The kingdom of God is the hard, intimate, and sweaty work of simply getting along with people.
In contemporary American culture our slavery to the fear of death produces superficial consumerism, a fetish for managing appearances, inauthentic relationships, triumphalistic religion, and the eclipse of personal and societal empathy. These are the “works of the devil” in our lives, works produced by our slavery to the fear of death.
To follow Jesus, therefore, is to undergo a training that refuses to let death, even death at the hands of enemies, determine the shape of our living.88.
This is how worship is connected to our ability to love. When we give our ultimate allegiance to any of the principalities and powers, large or small, we find ourselves perennially at war with anyone who places these things at risk. Idolatry breeds perpetual vigilance and violence.
Satan might not be a personalized agent, but I do believe there are moral forces that transcend individuals, forces that have a real causal effect on moral decision-making.
Basically, a satan is more of a relationship than a person. Anything that is facing you in an antagonistic or adversarial way – working against you as an opponent or enemy – is standing before you as ha satan, as an adversary, as a satan. In the Bible, Satan and the Devil are interchangeable names for the personification of all that is adversarial to the kingdom and people of God, the personified Enemy of God.
Salvation, then, involves liberation from this fear. Salvation is emancipation for those who have been enslaved all of their lives by the fear of death. Salvation is a deliverance that sets us free from this power of the devil.
In sum, when Paul writes in Ephesians 6 that our battle is against the principalities and powers, he’s not just talking about demon possession, he’s also talking about our struggle with political powers.
The trouble with the Devil is that we see him in the faces of those we hate, justifying our violence toward them.
It’s the same problem we struggle with when it comes to marginalizing our privilege, power, or position as we focus on the voices and concerns of those who have been marginalized and oppressed. Even our social justice efforts become contaminated by our desire to be the center of attention as we fail to place weaker and less powerful voices at the center of our concerns.
Grace is the only thing in the world that is stronger than shame.
Here, then, are cases in which the fear that violent pedophiles might abduct children from public places – a vanishingly rare occurrence – was used to justify the punishment of women who were looking for work, women who were at work, or women who simply thought that she and her child might both benefit from the child being allowed some time to play on his own – in other words, women whose failure to devote every moment to their role as mothers was viewed as literally criminal.
Grace comes to us in the suffering of sin. There is a sermon in the damage we have done to ourselves and to others. Pain becomes the doorway to salvation, and our tears are a bridge for the awful grace of God.
The walls we have to tear down to make room for each other are rarely physical. The walls that separate us are mostly psychological. Feelings are what exclude people from our friendship and dinner table: ignoring versus noticing, suspicion versus trust, exclusion versus embrace.
Hospitality isn’t just about welcoming sinners; it’s also about welcoming people we think are idiots.
You know’ he said, ’it’s better to make a mess in your pants than a mess in your heart.
Before hospitality can make space in the world or around your table, it has to begin closer to home, with an inward, emotional revolution. Hospitality begins as an affectional capacity, cultivating the ability to make room in our hearts for others. Hospitality starts with the ‘will to embrace, ’ the spontaneous and unconditional welcome we extend toward others.