I am grateful that you have openly confessed your thoughts and feelings toward other members of the church. God is stronger than likes and dislikes. He gives us love and he gives us community, where likes and dislikes …

Is it a sin for a Christian to own a $120,000 car? I'm pretty sure that it is. -NDSR

I have great sympathies for both sides in the election, and in the overall debate about American policy. I can understand why good Christians support Barack Obama, and I can understand why faithful Christians support Jo…

I refuse to allow my life to be boiled down to: efficiency, utility, solvency, complacency. I simply refuse. My form of protest: the bicycle. -Nicholas Stanton Roark

Let us call upon God and ask him that we may fight for his kingdom. The more deeply we enter this fight, the more deeply we will experience the cross of Christ, the resurrection, and Pentecost - and the nearer the kingd…

Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men; protect me from men of violence, who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war every day. They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent's; the poison of v…

Calvinism - specifically, the double decree Open theism - specifically, that God is not immutable Christian universalismJust war doctrineTotal pacifism Vatican IIThe acceptance of homosexualityFeminismPanentheism Weak th…

The task of redemption is not restricted to changing individuals...but also to changing their fallen institutions [and systems]. That redemption will culminate in the salvation, not just of people, but of their nat…

Do you understand angels and demons to be these very literal guys, flying around invisibly and causing mischief? Or do you understand the talk of angels and demons in the Bible to be mainly figurative, symbolizing the s…

I downloaded World of Goo for Nintendo WiiWare, and it is consuming all of my mental space. Which, incidentally, I recommend downloading immediately if you have a Wii. Not only is it a great buy for $15, and one of t…

I know that I've pointed this out a number of times, but he brought it up during the debate tonight. He said, "I would return the issue to the states. I am a federalist." So we would basically have a red state/blue st…

In 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to set a 100 percent tax on all income over $25,000, the equivalent of about $300,000 today. Roosevelt, in the end, would prove unable to assemble a congressional majorit…

Both you, Barack Obama, and you, John McCain, have referred the United States of America as the "city on the hill" Jesus referred to in Matthew 5. With respect, Senators, the United States is not the "city on a hill." …

Homosexuality and Christian Faith, ed. Walter Wink. -NDSR

Anytime the subject of withholding taxes comes up, and often well before it comes up and the conversation is still focused on refusing military service, someone will invariably bring up Jesus' statement to "Give to Caesa…

my beast comes in the afternoon he gnaws at my gut he paws at my head he growls spits out part of me my beast comes in the afternoon while other people are taking pictures while other people are at picni…

by Andrei Codrescu I was sharpening my chain saw when they called me from Washington, D.C., to ask me how to fix the economy. Thisrequest focused my thoughts, or the lack of 'em, to such a fine point,I gave my 14-i…

Five princes were setting out to seek the Buddha: to ask him if they could become disciples. As they traveled on the road together one of them suggested they all remove their expensive jewelry, since they would not b…

How had it come to pass that the Empire was destroying entire worlds? Atour was an intelligent and sensible man; he might be apolitical, but he wasn't naive. He was aware of the purpose for which this battle statio…

"The first stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love. The middle stage is to believe that there are many kinds of love and that the Greeks had a different word for each of them. The last stage is to beli…

If you could live forever, in your current state, unable to be killed, here on earth... would you?There are a lot of reasons to say no. You would have to suffer watching everyone around you - your spouse, your kids, y…

And the Lord said to Moses, 'To these the land shall be divided for inheritance according to the number of names. Toa larger tribe you shall give the greater inheritance, and to a smalltribe the less inheritance; to …

Re-reading Kingdom Ethics by Glen StassenNeither Poverty Nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions by Craig BlombergSatan and the Problem of Evil by Gregory BoydThe Church's Witness to the State by John Howard Yoder…

"In biblical character ethics, the good we serve is the reign of God, and the reign of God is oriented toward community with God (God's presence and salvation) and community with our fellow human beings (peace and justic…

See, your king is coming to you, his cause won, his victory granted humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will banish the chariot from Ephraim the war-horse from Jerusalem; the warrior's bo…

Sometimes when I unsubscribe from someone (usually because they recommend ten or more posts per day, spamming my newsfeed), it takes a week or more to stop seeing their updates. That's annoying. -ND

I have fallen into the habit lately of insisting that Christian talk is best expressed in terms of redemption rather than of salvation. As such, it occurs to me that it might be helpful to explore some meanings of re…

People who pray, really pray, don't talk about it much. After you have looked into the matter carefully, you may be able to puzzle out who is really praying. In general, though, prayer is something of an underground…