“I want the whole Christ for my Savior, the whole Bible for my book, the whole Church for my fellowship, and the whole world for my mission field.” - John Wesley
Pastors need to wisely pick the battles they fight, because credibility held in reserve is what gives their words weight when they finally need them. And there are those times when they need that gravitas. Anyone who has not carried the pastoral burden cannot fathom what a true pastor actually carries. When a pastor has not spent themselves on trivia, the people know that their seriousness signals something important, something holy. Restraint is not weakness. It is the stewardship of trust.
My dear Wormwood,
One of the most important tactics to keep injustice present is convincing the humans that racism is strictly an overt act of discrimination by an individual.
Don’t let them focus on the systemic nature of it.
Keep up the good work.
Your Uncle,
Screwtape
This is sanity. This is balance. This is honesty. You can be a conservative—hyper, even..And not have a heart full of Bible and a mouth full of hate. 👏🏾
(Side note: it didn’t look fantastic to me..but that’s my opinion)
I’m thrilled the TPUSA halftime show did well. It looked fantastic.
But - (ducks for cover) - the Right should be careful not to overreact to Bad Bunny.
The music is not to my taste. But many Americans hold Latin American heritage, and it’s not wrong to pay homage to it.
The American flag was honoured first in any case.
The performance literally promoted marriage to an audience of 127 million.
It was fine.
Making a mountain out of a molehill makes everything so much worse.
I long for a day when the United States has a president who, just for starters, not to even get into more serious matters, is not older than Methuselah and does not sound like a 13 year-old on TikTok talking about middle school classmates. I don’t think this is too much to ask. And do not say to me, I guess you wish we had so-and-so and think what they’d do. We don’t have so-and-so. We have this one. And I don’t think it makes me woke to wish he acted like a grown-up.
@shaunking I feel the same way about Christianity and 2.26 billion others globally do as well. A God who became man..dying for the sins of an ungrateful people. Being crucified and buried..resurrected from the dead. What a merciful and kind God! What grace! So Amazing! Jesus is king!
@Ameen_HGA The current wave of Keller criticism is a symptom of a fast-spreading form of culture warring that is foreign to New Testament Christianity, but very "at home" in American conservatism as a siloed, anemic, partisanly-hijacked ideology masquerading as evangelicalism.
The sin of worshipping the golden calf was not idolatry as we think of it— worshipping something else in God’s place.
It was the sin of over-defining God in ways that go beyond or outside of how He defines Himself. They said, “This is what the God who brought you out of Egypt looks like.”
By over-defining God, they ended up confining God.
But there’s more.
They took their golden earrings and turned it into a golden calf. They took what was ornamental and made it sacramental.
We do something like this whenever we take the non-essentials or our personal or political opinions and elevate it to the level of the theological. We over-define God by making Him into our image. We take something that comes from us and use it to define Him. We take the stuff of earth— human ideas and ideologies— and say, “This is what God is like.”
But there is only one who reveal the Father’s glory, and He was not made by human hands. His name is Jesus.
Friendly Reminder:
Marriage > Youth Sports
Church > Youth Sports
Education > Youth Sports
This is for all of us wading through youth sports culture. Let’s keep it in perspective. 🙏🏿
Erika Kirk forgiving her late husband’s assassin should speak to all of our hearts.
We don’t have to agree with him or the entire event, but we’ve let the world desensitize us if we feel nothing.
Forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel.
1 John 4:20 CSB
If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
I find it interesting how loud some Christians are about the mutilation of physical bodies [gender operations], while in the same breath affirming the mutilation of Christ's body [by tearing down other pastors]. Help, Lord.