In order to retain a commitment to Jesus’s new messianic community with its countercultural values, Christians must accept the fact that the faithful church will often – perhaps always – be a minority community in a broken world.
No one can do everything, but everyone can do something, and together we can change the world.
It is not because food, clothes and property are inherently evil that Christians today must lower their standard of living. It is because others are starving. Creation is good. But the one who gave us this gorgeous token of his affection has asked us to share it with our sisters and brothers.
It is a sinful abomination for one part of the world’s Christians to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters ache and suffer for lack of minimal health care, minimal education, and even – in some cases – enough food to escape starvation.
This helpful book on the role of the arts fills a significant gap in the growing literature on holistic faith-based programs.
What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, “Christian” minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!
In many parts of the Bible Belt, the divorce rate was discovered to be roughly 50 percent above the national average.
Persons sin by participating in evil systems when they understand, at least to some degree, that the system displeases God but fail to act responsibly to change things.
Does not a one-sided focus on the issues that happen to be favored by either the Left or the Right suggest that one’s political agenda is shaped more by secular ideology than careful biblical, theological reflection?
Christians must be ready to lose politically rather than engage in dishonesty or corruption.
Christians must be extremely vigilant against the ongoing temptations of idolatrous nationalism. Christians in the United States are especially prone to embrace this evil, but the temptation lurks in every nation.
Are national boundaries sacred? Are they ordained by God? do the citizens of a rich nation have the right to use their abundant resources just for themselves? Or to keep out immigrants from poor nations who seek greater economic opportunity?
Christians have too easily, and too often, fallen into the trap of supposing that the nonhuman creation has worth only as it serves human purposes. This, however, is not a biblical perspective.
Christians today should never claim that democracy is the Christian form of government, but we can and should claim that biblical principles fit better with democratic government than with existing alternatives. In addition, Christian virtues – honesty, tolerance, love for neighbor – strengthen democratic life. Therefore Christians should actively nurture democracy in their own countries and around the world.
Great economic inequality inevitably produces injustice in a fallen world; therefore Christians must oppose it.
So we work for better political and economic systems, knowing that sin precludes any earthly utopia now, but rejoicing in the assurance that the kingdom of shalom that the Messiah has already begun will one day prevail, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord.
As the church demonstrates new possibilities for community grounded in Jesus’s teaching, the church models a new reality that historically has profoundly shaped surrounding society.46 Perhaps it is not an overstatement to say that “only a continuing community dedicated to a deviant value system can change the world.
White evangelicals will be known as the people who defended the guy who defended the neo-Nazis.
Sadly, the lack humility and expansive presence of pride in the words and deeds of Donald Trump make him unqualified to be president of the United States of America. He should not be given four more years to hold the highest political office in our land. Christians who ignore this not only undermine the present and future good of the nation, but also their witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If, as Christians, we continue to enable a pathological liar to remain president, we are going to see greater damage inflicted on the cause of Christ and our God-given authority as Christians to speak out against immorality and injustice.