Preaching Without Words
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Halloween is a celebration of artificial fear. No goblins or witches are really going to cause harm to us. For Christians, the deeper and more genuine fear may come from within our own faith.
In this season of Halloween and All Saint's Day and the Day of the Dead, when fear and death and Ebola and terrorists are all around us, perhaps it is a good time to capture our fears.
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The thought behind the outcry being that marriage has always been the exact same institution ever since the dawn of time or at least since the dawn of the Bible. Same-sex marriage, it is argued, is a radical departure from this unbroken tradition. But does the Bible actually present "marriage as an unchanging picture?"
On Halloween we have the opportunity to interact with the Christ in our midst as we extend radical hospitality to our neighbors and strangers. Will Christ be allowed into our neighborhoods this Halloween?
The ideological response to ISIS must be cast from outside the realm of religious authority altogether. You see, Islam in particular, and holy text religions in general, are open to interpretation and selectivity. By responding to ISIS from within its own paradigm, one only validates its basic premise...
We all have a story. My story is that I was born in Chicago to a Muslim father and Christian mother. I was born to parents that came to America to flee persecution and war and to strive for the American dream. My story isn't that much different than other American Muslims. I
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For me, experiencing the richness of this season entails brewing spicy teas, gathering with other nature spirituality practitioners, meditating and listening to lots of witchy music.
Salvation was always such an important part of my upbringing. We were constantly begged, pushed, prodded and manipulated to go down the aisle. If I got saved once, I got saved a hundred times.
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Too often, politicians operate on the mistaken assumption that the only issue that matters to America's Jewish voters at the polls is Israel.
Mothers and fathers who practice what they preach and preach what they practice are far and away the major influence related to adolescents keeping the faith into their 20s, according to new findings from a landmark study of youth and religion.
One of the reasons Jesus got a bad reputation amongst the religious community of his day was because he was not afraid to associate himself with mankind, all of mankind: The best and worst, the clean and unclean, the accepted and the rejected.
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Let us put this to rest once and for all. This is not a struggle between radical Islam and the West. It is between radical Islam and the rest of us, Muslims and non-Muslims. Freedom is not a Western value. It is a universal value.
In churches like mine, we are usually wary of the word reconciliation (ironic, see 2 Corinthians 5). We are wary because it has often been used by those in power to quiet dissent, thinking that reconciliation equals civility.
As we brace ourselves for what may not be the most inclusive space, we also go with an open heart - and a belief in a future of true community. A community where we can live out our commandment to love our neighbors as we do ourselves.
I believe there is something about experiencing the ancient liturgy that can take us to another part of our being, deep into our spiritual selves -- whether one can recite the Nicene Creed in good conscience or not.
A Facebook friend recently asked me, "Hey Carl, what are your ten top books on meditation?" So here's my answer. I hope this is a useful list. I've listed the books in the order in which I would recommend them.
"Southern Evangelicals Dwindling--and Take the GOP Edge With Them" screams a headline in the online Atlantic. I'll exegete the meaning of the first three words of that headline, and leave the last seven to prognosticators, politicians, and pollsters.
Nobody grows old. You just wake up one day and realize you are. Dress up aging any way you wish. Offer whatever cute cliche' you'd like. None of it helps. Aging, or growing old, just plain sucks.
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While gun violence can happen anywhere, as Ottawa shows, it happens much more in the United States than any other developed country. Why the discrepancy? The full answer is complicated, but one of the driving factors is not.
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