For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.  
—Mark 9:49–50 

Australian theologian Sally Douglas considers Jesus’ teachings about power:   

In Mark 9, we hear about an argument between Jesus’ male disciples. They have been disputing amongst themselves which one of them is the most important (Mark 9:33–34). The author of Mark makes it very clear that they really haven’t been listening to Jesus’ words for some time…. 

Jesus responds to their power plays by drawing their attention to a child. Jesus brings the child to the centre, a little one, considered entirely unimportant in the patriarchal and hierarchical worldview of the Common Era. Jesus then goes on to proclaim the unthinkable:  

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me (Mark 9:37).   

Here Jesus is effectively saying, “Look, the one you think of as the least important, is where you will find me and where you will find God. Get your heads checked.”…  

In response to the male disciples jostling for status and privilege, Jesus does not seek to sooth their insecurities but instead, disrupts their understandings of power … in the place they least expect it, with those considered the least important in society. Jesus then goes on to affirm the centrality of honouring the little ones and being at peace with one another. It is here that living in peace is linked with saltiness.  

Jesus connects using our power to honor and protect others with being a transforming presence or “salt” in the world. 

When we keep in mind the context of this whole passage in which the disciples have been jostling for power and Jesus gives stark warnings to those who misuse their power (Mark 9:33–48), we discover a piercing challenge. Here, the gathering together of imagery of being “salted with fire,” ideas of sacrifice and the challenge to live peaceably together, may reflect ideas about being purified and refined for peace. That is, in the process of allowing our lives to become a salty offering, no longer driven by power plays, but instead focused upon honouring and protecting others, especially the “little ones,” our ego-driven agendas are burned away. Like the fighting disciples, this will be a costly process of having our assumptions about power deconstructed, so that we may actually be able to embody God’s peace together…. 

When Jesus communities embody structures in which the last are first and the “little ones” (including children and vulnerable adults) are honoured, safe and included, we become a salty, seasoning gift, sprinkled across our global village. When Christians live in authentic peace, no longer sniping, competing or lording it over one another, we offer a spicy alternative to the dominant models of power in our global village that are commonly shaped by coercion, fear, exclusion, and violence.  

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SEP 9, 2025 Henri Nouwen: Downward Mobility

I first encountered the writings of Henri Nouwen as a college student. It was a season when the American evangelical tradition most shaped my vision of the Christian life. This form of Christianity is a popular blend of biblical principles and entrepreneurial ambition in which ever-increasing influence and impact are celebrated. Nouwen entered my world and quietly dismantled many of the assumptions about faith I had inherited. Nouwen was Dutch, not American, he was a Roman Catholic priest, not an evangelical pastor-preneur, and he spoke about intimacy with God more than impacting the world.Beyond his very unfamiliar way—at least to me—of framing the Christian life, I was inspired by Nouwen’s own story. Despite his focus on the inner life of the soul, Nouwen lived with deep insecurities and an insatiable need for approval. He struggled with depression and anxiety, and while his drive for significance landed him a professorship at Harvard University, the cost to his health nearly killed him. At the height of his success and influence, Henri Nouwen decided to leave Harvard to become a pastor and caregiver at L’Arche, a home for mentally disabled adults. By moving from Harvard to L’Arche, Nouwen willingly left everything the world esteems to be counted among those the world ignores. His life of downward mobility not only contradicted the popular American narrative, it also confronted my evangelical assumption that God always calls us to more power and more influence, and never less. It’s appropriate to begin this series with Henri Nouwen’s story because it so obviously parallels Jesus’. The incarnation is also a story of downward mobility, of Jesus exchanging the glories of divinity for the obscurities of humanity, ultimately accepting the indignities of the cross. Henri Nouwen taught me that the way of Jesus is more about what we surrender than what we achieve. DAILY SCRIPTURE PHILIPPIANS 2:1–11 2 CORINTHIANS 8:8–9 LUKE 18:18-30 WEEKLY PRAYER Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) O Lord Jesus Christ, I long to live in your presence, to see your human form and to watch you walking on earth. I do not want to see you through the darkened glass of tradition, nor through the eyes of today’s values and prejudices. I want to see you as you were, as you are, and as you always will be. I want to see you as an offense to human pride, as a man of humility, walking amongst the lowliest of men, and yet as the savior and redeemer of the human race. Amen.

Positive Power Dynamics

Richard Rohr explores the ways we have used our God-given power for good and ill:  

Despite the many abuses of power documented throughout history, power itself cannot be inherently bad. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is described as dynamis, which means power (Acts 10:38; 1 Corinthians 2:4–5). Jesus tells his disciples before his Ascension that “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Then you will be my witnesses … to the very ends of the Earth” (Acts 1:8). 

Sustained contact with the Holy Spirit, our Inner Source, allows us to become living icons of true, humble, and confident power. We no longer need to seek “power over” others, because we have discovered the “power within” and know it is a dignity shared with all of life. This is ultimately what it means to be a well-grounded person. 

Paul states the divine strategy well in Romans 8:16: “God’s Spirit and our spirit bear common witness that we are indeed children of God.” The goal is a shared knowing and a common power, which is initiated and given from God’s side, as we see dramatized in the Pentecost event (Acts 2:1–13). To span the infinite gap between the divine and the human, God’s agenda is to plant a little bit of God, the Holy Spirit, right inside of us (John 14:16–17; Romans 8:9, 11; 1 Corinthians 3:16). Yet, as many have said, the Holy Spirit is still the “lost” or undiscovered person of the Trinity. If we have not made contact with our true power, the Indwelling Spirit, we will seek power in all the wrong places. 

I want to repeat that power, in and of itself, is not bad. It simply needs to be redefined as something more than domination. If the Holy Spirit is power, then power has to be good, loving, and empowering, not something that is the result of ambition or greed. In fact, a truly spiritual, whole and holy individual, is a very powerful person. If we don’t name the good meaning of power, we will be content with the bad, or we will avoid claiming our own powerful vocations. What is needed, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.” [1] 

King further wrote,  

If we want to turn over a new leaf and really set a new humanity afoot, we must begin to turn humankind away from the long and desolate night of violence. May it not be that the new humanity the world needs is the nonviolent human?… This not only will make us new people but will give us a new kind of power…. It will be power infused with love and justice, that will change dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, and lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope.

Power Within

It is precisely the parts of the body that seem to be the weakest which are the indispensable ones.
 —1 Corinthians 12:22 

How ingeniously you get around the commandment of God in order to preserve your own traditions! 
—Mark 7:9 

Father Richard Rohr examines different ways of understanding and using power: 

The epigraphs above are two subtle scriptures that I hope illustrate both good power and bad power. In the first, Paul encourages his community to protect and honor those without power. In the second, Jesus critiques the religious leaders for misusing tradition to enhance their own power. 

If we watch the news, work on a committee, or observe some marriages, we see that issues of power have not been well-addressed by most people. When we haven’t experienced or don’t trust our God-given “power within,” we are either afraid of power or we exert too much of it over others. Enduring structures of “power over,” like patriarchy, white supremacy, and unfettered capitalism, have limited most individuals’ power for so long that it’s difficult to imagine another way. Only very gradually does human consciousness come to a selfless use of power, the sharing of power, or even a benevolent use of power—in church, politics, or families. 

Good power is revealed in what Ken Wilber calls “growth hierarchies,” [1] which are needed to protect children, the poor, the entire natural world, and all those without power. Bad power consists of “domination hierarchies” in which power is used merely to protect, maintain, and promote oneself and one’s group at the expense of others. Hierarchies in and of themselves are not inherently bad, but they are very dangerous for ourselves and others if we have not done our spiritual work. Martin Luther King Jr. defined power simply as “the ability to achieve purpose” and insisted that it be used towards the growth of love and justice. He wrote, “It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice.” [2] 

A prime idea of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is its very straightforward critique of misuses of power. From the very beginning, the Bible undercuts the power of domination and teaches us another kind of power: powerlessness itself. God is able to use unlikely figures who in one way or another are always inept, unprepared, and incapable—powerless in some way. In the Bible, the bottom, the edge, or the outside is the privileged spiritual position. This is why biblical revelation is revolutionary and even subversive. The so-called “little ones” (Matthew 18:6) or the “poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3), as Jesus calls them, are the only teachable and “growable” ones according to him. Powerlessness seems to be God’s starting place, as in Twelve-Step programs. Until we admit that “we are powerless,” Real Power will not be recognized, accepted, or even sought.  

PARROTT.INKJames, Paul, Works and Faith When Faith and Works Stop Fighting: What James and Paul Actually Agree On. By Anthony Parrott • 8 Sept 2025  I have faith that my plant will grow. Therefore I work by watering it.

In an undergrad discipleship class, my classmate Sarah wrinkled her nose at our professor’s assignment. We were supposed to read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and pick a spiritual discipline to practice.”I don’t like this,” Sarah announced. “Spiritual disciplines feel too much like works. It’s too legalistic.” I remember staring at her. The disciplines we were talking about were thinks like prayer, fasting, meditation on Scripture—practices that have shaped Christian formation for two millennia. But Sarah had been so thoroughly trained in the Protestant fear of “works” that anything requiring effort or intentionality felt dangerous. As if any sort of works was opposed to being a Christian.Which is sort of preposterous when you think about it. But this is what happens when we create a false war between James and Paul, between faith and works. This past week, reading James 2 for the lectionary, I was struck again by how we’ve misunderstood this relationship. “Saved by faith alone” has been turned into theological rallying point that actually prevents the very transformation it’s supposed to protect. The False War Between James and Paul Some folks love to pit James and Paul against each other. James says, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Paul says we’re saved “by grace through faith, not by works” (Ephesians 2:8-9). And then everyone picks sides…and let the gladiators begin!But this misreading misses what both apostles are actually doing.Paul had to work constantly to correct the idea that works (or misreadings of the Law) are what grant salvation. Paul’s emphasis is on the faithfulness of Christ, which provides salvation to all in order for us to accomplish good works. And that’s obviously the case—Paul cares about good works or else he wouldn’t bother writing his angry letters otherwise! James seems to be correcting probably a misreading of Paul or Paul’s proteges that says, “Well, I have faith and that’s all I need.” No, James argues, the way that you know faith is working is by the production of good works. Otherwise, something has gone terribly wrong.Look at James 2:22: “You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected.” This is in perfect harmony with Paul’s writing in Ephesians 2:8, 10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith…created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.” They’re not contradicting each other. They’re addressing different errors and working in harmony.The Translation ProblemWhat’s infuriating is that our English Bible translations have been shaped by Protestant anxiety about works in ways that actually distort what Scripture says.New Testament scholar Scot McKnight has documented how the NIV systematically avoids translating the Greek word ergon as “works” when it’s something positive Christians should do.When ergon means seems to imply legalism, the NIV uses “works.” But when it’s something Christians are supposed to do, the translators choose “deeds” or “actions” or some other substitute. Look at James 2 (the “faith without ‘works’ is dead’ chapter). The NIV translates ergon as “deeds” six times in this chapter alone. “Show me your faith without deeds.” “Faith without deeds is dead.” But the Greek word is the same one Paul uses in Ephesians 2:9—ergon. Works. This is theological bias shaping how we read Scripture, creating a nervousness around the very concept of works that I believe both James and Paul would find baffling. The Deadly Downstream Effects. This fear of works has created some truly awful theology. You can watch it play out in churches that can obsess over legalistic issues like sexual purity and swearing while completely ignoring racism, nationalism, and economic injustice. There’s this complicated relationship in Christianity where you can have both very legalistic systems that demand conformity to group norms—what you wear, whether you’re allowed to swear, your sex life—and yet that same legalism is completely unwilling to deal with deeper issues like racism and sexism. It has been claimed that progressive Christians don’t care at all about sin. But that’s not true; we care deeply about sin. For instance, we think the President’s felonies and authoritarianism and racism are deeply odious. We think the nation’s sins of colonialism, sexism, and environmental injustice are terrible. But we care about sin defined as things that cause harm rather than just adherence to group norms. Conservative churches can be guilty of using “faith alone” as a way to avoid justice work entirely. “It’s not up to us to make the world better,” they’ll say. “Only God can do that at the second coming.” It’s an abdication from the responsibility that God has given us to care about the world, to care about the poor and the marginalized.There was a school shooting last week. The inevitable conservative response is “thoughts and prayers.” But thoughts and prayers that aren’t matched with action are dead, as James would say. If somebody comes up to you hungry and you say, “Be blessed, have food,” and you don’t do anything for them, that faith is dead.We can’t just pray for justice. We have to work for justice. As the proverb goes: when you pray, move your feet. Breaking the False Binary. This whole mess is a false binary has been erected that neither James nor Paul would recognize. Faith and works must work together.The anxiety is always going to be new forms of legalism. The left gets accused of purity tests, of kicking people out for doing the wrong thing. And I’ll admit that’s a real concern. In a hundred years, the progressive movement in Christianity will likely swing the other direction and become just as legalistic. We always have to be awake to not just recreating the systems we escaped from.At its worst, a works orientation can lead right back to the indulgences that Luther had to reform in the first place. You can’t abandon the faith piece of this. You have to have a foundation of the inherent dignity of all humans in the Imago Dei, and God’s posture toward humanity of love and non-condemnation. In my own life, I don’t serve and honor my wife Emily or my children because I’m trying to earn their love or afraid that will smite me and send me to hell if I act poorly. I do it because we’re all in a loving relationship with each other and I care for them, just as they care for me. There’s mutuality there.If I’m serving God out of fear that they’ll stop loving me, then my mindset is wrong.I serve God and my community and my neighborhood and society because I deeply care for them. Our faith—our religion—is not one merely of mental assent. It’s not just signing the dotted line on a set of propositional beliefs. It’s meant to be embodied and practice-oriented. It’s meant to imitate the way of Jesus and the saints who came before us. This is why I’m much more likely to assign the Civil Rights Movement the title “A Great Awakening” than any other so-called revival that doesn’t actually lead to liberation and freedom for people. Working Alongside God. What James and Paul both understand is that we are called to work alongside God—synergeo with God. Faith is giving our attention and focus and hope to the reality that God is working in the world, that God will accomplish their purposes, that God intends goodwill for all people at all times. And that creates in us the need to work alongside God as well.The call here is for holistic formation. We should care for ourselves individually, as souls and bodies. We should care for our immediate communities—our families, our churches. And we should care about the neighborhoods and societies we’re part of. This is how we work out our faith with fear and trembling.Using “faith alone” as a way to avoid justice work is abominable. It’s a dramatic misunderstanding of Jesus’ ministry. Look at what Jesus did—he healed and cast out demons, which can be seen as a way of talking about systems of oppression. If we try to have a faith-alone sort of faith that ignores the work of Jesus, and if we make Paul into a caricature who was only about faith while James was only about works, then we’re misunderstanding entirely what both of them were trying to do. James and Paul aren’t fighting. They’re singing harmony. Faith without works is dead. And works without faith misses the point entirely. But when faith and works dance together—when we root our activism in grace and let our theology get its hands dirty—that’s when we join the real Great Awakening. So when you pray, move your feet.

Offering Our Presence

Friday, September 5, 2025

Poet and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs reflects on what we can learn about a practice of presence through the study of dolphins for whom proclaiming presence is a life-saving operation:   

What could it mean to be present with each other across time and space and difference? Presence is interpersonal and interspecies and intergalactic, in some ways eternal. How can we rethink our presence on the planet and its precarity by paying attention to how the Indus dolphins have brought themselves back from the brink of extinction?… Marine mammal mentorship offers us the chance for presence as celebration, as survival and its excess, as more than we even know how to love about ourselves and each other…. 

The Indus and Ganges river dolphins live in sound. They make sound constantly, echolocating day and night. In a quickly moving environment they ask where, again where, again where. The poem of the Indus river dolphin is the ongoing sound of here, a sonic consciousness of what surrounds them, a form of reflective presence. Here. 

The home of the Indus river dolphin has gone through many manmade changes. First of all, pollution. First of all, illegal poverty-induced fishing methods. First of all, before that, a legend about a sea monster, and more recently, in the 1980s, a takeover of the river banks of Sindh by the Daku Raj, a group of organized gangs who effectively scared all the fisherfolk away. Through all of it, the Indus river dolphin, who clicks all day and night, has been saying, here. Here. Here. Here. In a language I want to learn. According to the scientists who have been counting the endangered Indus river dolphin population since 1972, their population has steadily increased every year. From 132 when they first started counting to 1,419 this year. Here. Here. Here.  

Gumbs invites us to consider how we might offer our presence:  

In the language I was raised in, “here” means “this place where we are,” and it also means “here” as in “I give this to you.” Could I learn from the Indus River dolphin a language of continuous presence and offering? A language that brings a species back from the brink, a life-giving language? Could I learn that? Could we learn that? We who click a different way, on linked computers day and night?  

What I want to say to you requires a more nuanced field of receptive language than I have ever spoken. It requires me to reshape my forehead, my lungs. It requires me to redistribute my dependence on visual information. So, I will close my eyes and say it: Here. Here I am. Here I am with you. Here is all of me. And here we are. Here. Inside this blinding presence. Here. A constant call in a moving world. Here. All of it. Here. Here. Humbly listening towards home. And here. And here. Right here. My poem for you. My offered presence. This turbid life. Yes. Here you go.  

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5 On Friday John Chaffee

1.

“The point is to unify the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground that transcends and encompasses both.”

– Ken Wilber, American Philosopher

The New Testament word “repent” (metanoia in Greek) can be more accurately (and playfully) translated as “reconsider” or “elevate the way you think.”

There is one mode of thinking about the world that loves to divide, separate, name, and categorize things into specific, little containers.  This is likely a helpful task to a point, but after that, it can become a way of dissecting the world and yet never putting it back together.

Perhaps this is the grand work of the reconciliation of all things mentioned in Colossians 1…

The whole cosmos is aching to be put back together again, and it begins with us “repenting” from one way of thinking, and reconsidering how a larger Mystery is holding all things together.

2.

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”

– Abraham Maslow, American Psychologist

We humans don’t know what we don’t know.

It is part and parcel of what it means to be limited beings with a finite perception of an infinite universe.

We probably have no idea what needs to change about us if we do not have people in our lives who can reflect to us aspects of our lives that we cannot see in ourselves.

For some reason, this leads me to imagine how a boss might fire someone because they “reflect” back to the boss something about the boss that the boss does not know is a problem.  The same could be said about a parent who is frustrated with a child who points something out, or a family member who says out loud what everyone else has been noticing.

The primary task is to remain open to learning more about ourselves at all times.

Why?

Because we cannot change what we do not know about ourselves.

3.

“Some of us believe that God is almighty, and can do everything; and that he is all wise, and may do everything; but that he is all love, and will do everything— there we draw back.”

– Julian of Norwich, English Anchoress

So, if God is all-powerful, why wouldn’t Infinite Love at some point do all that is necessary to redeem, reconcile, renew, restore, reclaim, repair, and rescue the whole of everything?

4.

“The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God.”

– St. John Chrysostom, 4th Century Bishop

It seems to me that the first thousand years of Church history had a better sense of the intimate presence of God in nature.  It was more in response to the rise of the Enlightenment that we began to separate God from nature.

It should come as no surprise to us that if our theology leads us to view nature as distant from God, we would start to exploit the natural world for gain, fail to protect and preserve it, and instead avoid it rather than treasure it.

No wonder many of us feel closer to God after spending intentional time in the natural world, away from traffic and cities.

5.

“Many people feel unaware of any guidance, unable to discern or understand the signals of God; not because the signals are not given, but because the mind is too troubled, clouded, and hurried to receive them.”

– Evelyn Underhill, Anglican Mystic

Almost entirely across the board, every one of the Christian mystics gives commentary on the need to turn off the brain with all of its cares and chatter.  It is difficult to hear the voice of God or even to notice the presence of the Great I Am if we have earthquakes, tornadoes, and firestorms within.

Too often, I sit down to pray and talk right away.

I have noticed a change over the past few years that when I begin a time of prayer, there is an unspecified amount of silence.  It helps the mind-chatter to tire itself out and dissipate.  At that point, I can feel my breath slow down and my heart rate relax.

It is only then that I finally feel myself able to receive something.

The world already has enough “sound and fury” (as Shakespeare might say), it is so odd that we think our prayers should have the same approach.

Love Knows What We Can Do

Thursday, September 4, 2025

Love knows what we can do. Let’s begin. Perhaps God is only waiting for our kind intention.
—Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence 

Brother Lawrence engaged in an ongoing correspondence with a nun who lived in a nearby Paris convent. In this letter, he encourages her in her practice: 

You are telling me nothing new in your letter. You’re not the only one who has distracting thoughts. The mind is extremely likely to wander, but the will is the mistress of all our powers, and must draw the mind back and carry it to God as to its final end.  

When the mind has not been taught early on how to return, to be led back to itself, it can develop some unhealthy habits of becoming distracted and scattered. These are difficult to overcome. These tendencies ordinarily drag us off to earthly things, in spite of ourselves.  

I think that a solution for this is to admit our stumbles and humble ourselves before God. During set times of silent prayer, I advise you not to use many words. Long discourses often create distractions…. Do your best to keep your mind in God’s presence. If it wanders or pulls away sometimes, don’t be discouraged. Distress tends to distract the mind rather than to focus it. We must use the will gently to bring it back. If you persevere in this way, God will have mercy on you.  

An easy way of bringing your mind back during the set time of prayer and holding it there more at rest, is not to let it wander much during the day. Hold it attentively in God’s presence. As you get used to thinking of God from time to time, it will become easy to remain calm during times of prayer, or at least to bring the mind back when it wanders.  

In his letters to a laywoman, Brother Lawrence shares: 

God does not ask much of us, merely a brief thought of them from time to time, a little love, sometimes asking for grace, sometimes offering them your sufferings, other times thanking them for the blessings they have given, and are giving you. In the middle of your tasks you can comfort yourself with Love as often as you can, in all these ways. During your meals and conversations, lift up your heart to God sometimes. The slightest little awareness will always be very pleasant. We don’t need to shout out to do this. God is closer to us than we may think…. 

Remember, I beg you, what I recommended. Think of God often, night and day, in all your activities, even when you relax. God is always near you and with you. Don’t leave them alone. You would think it rude to leave a friend alone who came to visit you. Then why abandon God and leave them alone? Don’t forget Love. Think of God often and love them without stopping.  

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: September 5th, 2025

Jesus Calling: September 5th

I am your best Friend, as well as your King. Walk hand in hand with Me through your life. Together we will face whatever each day brings: pleasures, hardships, adventures, disappointments. Nothing is wasted when it is shared with Me. I can bring beauty out of the ashes of lost dreams. I can glean Joy out of sorrow, Peace out of adversity. Only a Friend who is also the King of kings could accomplish this divine alchemy. There is no other like Me!
     The friendship I offer you is practical and down-to-earth, yet it is saturated with heavenly Glory. Living in My Presence means living in two realms simultaneously: the visible world and unseen, eternal reality. I have equipped you to stay conscious of Me while walking along dusty, earthbound paths.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

John 15:13-15 (NLT)
13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

Additional insight regarding John 15:13: We are to love each other as Jesus loved us, and he loved us enough to give his life for us. We may not have to die for someone, but there are other ways to practice spiritual love: listening helping, encouraging, and giving. Think of someone in particular who needs this kind of love today. Give all the love you can, and then try to give a little more.

Additional insight regarding John 15:15: Because Jesus Christ is Lord and Master, he should call us servants; instead, he calls us friends. How comforting and reassuring to be chosen as Christ’s friends! Because he is Lord and Master, we owe him our unqualified obedience, but most of all, Jesus asks us to obey him because we love him.

Isaiah 61:3 (NLT)
3 To all who mourn in Israel,
    he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
    festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
    that the Lord has planted for his own glory.

2nd Corinthians 6:10 (NLT)
10 Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.

In this Daily Meditations interview, Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo introduces the teaching “present moment, wonderful moment” from her tradition. The simple practice of being fully present can help alleviate suffering.  

A Jewish rabbi says in the Talmud that you have to bless both the good and the bad that comes to you. I could speak of it in terms of two dimensions. There’s a historical dimension in Buddhism where things are born, things die. Things come, things go. Things are, things are not. But there’s also an ultimate dimension in Buddhism which is just as real though it’s less tangible—where things are never born and never die; there’s no coming, no going, no here, no there…. The ultimate dimension is beyond the limitations of the historical dimension, so all the things that happen in our lives that we have joy over or we grieve over, those don’t define us in the ultimate dimension.  

That’s one way to understand this teaching of “present moment, wonderful moment.” Life is unfolding in ways we can’t always understand when we’re right in the thick of it…. Some things are going to happen that cause suffering. Some things are going to bring us joy. Some things will happen in our lives that we want. Some things will happen that we don’t want.  

There’s tremendous freedom that can come from learning to turn towards all of it with an open heart, rather than pushing away … and fighting what we don’t think should happen…. There’s a certain amount of pain that we’re all going to have in our lives; that’s unavoidable. But whether or not we suffer on top of that pain is up to us. This teaching “present moment, wonderful moment” helps us to say that if we can dwell in the present moment and just be with this now, not project into the future … then we can bear it…. If we can stay with the present moment, … as hard as that may be, and take care of this present moment, then the next moment is a continuation of this moment, so we can also take care of that moment.  

Lingo shares a conversation she had with a woman who was grieving the loss of her husband.  

She was really struggling with this “present moment, wonderful moment,” teaching and I said, “It can be present moment, opening to the moment. It can be present moment, allowing the moment. It can be present moment, feeling the moment.”… If it’s not appropriate for you to go towards wonderful, it can be just “present moment and it’s the only moment.” That’s why it’s wonderful. It’s the only moment we have. We aren’t guaranteed any future moment, so as hard as it may be or as unwanted as it may be, it’s like asking, “How do we bless this too?” because this is part of the life we’ve been given and if we’re going to live it, we have to decide to live it. 

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SEP 3, 2025
Persecution or Privilege?

Skye Jethani With God Daily.

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Yesterday, we looked at what Jesus meant when he told his disciples, “the world hates you” (John 15:19). We saw that in John’s gospel when Jesus speaks about “the world” he’s not referring to everything and everyone outside the community of his followers, but to those forces opposed to God and his kingdom. Therefore, we must be careful not to dismiss the critique of the church that comes from our culture or from a non-Christian source. In some cases, they may be instruments of God’s correction and grace to be welcomed rather than enemies to be shunned. However, a proper reading of Jesus’ warning in John 15 also depends on how we understand persecution. As he said, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).

When Jesus spoke about persecution, he made it clear that not all suffering his followers experience is persecution. For example, in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted . . .” and he went on to bless those who are persecuted, “on my account” (Matthew 5:110-11). It is when we suffer for doing what is right or for being identified with Jesus that we are blessed. But there are plenty of Christians who may claim persecution who are actually suffering due to their own foolish or unrighteous behavior. Some suffer for righteousness. But frankly, some Christians suffer because they are insufferable.

“Persecution,” as John Stott deftly defined it, “is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems.” The value system presented by Jesus is radically incongruent with the one presented by much of the world. Therefore, anyone who follows Jesus’ way should expect to be misunderstood, maligned, or mistreated. In fact, persecution is often seen as a sign of genuine faith in Christ. This is why Martin Luther listed suffering as an identifying mark of the true church, and any church that never suffers must be so at home in the world that it cannot possibly be faithfully representing Christ and his kingdom.

A desire to be seen as a “genuine” Christian, however, may cause us to claim persecution where none exists. This temptation is compounded by the rapidly changing cultural realities of our age. As the United States has become more diverse, with many more religious traditions, and an increasing number of people with no religious affiliation at all, the privileged position that the Christian faith and its values once enjoyed in our culture is diminishing. For example, in some places, Christian prayers and symbols have been removed from public spaces, or they now exist alongside religious symbols from other traditions. This loss of Christianity’s privileged status in our culture can often be misinterpreted as persecution.

This conflation of privilege and persecution was uncovered by a recent Barna study concerning the state of religious freedom in the United States. Evangelicals were the Americans most likely to say “Religious freedom in the U.S. has grown worse in the past 10 years” (77%). And yet, evangelicals were also the most likely to say that their religious values “should be given preference in the U.S.” (76%). Preferential treatment of one religion over another is precisely what religious freedom was established to prevent. How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory findings? There are two possibilities. Many American evangelicals may not fully understand what religious freedom means. Or, as David Kinnaman, president of Barna, asks, “Is it possible that evangelicals are interpreting a loss of religious privilege as loss of religious freedom?” I suspect both may be true.

To be clear, religious persecution is a very present reality in our world. In fact, according to Open Doors International, more than 340 million Christians are experiencing high, very high, or severe persecution for their faith, and the number has risen considerably in recent years. The experience of our sisters and brothers around the world who are suffering for their devotion to Christ ought to make us reconsider our own situation. Before we cry “Persecution!” we should pause and ask whether we’re truly being targeted for being a Christian, or whether we’re simply being asked to make room for our neighbor who isn’t. When we claim our loss of privilege is actually persecution, we’re not only misapplying Jesus’ words in John 15. We’re also disparaging those who are genuinely suffering for his name both in the U.S. and around the world.

Work Gently

Everything is possible for those who believe, even more for those who hope, still more for those who love, and most of all for those who practice and persevere in these three powerful paths.
—Brother Lawrence, Practice of the Presence 

Brother Lawrence wrote down a short list of spiritual maxims or suggestions for the spiritual life that were published after his death. They included the reminder that “everything is possible” and to remain “humble and authentic.” CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher offers a modern translation of his instruction to “work gently”:   

The most sacred, most ordinary, and most necessary practice in the spiritual life is the presence of God. When we practice the presence, we enjoy and become familiar with God’s divine company, speaking humbly and looking to them [1] lovingly for support all the time, at every moment, without methods or limits, especially during times of temptation, pain, loneliness, exhaustion, and even disbelief and stumbling….  

We do all actions deliberately and thoughtfully, without being rash or rushed (which are signs of an untrained mind). We work gently and in love with God, asking them to accept our work. By our ongoing attention to God, we will break the cycle of harmfulness, and make all weapons fall. 

During our work and other activities, even during our reading and writing, no matter how spiritual, … we must stop for a brief moment, as often as we can, to love God deep in our heart, to savor them, even though this is brief and in secret. Since you are aware that God is present before you during your actions, that they are in the deep center of your soul, why not stop your activities and even your vocal prayers, at least from time to time, to love God, praise them, ask for their help, offer them your heart, and thank them?…  

Ultimately, we can offer God no greater evidence of our faithfulness than by frequently detaching and turning from all things created so we can enjoy their Creator for a single moment. I don’t mean to give the impression, though, that you should stop working or abandon your duties. That would be impossible. Wisdom, the mother of all our spiritual strengths, will be your guide. I am saying, however, that it is a common oversight among spiritually minded people not to turn from outside engagements from time to time to worship God within ourselves and enjoy in peace some small moments of their divine presence.  

This practice begins with a faith that God is truly present in all times and circumstances:   

All this reverence must be done by faith, believing God is really living in our hearts, and we must honor, love, and serve them in spirit and in truth…. Infinitely excellent and with sovereign power, they deserve all that we are, and everything in heaven and on earth, now and through eternity. All our thoughts, words, and actions belong rightly to God. Let’s put this into practice. 

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Learning from the Mystics: George MacDonald

Quote of the Week:   “The mind of many is not the mind of God.” Reflection  Although this is such a short statement from MacDonald, it is a striking one.  Did he say this as an observation or as a lament? Philippians 2:5 tells us to have the same mind as Christ, not the same mind as the authors who wrote the Bible… and yes, there is a difference. At no point during Jesus’ earthy ministry did he quote Joshua, Judges, or other violent passages of the Old Testament.  He did, however, often quote from Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, Isaiah, and other minor prophets.  Jesus seemed most concerned with quoting the Old Testament wherever it was redemptive, healing, etc. Not everything in the Bible is what we would call “the mind of God.”  Sometimes there are passages in the Bible that are more to be understood as cautionary tales than stories to be emulated. Being “biblical” by some people’s standards is NOT the same thing as being “Christ-like.” The Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ day were “biblical” but they were not reading their Bibles with “the mind of God” and therefore they missed what the whole arch of cosmic history was actually about, the restoration of all things in Christ. For George MacDonald, one might wonder if he was closer to the mind of God than others around him.  He was often reacting to the abusive and harsh Calvinism/Reformed theology around him that was telling people that they were chosen for hell and there was nothing that they could do about it, except repent and pray that they might be one of the “elect.”  (And even then, you were never really sure.) MacDonald was even famously said to not be a Christian by Tim Keller and John Piper for his views on atonement.  That being said, one has to wonder, have the writings of George MacDonald, and the influence he had on CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, and JRR Tolkien stood the test of time because they were showcasing a minority position, or because he possibly did have the mind of Christ? Is it possible to be so close to the Scriptures that one misses the overall scope of the mind of God?  Absolutely.  The Pharisees did it as well. All this goes to say, is that good theology is at the end of the day a tool.  Good theology is a tool for proclamation.  And what should be proclaimed?  “Good Advice” or “Good News”?  Good News.  And what is that Good News?  That in Christ, the first, middle, and last word spoken to and over all of us is Love.Prayer Heavenly Father, help us to let go of our certainty that we see the world exactly as you do.  Enable us the courage to set aside our assumptions and to learn from Christ alone, our truest and deepest, and most real “Scripture.”  Grant us the grace to put on the mind of Christ, and not the fanciful worldview of anyone else.  May it be so.  Amen.

Life Overview of George MacDonald:  When and Where: Born on December 10th, 1824.  Died on September 18th, 1905.  He spent most of his life in England and Scotland.  Why He is Important: The Cloud of Unknowing is considered a spiritual classic, that in some ways, worked against the logic and the rhetoric common in that day.  What is understood about God is deemed less important compared to what can be experienced with God.  Most Known For: His poetry, fantastical stories, and unspoken sermons on God as Father, God as Refiner, and the salvation of all people. Notable Works to Check Out:Unspoken Sermons Phantastes. Lillith

Father Richard Rohr describes prayer as a practice of being present before the mystery of God.   

Anyone familiar with my writing knows that I believe that immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union. Naked, undefended, and nondual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence. I approach the theme of contemplation in a hundred ways, because I know most of us have one hundred levels of resistance, denial, or avoidance. For some reason in our complicated world, it is very hard to teach simple things. Any mystery, by definition, is pregnant with many levels of unfolding and realization. That is especially true of the “tree of life” that is contemplative awareness. 

In my novitiate I was exposed to an early method of silent Franciscan contemplation called pensar sin pensar or no pensar nada as described by the Spanish friar Francisco de Osuna. I didn’t totally understand what I was supposed to be doing in that silence of “thinking without thinking” and probably fell asleep on more than one occasion. Yet it had the effect of moving me away from the verbal, social, and petitionary prayers I had been taught almost exclusively up to that time. 

Prayer is indeed the way to make contact with God/Ultimate Reality, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or about events. It’s primarily about changing our mind so that things like infinity, mystery, and forgiveness can resound within us. A small mind cannot see great things because the two are on two different frequencies or channels, as it were. The Big Mind can know big things, but we must change channels. Like will know like. [1] 

Of all the things I have learned and taught over the years, I can think of nothing that could be more helpful than living in the now. It’s truly time-tested wisdom. So many leaders in so many traditions have taught the same thing: Hindu masters, Zen and Tibetan Buddhists, Sufi poets, Jewish rabbis, and Christian mystics, to name a few. In the Christian tradition, we have heard it from Augustine, the Cloud of Unknowing, and the Carmelite Brother Lawrence. Contemporary teachers like Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Eckhart Tolle have done much to help us understand the importance of living in the now. It’s a shame that this real and deep tradition of the present moment has been lost to so many. 

Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade called this type of prayer the “sacrament of the present moment.” In his book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, the key theme is: “If we have abandoned ourselves [to God], there is only one rule for us: the duty of the present moment.” [2] To live in the present is finally what we mean by presence itself! God is hidden in plain sight, yet religion seems determined to make it more complicated.

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Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection

CAC’s We Conspire introduces the life and teachings of Brother Lawrence (1611–1691), whose simple guidance and humble life inspired countless people to “practice the presence of God.” His wisdom reminds us that Divine connection is available in every moment if we learn to quiet our minds and surrender our hearts.  

In the mid-17th century, a man named Nicolas Herman joined the Carmelite monastery in Paris, France. Wounded from fighting in the European Thirty Years’ war, and suffering a sustained leg injury, he took the monastic name “Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.” He worked in the monastery kitchen and eventually became the head cook. Amid the chaos of food preparation and the clanging of pots and pans, Brother Lawrence began to practice a simple method of prayer that helped him return to an awareness of Divine presence. He called it the practice of the presence of God and described it as “the most sacred, the most robust, the easiest, and the most effective form of prayer.” [1] 

Brother Lawrence’s method of prayer is so simple that it might seem misleading. It is to cultivate and hand over one’s awareness to God in every moment, in whatever we are doing. Brother Lawrence recommends that newcomers to the prayer use a phrase to recollect their intention toward the Divine presence, such as “‘My God, I am all yours,’ or ‘God of love, I love you with all my heart,’ or ‘Love, create in me a new heart,’ or any other phrases love produces on the spot.” [2] Practice of the Divine presence sometimes simply means taking brief pauses “to love God deep in our heart” and “savor grace.” [3] It involves a surrendered and resting trust in God to which one returns at all times.    

Brother Lawrence might be a surprising teacher of enlightenment. He lived through war, plague, and poverty. He suffered anxiety, injury, various humiliations, and even called himself a “clumsy oaf.” His leg pain became so great that, after twenty years in the kitchen, his monastic superiors transferred him to work repairing sandals. Yet translator and CAC core faculty member Carmen Acevedo Butcher commends him to us: “His exceptional calm and responses to life’s hardships make this unassuming friar an accessible and humanizing mentor of the time-tested practice of the presence prayer.” [4] 

For Brother Lawrence, even suffering itself becomes fodder to practice the Divine presence. We know of Brother Lawrence’s kind and gentle witness through numerous spiritual maxims he wrote down, letters that he penned to others, and interviews he gave to a curious, eager-to-learn monk named Joseph of Beaufort. In one letter, written to a nun at a nearby convent undergoing health challenges, Brother Lawrence is convinced that the Divine love given to us through practicing the presence heals our wounds despite painful circumstances. Nearing death and unable to walk, Brother Lawrence nevertheless envisions God as a parent full of love, affirming when we are embraced by such a Divine friend and parent “all the bitterness is removed, and only the sweetness remains.” 

sufficiently suspicious 

how to not be disappointed in community. ( Nadia Bolz Weber)

I always try and remain sufficiently suspicious of two things:

1. Myself

2. Vision statements, mission statements, (even 5-year plans) when it comes to community. 

I know I will never win this argument – most organizations are all-in with their statements – but just hear me out.

I know they feel good. But they always seem a bit like lofty nonsense. (sorry sorry sorry – I know we spend an ungodly number of hours trying to get these precious things right).

But one of my readers recently posted this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“He who is in love with his vision of community will destroy community. But he who loves the people around him will create community wherever he goes.”

Such an important truth. 

When we started House For All Sinners & Saints, it was during a time when a lot of church plants had a “what we believe” tab on their website. I remember hemming and hawing about whether or not to have one ourselves (I was quickly overruled when I suggested we just post the Nicene creed). Then someone said why don’t we just say “if you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do”, and that felt so much better. Nothing to aspire to and then criticize each other for falling short of. I mean, honestly, we can say anything we want about what we believe, or value – but what we do is what matters. The rest is just aspiration and ego. Or spin.

I’m generally more interested in the descriptive than the prescriptive.

At one point during my 11 years as their pastor, I realized that the congregation just seemed to be really good at loving each other. It was wild. But it wasn’t because LOVE was the focus. It was because GRACE was the focus. Some things only happen as a result of focusing on other things, and yet as Americans we want to approach everything head on. I know for a fact that, over the years HFASS was around, if new folks were welcomed with “the thing we want you to know about this community is that we love each other well!” we would have failed to become a community that ended up being pretty good at loving each other, but we for sure would have succeeded at becoming a community that was endlessly disappointed in ourselves and others for everything said or done that could be deemed “not very loving”. I know the following claim does not fill anyone with sparkly inspiration, but I think it is true: aspiration so often becomes the raw material of accusation.

Instead, when we would have a Welcome to HFASS Brunch for newcomers, folks were invited to say what drew them to the church – or for the old timers, what has kept them there. “I love the inclusivity, or the sense of community or the singing, or the fact that I don’t have to believe certain things in order to belong”, etc… And that’s when I would say “I love all those things too! But what I need you to hear me say is this: this community will disappoint you. We will fail to live up to your expectations of I will say something stupid that hurts your feelings. We invite you to stay after that happens, because if you leave you will miss the way that grace flows in to fill the cracks left behind by our failures.”

I’ve seen it. It’s real. I’ve seen grace fly in with healing in her wings and fill in the cracks – and I’ve seen how it softens me and leaves me with a cleaner heart than just getting it all right from the beginning (because I aspired to do so) – ever has.

Some of the best things in this terrible/beautiful life happen without us trying, and in fact could never happen as a result of us trying. That’s grace and it is absolutely everywhere.

Maybe this is why my favorite thing I ever heard in a yoga class was, “try less hard”.

Here’s to trying less hard, friends. 

In it with you,

Nadia

Can Christians Be Makers of Peace?

Friday, August 29, 2025

I can think of nothing more prophetic than to preach the gospel of Jesus. Nothing more radical, more countercultural, than to nurture and promote the values of the Spirit—love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness as well as self-control—in little ways and great. —Cyprian Consiglio, Epiphanies 

Camaldolese monk and songwriter Cyprian Consiglio shares a memory of visiting Israel and Palestine:  

One of the strongest images I have from my brief but intense pilgrimage to the Holy Land is of Rabbi Eli, who was probably the closest thing to one of the Hebrew prophets I have ever met. This was an Israeli who had been arrested several times for standing in solidarity with Palestinians, protesting the human rights violations against them…. We were standing at a high spot in East Jerusalem looking out over the disputed territories, and Rabbi Eli was pointing out the various iterations of the security wall making its serpentine way through Palestinian land. He was showing us a map of a new settlement about to begin construction in defiance of the UN and the US, which would effectively cut Palestine in half, thus preventing any possibility of Palestinians ever having a contiguous piece of land to call their state and effectively destroying the so-called two-state solution. Rabbi Eli said, “And so we are asking ourselves: What time is it? Is it a quarter to midnight? Is it five minutes to midnight? With this development I think it’s one minute to midnight. It’s almost too late.” 

That moment seared so deeply in my mind that on the way home on the plane I wrote a whole song about it called “One Minute to Midnight,” the closest thing to a ’60s-style protest song I had ever written. One of the verses included lines that were my sadly ironic version of the famous verses from the prophet Isaiah: “We’ve beaten our ploughshares back into swords / and made spears of our pruning hooks.” And I added, “We’ve turned revelation to a battle of words / and made weapons of our holy books.”  

Consiglio finds himself changed by Rabbi Eli’s solidarity with the Palestinian people:  

My friends told me that when I came back from that trip to the Holy Land my preaching changed. It was more fiery, more “prophetic,” I suppose. I was fired up by the frustration and energized by the agitation that I felt witnessing up close a situation that was patently unsustainable and obviously unjust, but with no visible solution and no one with enough real moral authority to “fix” everything. And I think I felt like never before the challenge of being a follower of Jesus, and I glimpsed what a privileged position we Christians have there in the Holy Land as well as in the world at large, to stand in the breach between our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters and dare to preach love of our enemies, dare to believe that peace if possible, dare to take Jesus at his word.  

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“Love is my true identity.  Selflessness is my true self.  Love is my true character.  Love is my name.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

If you and I are made by God and of God (as Julian of Norwich teaches us), and if God is Love, then it would make sense that, on a deep spiritual and even material sense, we are Love as well.

2.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”

– Flannery O’Connor, American Author

This feels true to me.

It is not only that the truth shall set us free, but it will make us odd to a whole world that prefers to live in illusions, half-truths, and fabrications.  The world has sanctioned stories that it chooses to tell, it has pre-approved narratives that it wants us to live within because they keep us from challenging the status quo and not rocking the boat “too much” for everyone else.

However, the truth shall make us odd.

To live truthfully, listening to the sound of the genuine around us, will invariably make us antagonists to falsehood.

Perhaps this is why many of us feel uneasy or even lonely when we consider the scope of Christianity in the West today.  What passes for “truth” is often merely rhetoric or propaganda tailored to a particular group of people.

However, it will be okay.

Truth always eventually roars like a lion, falsehood eventually crumbles, and the odd ones will be shown as those who have been made free.

3.

“For we no longer take up “sword against nation,” nor do we “learn war any more,” having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader.”

– Origen of Alexandria, 2nd Century Early Church Father

The way of violence has nothing to do with the way of Jesus of Nazareth.

Who would Jesus shoot, bomb, starve, cage, or execute?

No one.

After all, the Beatitude says, “Blessed are the peacemakers…” not “Blessed are the warmakers.”

4.

“If every man took only what was sufficient for his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor.”

– Basil of Caesarea, 4th Century Cappadocian Theologian

44% of the world’s population (that’s roughly 3.5 billion people) live on less than $6.85 per day.

And yet, I live in a country where we spend that much per day on coffee on the way to work.

It is interesting to me that what marks so much of Christianity in America is centered around topics of the culture wars, and yet the early church had much more of an emphasis on the poor.

In fact, the topic of the poor is mentioned more than 2,000 times across both the Old and New Testaments.

Regardless, the actual ethics of the Bible are much more socially aware than many might want to acknowledge.

5.

“Whoever has ears, let him hear.”

– Jesus of Nazareth in Matthew 11:15

There is a strange paradox that even Jesus himself encountered people who were not ready to hear the teachings he gave them.  He who is the Christ could not communicate in a way that more people could understand him.  It is perplexing.

This means we should not be too surprised if the teachings of Christianity are not heard or understood by more people today.  We are, by no means, as good a teacher of the faith as Jesus was.

And, there are plenty of lessons that Christ is still trying to teach each of us individually that fly completely over our heads.

Christ, have mercy.  We don’t know what we are doing, and we are a stubborn people who think we know better than we do, failing to have the humility to keep learning throughout our lives.

May we each stay open to the new lessons and insights that Spirit is trying to teach us, and be willing to hear from new teachers who can phrase things in a way that they can finally sink in.

Brian McLaren recalls how he felt led to reach out to local mosques in the days after the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks: 

While praying, I felt a voice speaking, as it were, in my chest: Your Muslim neighbors are in danger of reprisal. You must try to protect them. The next morning, I wrote and made copies of a letter extending, belatedly, friendship toward Muslim communities in my area, and offering solidarity and help if simmering anti-Muslim sentiments should be translated into action. I drove to the three mosques nearby—I had never visited them before—and tried to deliver my letter in person. The first two were locked tight—no doubt for fear of reprisals…. 

When I arrived at the third … I clumsily introduced myself as the pastor from down the street…. I then handed [the imam] my letter, which he opened and read as I stood there awkwardly…. Suddenly, he threw his arms around me—a perfect stranger…. I still remember the feeling of his head pressed against my chest, squeezing me as if I were his long-lost brother.  

“It means so much to me that you have come,” he said. “Please, please, please come inside.”… My host welcomed me not with hostility or even suspicion, but with the open heart of a friend. And so that day a friendship began between an Evangelical pastor named Brian and a Muslim imam we’ll call Ahmad. 

A few days later, the youth group from our church made a colorful banner expressing their desire for there to be friendship between the youth of the mosque and the youth of our church…. The mosque began hosting community dinners to which our people were invited along with people from other faith communities in the area…. 

The friendship between our congregations grew through a series of interfaith dialogues … and Ahmad and I began meeting for lunch every month or so…. If Ahmad wanted to talk about something or arrange for our next lunch meeting, he knew one place one day each week where I could be found—Sunday mornings at church…. 

Some people were, I imagine, a little shocked at first to see a Muslim cleric walking through the church lobby as people chatted over coffee and bagels. But because our congregations had developed a friendship, he was soon recognized and welcomed…. There was something wonderfully right about Ahmad feeling so at home that he could come find me before or between services on a Sunday…. 

Imagine what might happen around the world if more and more Christians rediscover that central to Christian life and mission is what we could call subversive or transgressive friendship—friendship that crosses boundaries of otherness and dares to offer and receive hospitality…. Imagine the good that could happen—and the evil that could be prevented from happening—if more Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and others cross the roads and other barriers that have separated them, and discover one another as friends.  

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From Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. (Brad Jersak)

Matthew 7

^{16 “}You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? ¹⁷ In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

In context, Jesus warns his immediate audience about false prophets. He coined the phrase “wolves in sheep’s clothing” in the previous verse. Then in the paragraph above, he lays out a simple rubric for who passes or fails the test of credibility: “You will know them by their fruits.”

I’m not interested in pointing fingers at false prophets today. I know all too well Jesus’ warning in this same sermon how we’re judged by the measure with which we judge. This passage does, however, make an important point about the criteria by which we can distinguish healthy teaching from the unhealthy content that should be tossed into the fire. It’s all about the fruit.

Biblical & Theological Debate 

Religious movements spend an awesome about of time, energy, and ink trying to sort truth from error in biblical and theological debate. It’s an industry of which I’ve spent much of my life, whether behind pulpits, in classrooms, on social media, or the publishing world. There’s probably something important happening in those conversations (IF they every get beyond duelling monologues, weaponizing sacred texts, or flexing our factions). 

But in this text, Jesus cuts to the chase: just watch the fruit. If the fruit of our teaching, preaching, writing, or theology nurtures or heals or restores, perhaps we’re on the right track. When you can recognize and identify a pattern of damage, I’m not convinced further biblical or theological debate is necessary. 

When God is an Abuser

One of our students at St. Stephen’s University saw this clearly. Tabitha Sheeder is an experienced domestic violence advocate with experience in recognizing the signs of abuse in her clients, including the violence of power over and control by abusive partners. Her trauma-informed ministry helps those who’ve suffered to move forward.

As Tabitha researched her M.A. thesis, she became aware of patterns of religious trauma that looked eerily familiar, a pattern of indoctrination in which believers in a particular construct of God showed the same signs she had seen in her clients. The common factor was the notion of divine retribution. Out of those studies, she gathered her findings into capstone thesis titled “When God Is an Abuser: Dismantling the Abusive Gospel of Original Sin, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, and Eternal Conscious Torment.”

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The abstract of her essay, which I think needs to published as a book, includes this description:

Rooted in power and control, this retribution-laden theology bears similar markers to the tactics used by domestic violence perpetrators. This thesis will argue that this “gospel” proves to be abusive, and the God behind it is an abuser. While others have argued against these dogmas using biblical, theological, and philosophical grounds, I will demonstrate, using the tools of a domestic violence advocate, that their most potent refutation is their inability to pass the litmus test laid out by Jesus in Matthew 7:15-20: “Good trees cannot bear bad fruit.” 

The Moral Community

From there, Tabitha completed her project by describing a healthy alternative—a “moral community” that conveys a liberating counter-narrative and bears the good fruit and restored people we’d associate with a healthy gospel. 

Anyway, Tabitha’s point is simple and poignant. Jesus’ model for testing truth from error was not about who could win in a biblical or theological debate. That’s often just a test of one’s rhetorical skills. Watch the fruit. Fear or freedom? Hatred or kindness? Exclusion or hospitality? Withering or flourishing? I guess we’d need to examine what we imagine good fruit looks like, but I found Tabitha’s thesis and Jesus’ point as profound as it is simple.

I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged to call him my friend.  
—Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Nomination 

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) shared a friendship based on solidarity with the suffering of one another’s communities.   

A. J. Muste, working on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, arranged a meeting between Nhat Hanh and King in Chicago on May 31, 1966. They conferred privately for some time, discussing the latest crises in Vietnam, and then held a joint press conference…. The main artifacts of the 1966 meeting are photographs of Nhat Hanh and King at the press conference…. If the photographs can be considered to have iconic quality, it would be of friendship and solidarity. They are not two men working on isolated issues; their message is their commitment and their common cause.  

At some point that day, likely during the press conference, they released a joint statement. The statement read: 

… We also believe that the struggles for equality and freedom in Birmingham, Selma and Chicago, as in Hue, Danang and Saigon, are aimed not at the domination of one people by another. They are aimed at self-determination, peaceful social change, and a better life for all human beings. And we believe that only in a world of peace can the work of construction, of building good societies everywhere, go forward…. [1]  

This brief statement of mutuality and solidarity bursts with meaning…. Common cause is made between those in the Vietnamese peace movement and Black civil rights activists….  

To make this statement together, on their first meeting was an extraordinary step in their relationship. At the … meeting, with its private conversation followed by the press conference, we may say that Nhat Hanh and King began a friendship that is at the heart of the Beloved Community to which both men dedicated their lives. [2]  

After King’s death, Nhat Hanh was inspired by their friendship to continue exploring the connections between their two religions: 

The challenges to maintaining the Beloved Community are easy to discern in our everyday world. Wherever we encounter divisions that lift some up and oppress others, we recognize the betrayal of the Beloved Community. Among the most notorious divisions of our world are those between religions…. Nhat Hanh has helped lower the barriers between two of the great world religions, Buddhism and Christianity.  

The continuing and developing friendship between King and Nhat Hanh led Nhat Hanh to further explore the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity. As he wrote in Living Buddha, Living Christ,  

It was only later, through friendships with Christian men and women who truly embody the spirit of understanding and compassion of Jesus, that I have been able to touch the depths of Christianity. The moment I met Martin Luther King, Jr., I knew I was in the presence of a holy person. Not just his good work but his very being was a source of great inspiration for me. [3]  

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PARROTT.INK When Every Generation Thinks It’s the Last: Reading Revelation as Living Metaphor

A church member once handed me a copy of a DVD that proved that Obama was the Antichrist and insisted I watch it. I (not so) politely refused. “If I watched every video or read every article that someone sent me about the end times, I wouldn’t have time to do my real job.”If you’ve been in the Christian sphere at all, you’ll know that Obama was the Antichrist. Then Trump. The covid vaccine was clearly the mark of the beast. Every earthquake, every blood moon, every political upheaval gets filtered through the apocalyptic anxiety machine that American Christianity has become.Some segment of every generation for the past 2,000 years has thought they were living in the last days. Every single one. And maybe—just maybe—they were all right?There are (very basically) two ways to read Revelation: Futurist and Preterist. I inherited a view of Revelation that turns John the Revelator into some kind of first-century Nostradamus, receiving visions of nuclear weapons and computer chips and whatever other modern technology we’re convinced matches his strange symbols. This futurist approach treats the book like a detailed prophetic timeline, complete with charts and diagrams showing exactly when the rapture will happen and who the Antichrist will be.But this means John wrote an entire book that would be completely meaningless to its original audience. Picture getting a letter from a friend that consists entirely of detailed descriptions of events that won’t happen for another 2,000 years, involving technologies and nations that don’t exist yet. You’d probably think your friend had lost their mind.The early Christians were being fed to lions, crucified upside down, and burned as human torches to light Nero’s garden parties. They needed hope for their situation, not a cryptic roadmap for some distant future they’d never see.This is where preterist interpretation comes in—the view that Revelation was primarily about events in John’s own time. In this reading, the beast with the number 666 represents Nero Caesar (whose name adds up to 666 in Hebrew numerology), Babylon is Rome, and the destruction described in the book refers to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.This does make more sense historically. John is writing to persecuted churches, using coded language that would slip past Roman censors while offering his audience real comfort about their immediate circumstances. The book becomes a powerful act of resistance literature, saying “Rome looks invincible, but God’s justice will prevail.” But if we stop there—if Revelation is only about the past—we’re left with a beautiful historical artifact that has nothing to say to us today. And that doesn’t match how the book has continued to speak to believers across centuries of different circumstances.What if both approaches are missing something crucial? What if John wasn’t trying to write either a literal prediction of the distant future orjust a coded message about his own time, but something far more sophisticated—a typological framework that would remain relevant across generations?This is the approach that makes the most sense to me, and I’m not alone in this. Typological interpretation recognizes that biblical authors often wrote about patterns that repeat throughout history. John uses the specific circumstances of Roman oppression to illuminate universal truths about empire, violence, and resistance that transcend any single historical moment.Think about it this way: dystopian literature works similarly. When Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower, she wasn’t predicting exactly what would happen in 2025. But damn if her vision of climate chaos, corporate feudalism, and religious authoritarianism doesn’t feel prophetic. When Margaret Atwood created Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, she wasn’t forecasting a specific future but revealing patterns of patriarchal control that exist in every era. Revelation functions like the Bible’s great dystopian novel. John uses vivid, archetypal imagery—the beast, the whore of Babylon, the new Jerusalem—to create a framework for understanding the cosmic struggle between empire and kingdom, violence and peace, oppression and liberation.This is why every generation has seen itself in Revelation’s pages. There is always a beast—some empire or system that demands ultimate allegiance and crushes those who resist. There is always a Babylon—some center of wealth and power built on the exploitation of the vulnerable. There are always martyrs crying out “how long, O Lord” for justice against violence.The Roman Empire that John wrote about followed patterns that Stalin’s Soviet Union would repeat, that corporate oligarchy repeats today, that every system of domination throughout history has repeated. The specific details change—lions in the Colosseum become gas chambers become drone strikes—but the underlying spiritual dynamics remain constant. This isn’t to say that all empires are equally evil or that we can’t make moral distinctions between different political systems. It’s to say that Revelation gives us a lens for recognizing and resisting the recurring patterns of dehumanization and violence that show up in every age.What I love about a typological reading is how it centers Revelation’s most radical claim: that the way to overcome empire isn’t through superior violence but through what Eugene Peterson called “reverse thunder”—the power of sacrificial love.The lamb who was slain conquers not by becoming a bigger, scarier beast but by revealing a completely different kind of power. The martyrs overcome not by taking up swords but by refusing to bow down to the lie that might makes right. The new Jerusalem descends not as a locked-down fortress but as a place of healing, where the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations” and her gates are never shut. This vision remains as subversive today as it was when John first wrote it. In a world still dominated by the logic of redemptive violence—where every problem is met with calls for bigger weapons, tougher penalties, stronger borders—Revelation insists that God’s power works differently.If we take Revelation seriously as ongoing metaphor, then the church is called to be that new Jerusalem here and now.We’re meant to embody the alternative to empire, to be the community where swords get beaten into plowshares and the healing of the nations actually happens.Most of the time, we fail spectacularly at this. American Christianity in particular has often functioned more like Babylon than new Jerusalem—blessing empire rather than challenging it, accumulating wealth and power rather than laying it down, building walls rather than offering healing.But the vision persists. In every generation, there are communities that catch glimpses of what the new Jerusalem could look like. I see it in churches that open their doors to immigrants, in congregations that choose reconciliation over retaliation, in believers who refuse to let fear drive their politics.This typological approach helps us live in what theologians call the “already and not yet”—the tension between God’s kingdom breaking into our world and the full realization of that kingdom still to come.The beast has been defeated in principle through Christ’s death and resurrection, but beastly systems still rampage through our world. The new Jerusalem is already present wherever communities embody God’s justice and mercy, but we still wait for the day when every tear will be wiped away.This means we can read Revelation with both hope and urgency. Hope, because the ultimate outcome isn’t in doubt—love wins, justice prevails, death itself gets thrown into the lake of fire. Urgency, because our generation faces its own beasts that demand our resistance, its own opportunities to be new Jerusalem for our neighbors.Revelation refuses to let us sit comfortably on the sidelines of history, waiting for God to fix everything from the outside. It calls us to embody the alternative here and now, to live as people who know how the story ends but understand that how we live in the middle matters immensely.The apocalypse isn’t just coming—it’s happening, generation after generation, wherever the kingdom of God breaks into the kingdoms of this world. The question isn’t whether we’ll recognize the signs in tomorrow’s headlines, but whether we’ll recognize the call to be new Jerusalem today.