“I tried to remember that these are human beings, not caricatures.”
sin
Redemption revisited
Faith is formed in us by the Spirit and the life of the church. It renews our elemental confidence and creates our disposition toward the world.
The power of small sins
Far from being meaningless slights with minimal harm, microagressions intrude on the spiritual lives of those who are already marginalized and oppressed.
The satisfaction theory of the atonement centers on debt, humanity’s debt to God. It’s often criticized for its gruesome picture of God. But it also paints a weird picture of Jesus: Christ the Debt Buyer.
Standing Naked Before God, by Molly Phinney Baskette
Molly Phinney Baskette's book is not a robust example of the Christian practice of confession. But she does offer a glimpse into the life of a church that is thriving against the odds.
Crux of the matter
Fleming Rutledge's magnum opus is many things: a look at the ways the death of Christ has been interpreted, an argument that the how of his death matters, and a protest against Christianity-light.
In Romans 7, sin seems to have at least as much agency as Paul does.
In the wake of the grand jury’s failure to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown—and in light of conflicting eyewitness accounts of the incident—many have argued that video evidence would have helped a lot. Body-mounted cameras offer a technological solution to what is otherwise a problem of human moral complexity: eyewitnesses can’t agree; officers can’t behave; human evidence can’t be trusted. Technology, the argument suggests, can supersede all of this. And then, of course, a grand jury in New York City failed to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of another unarmed black man, Eric Garner.
The priest asked the thief why he would return a ruined tire. He said, with surprise, Because it wasn't mine, Father. Are you paying attention?
In the wake of the shootings in Las Vegas—in which bystander Joseph Robert Wilcox tried to take a shooter out and instead was himself shot and killed—Adam Weinstein offers a very thoughtful take on the notion of being a "good guy with a gun." A veteran and a gun owner, Weinstein describes himself as "one of those wannabe heroes"—but also details his growing doubts.