Category: Religion

Imagine

Imagine, if you will, that everyone who has bought a “powerball” ticket over the past few weeks had given that $2 to a non-profit, temple, homeless shelter, church, humane society, synagogue, food pantry, school PTA, mosque, hunger relief effort, community garden, or women’s shelter.

“It’s all for fun. Don’t be a buzzkill.”

Greed has been sold to us as a golden ticket out of the lower classes and closer to the life we all subscribe to on the Bravo! channel. If we wish / pray / think hard enough about the right things, it’ll happen to us. Knock, and Uncle Moneybags will answer the door.

Lotteries and Powerballs and Pick 5’s are evil and do damage to our society, culture, and communities.

Like it or not, we vote with our money in the United States. Render unto Caesar what you think belongs to Caesar.

Your chances of winning the Powerball jackpot are one in 292 million. Here’s what that looks like…

Source: How tiny are your chances at winning the Powerball jackpot? This tiny. – WSJ.com

I may be a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

Religion’s smart-people problem

Religion’s smart-people problem: The shaky intellectual foundations of absolute faith – Salon.com: “But we shouldn’t be deceived. Although there are many educated religious believers, including some philosophers and scientists, religious belief declines with educational attainment, particularly with scientific education. Studies also show that religious belief declines among those with higher IQs. Hawking, Dennett and Dawkins are not outliers, and neither is Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.”

Bigger Fixes Nothing in Churches

“CHURCH: Stop preaching downloaded sermons from other preachers. If you found it online, so can the congregation. People want to hear your take on God’s Word, not a re-heated sermon from someone else.”

Source: Bigger Fixes Nothing (7 Unexpected Steps Toward Church Health) | Pivot | A Blog by Karl Vaters

Saving these for later… and for clients.

So true.

Go Read Ezra and Nehemiah

dura-ezra“This story came out of nowhere and had me looking at other resources for answers. First, I didn’t really know that Ezra and Nehemiah were. And now, Nehemiah — a name I couldn’t spell in my notebook without writing out each letter looking at the Bible — and he was speaking to me. I flew through the pages.”

Source: A Catholic reads the Bible, week 22 – CNN.com

Whatever your religion, non-religion, perspective, or theology… go read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

People often look at me strangely when I tell them they are two of my favorite things in the Bible, but when I taught Old Testament at the college level we’d always spend way too much time with these books. Both (once the same) are very overlooked yet important for understanding our current situation, the development of Judaism, early Christianity, historical geography, and broader issues of colonialism.

When is a podcast a podcast and when is it a conversation?

Thomas Whitley and I are really enjoying doing this podcast… we missed last week’s episode and it felt (to me) like a big part of my week wasn’t complete. As I said on another podcast that had me on as a guest today, we don’t really think of Thinking Religion as a podcast as much as it is a conversation we’d be having anyway. Thomas and I are just letting you be voyeuristic and listen to a little snippet of that much longer weekly chat (our chats routinely go 2-3 hours, so this 45 mins or hour of a produced show is one conscious part of that).

It’s probably why we don’t have guests on as well.

Anyway, it’s a good listen (I think):

Download available here

My Sermon from Emmanuel Baptist Today

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Here’s my sermon from this morning at Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship in Lexington, SC entitled “You Don’t Know How to Serve.”

Download here.

The basic idea is that Mark 10:35-45 is not about sin or atonement, but about subverting hierarchies.

Why are churches struggling in 2015? Because churches are supporting the systems that Jesus attempted to break down. In that paradigm, churchers aren’t needed, churches are bitter, and churches don’t matter.

More resources on this theological topic from Brothers Kris and Willie:

Discount on Handguns if You’re a Christian

Sad.

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“Christians who are looking a good deal on a gun need look no further than Frontier Firearms. The Kingston, Tennessee liberty-defending establishment began offering 5 percent discounts last week for anyone who says “I’m a Christian” before purchasing a new handgun.”

Source: Guns Are Cheaper At This Tennessee Store If You’re a Christian – The Daily Beast

Funky Little Emmanuel

Will Emmanuel ever be a megachurch? No. It’s not a splashy place that is known for its rock band or stage settings or theatrical services. There’s no “Shine Jesus Shine” here. It’s not “easy” and it gets into your soul in ways that you don’t understand at first. Going to Emmanuel on just Christmas morning and Easter is impossible.

Instead, Emmanuel is a strange and wonderful little church. I use that term deliberately.  It’s a group of dedicated people from across socio-economic status, genders, colors, sexual orientations, political perspectives, religious theologies etc and it’s a place that changes who you are and how you think about God (whether you believe in a god or not).

Most of all, it’s a place where people pull up their socks, roll up their sleeves, and get to work doing what needs to be done.

The Apostle Paul would have been proud. I know I am. Now back to work.

“And that’s when Merianna Harrelson’s phone started blowing up. “I had church members calling to say ‘what are we going to do to help?’” said Harrelson, pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Lexington, S.C. “There was one woman who was taking on water at her home, and she was asking how she could help.”’

Source: S.C. churches stepping up to help flood victims | Baptist News Global

Americans Don’t Understand What it Means to Be Pastoral

We too easily understand the differences between “conservative” and “progressive” but our churches have taught us very little about what being “pastoral” actually means…

“Americans are often tempted to read Francis as a “progressive” pope who has tossed out the conservative playbook of Church leaders past. After all, he’s thrown down scathing critiques of global capitalism, pushed for radical reform on climate change, and shifted the Church’s tone on issues like homosexuality, divorce, and abortion. So as pundits map his views, many conclude that he’s pushing the church into uncharted territory. But as a 15th-century Vatican cartographer might have put it: hic sunt dracones.”

Source: When Does Pope Francis Arrive in the United States, Washington, D.C., New York, and Philadelphia? – The Atlantic

Essential reading as Pope Francis lands in the United States today to begin his tour of the country.