Perhaps because our culture and politics have gone so off course, with values so contrary to those of Jesus, more and more people intuitively recognize that His vision of God’s kingdom-a new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace- is the Good News they’ve been searching and waiting for.
Often, we ignore the fact that our spiritual condition and psychological state of mind are highly affected by what is happening to us physically. Sometimes depression is simply the result of exhaustion.
I don’t know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he’d choose the starving kids in Haiti.
I am saying that there is no salvation apart from Jesus; that’s my evangelical mindset. However, I am not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.
One of the most startling discoveries of my life was the realization that the Jesus that I love, the Jesus who died for me on Calvary, that Jesus, is waiting, mystically and wonderfully, in every person I meet. I find Jesus everywhere.
If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North America.
Your past is important but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.
I think it goes back to the fact that the evangelical community often does not have a biblical vision of God.
Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy and fulfilment he gives you right now?
Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving.
An evangelical is somebody who, first of all, has a very high view of Scripture, believes it’s an infallible message from God.
Clinton’s successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives.
I’m not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.
But isn’t it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?
It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable – it won’t be just like the past.
Sigmund Freud was the apostle of disbelief. He was the one who made psychoanalysis a part of our culture, and in so doing he kicked out a flying buttress that had been essential for holding up our cathedral of faith.
The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.
That’s what they do in Europe. You go down to the city hall and you become legally connected. You have a civil union there. Then, if you’re religious, you go down to the church, and the church blesses the union. That gets the problem solved.
There is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is given to both men and women in the New Testament. This is what makes the New Testament a New Testament rather than the Old Testament, in which women did not have such privileges.
Our call is to be God’s agents, to rescue not only the human race but the whole of creation.