so Jesus did it for you.”

The Pursuing God

Joshua Ryan Butler

...catch up on these, and many more highlights