Well, friends, today is election day in the United States. We don't know what the result will be or what the future will bring, especially since the current American President has been sending messages undermining the integrity of the election for months and has not committed to the peaceful transition of power that is inherent … Continue reading In Times like These (Again)
It's always interesting to see how people react when I tell them I'm a Christian. Some people get tongue-tied, unsure of what to say. Others' eyes glaze over and it's clear that whole area of spirituality has zero meaning for them whatsoever. Then, of course, there are the disciples of the New Atheists, who immediately … Continue reading The Door (A Reflection on Luke 11.47-52)
I recently made the comment here that Romans 12-13, in which Paul is outlining the rule of life for the household of God, is the part of Paul's writings where he sounds most like Jesus. It is a strange quirk of Christianity that its first major advocate sounds so little like the man Jesus, around … Continue reading Christ’s Gospel and the Gospel of Christ
For most of this series on Empire and Spirit, we've seen how the stories of our Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus and Paul challenged Rome's power and authority. But as I noted last week, this isn't the whole story. In that post, I looked at Jesus' famous teaching, to "Render unto Caesar what is … Continue reading A Tyrant’s Dream? (Disarming Romans 13.1-7)
Yesterday, I wrote about some of the complications involved in telling the stories of our lives. I focused particularly on the problems with endings — how ending them too soon can cause us to misunderstand our stories, and how not ending them at all can leave us stuck in the past or paralyzed like a … Continue reading The Messy Middle (Part II of The Stories of our Lives)
Matthew Root 