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A batch of the best highlights from what Todd's read, .
The story of Jesus speaks to me because, in one scene, Jesus is lovingly blessing little kids, and in another, he’s calling religious leaders a bunch of snakes. Jesus’s paradigm for God is of a gracious, loving Father who kisses the faces of his sinful, rebellious children, but the seriousness with which he regards evil is so intense that he says it’s better to gouge your own eye out than to objectify women. One thing makes me gush. The other makes me nervous. I’m suspicious of voices that only tell me what I want to hear.
Were it me, I might emphasize one thing, but not the other. I’d conceive of a God who is either never angry or never not angry. A soft, enabling God who doesn’t care enough to stop me from destroying myself, or a God so appalled at my relentless failure that he can’t bear to look at me without retching. But in Jesus, our soul-longings to be known and loved, for an end to evil and injustice are realized in the unfathomable beauty of truly self-sacrificial love.
Death to Deconstruction
Joshua S. Porter
If you’ve tended to think of spiritual warfare as mainly about how our prayers give aid and strength to protective angels fighting off aggressive demons, I challenge you to expand how you think about spiritual warfare, because in the Bible spiritual conflict is intimately associated with political struggle. So I hope this insight leads you to explore a more politically and socially engaged vision of spiritual warfare. But if you’ve already adopted this socially and politically engaged vision of spiritual warfare, I want you to expand your vision, too. For one thing, Jesus wasn’t much of a political activist. When Jesus described the battle he was fighting, he talked more about Satan than about Caesar. And when spiritual warfare is reduced to political struggle it’s tempted toward violence. For example, as we work for justice in the world, feelings can run hot; we’re often tempted toward bitterness and hatred when we face the people we’ve identified as the cause of the problem. So if Jesus was an activist, he was an activist who preached “love your enemies” and “bless those who curse you.” And that battle—the deep spiritual struggle to extend love, mercy, and grace for our enemies—must accompany any vision of Christian activism. Spiritual warfare isn’t just political engagement, it’s also a journey toward love.
Reviving Old Scratch
Richard Beck
In sum, our busyness:
1. Creates markets for new products and even new industries
2. Increases our spending on palliative measures
3. Generates wealth via interest for lenders
4. Distracts us the public sphere (among many other things…)
Busyness Decoded: How to Limit What You Say “Yes” To
Tara McMullin
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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