The other night in the midst of our bedtime routine my son asked a simple, yet profound theological question. The question, "How does Jesus make Spiderman costumes?"
Bloody, bruised, and burnt out—our friends, family members, and coworkers are walking out of churches, giving up on God’s family, and at the same time giving up on the message that the Church has been entrusted with. This is the same old story that we’ve been hearing Christians sound alarms over for decades.
In the 1970s and 1980s, nearly every movie that was set in New York City begins with an establishing shot of a graffiti-covered subway. In an article and podcast episode that describes this and the New York Transit authorities attempts at cleaning up the subway.
Christian t-shirts, mediocre films about the rapture, and Christian music that is a copycat of the Top 40 are proof that Christians largely misunderstand the doctrine of vocation.
There’s a retired lab technician called EP, who in the book Moonwalking with Einstein, is referred to as “the most forgetful man in the world.” EP suffered from one of the most sever cases of amnesia ever documented.
The rise of Luther's revolutionary influence coincided with the invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg.
Why was this revolutionary?
Freedom is not a word I would typically use to describe work. Even in good jobs, there is a weight and pressure that makes work much closer to slavery than freedom.
When Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” it starts in the living room. For most of us, the primary callings that we have take place in our home. We are called to be husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister.
It’s easy to dream about the living the life of somebody else. We can look at the allure of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who has endless amounts of money that most of us couldn’t even imagine.
In The Journal of Neuroscience, there was a man referred to as E.P. He was an 84-year-old retired lab technician. E.P. suffered from one of the most severe cases of amnesia ever documented. In his case, his amnesia was so bad he could only recall his most recent thought.
Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of a new eBook that I’ve been designing and editing in order to share for free with the world - Galatians: Selections from Martin Luther.
When Jesus died, his life was not taken… it was given.
Even in the last statement Jesus makes on the cross, we can see this.
The Gospel is what defines the Church. In a world that is constantly pushing us to do more, try harder, the Gospel runs counter to everything the world preaches. In our own sinfulness, we naturally trust in our own performance, but it is the performance of Jesus alone that sets us free.
Oscar Wilde said, “I can resist anything except temptation.” I can resonate with that. The devil knows exactly where I’m weak and vulnerable and I’m a sucker for his lies.
Throughout the scriptures there’s a looping pattern that we see in the nation of Israel. Over and over and over again, the Israelites rebel against God.