All posts tagged Vincent Van Gogh

  • August 29, 2010

    On Going To Church

    church-at-auvers
    Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome guest blogger, Joe Beach!

    Joe Beach pastors Amazing Grace Church in Denver and is a dear friend. Joe loves a lot of the same things I do — things like Jesus, church, mountains, theology and Bob Dylan. Which goes a long way in explaining why we like to hang out together so much. Joe is also an avid reader and a keen thinker. (Have you ever noticed that reading and thinking tend to go together?) Anyway, Joe has written a thoughtful article entitled On Going To Church. I would like to share it with you. Read. Think. Act.

    ON GOING TO CHURCH
    by Joe Beach

    You’re probably familiar with statements such as, “we don’t GO to church. We ARE the church.” There are similar ones that go something like this: “Church is not what we do when we gather on Sunday mornings for an hour or so. Church is not a place or a building. It’s what we are OUT THERE.” Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and, although there’s some truth and some wisdom in these statements (which I’ve spoken myself), I’m no longer so sure about them on the whole. Read more

    2 Comments / Church /

  • June 14, 2010

    For the Common Good

    I have drafted a statement which explains the friendship and cooperation I have with Ahmed El-Sherif (an Arab-American Muslim) and Samuel Nachum (an Israeli-American Jew) as we work together in the Let The Children Play for Peace project. It goes like this: Read more

    15 Comments / Christianity /

  • April 5, 2009

    Life Made Livable

    So I ask you for the umpteenth time, dear blog reader, what does it mean to be saved? Does it mean some part of you, your spirit let’s say, is saved to exist in a non-spatial, non-temporal existence following your death? That your spirit is “harvested” for a “spiritual” postmortem existence? A saved ghost preserved in a heavenly museum? If so, small wonder that some think we’ve got heaven and hell all rolled into one.

    Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
    Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

    Yes, I know the Bible can be read in such a way that salvation looks like this — part of you is saved for another time and place — but it’s a tragic misreading. And, sadly, it’s a common misreading. Which, I suppose, is to be expected, thanks to the massive doses of Platonism and Gnosticism which seem to be the very religious air we breathe. The “vapors” of Gnostic Platonism have caused popular American Christianity for the past two centuries to be unabashedly dualistic; to the extent that a dualistic reading of Scripture seems to be orthodox, when in fact it is entirely unorthodox.

    It’s frustrating.
    Read more

    No Comments / Heaven, Immortality, Resurrection, Salvation, Theology /

  • September 10, 2008

    The Good Life

    The Good Life. We all want it. But what is it?

    This was the great question of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

    For them the answer was an examined life that led to a life of virtue.

    Not bad.

    For the modern western world the Good Life has little to with virtue. We live in age of ethical poverty.

    Materialism having won the battle for the heart and soul of the post-Enlightenment West, the Good Life now has to do with achievement and acquisition. Position and property. Social status and being able to buy lots of stuff. Climbing the latter of success and finding a Best Buy at the top. The American Dream gone to seed.
    Read more

    2 Comments / Christianity, Salvation, Theology /
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