When I saw this photo of the nuns in the picture above, it made me think about myself and how I view others who are lost. As I pondered the answer to this question, it became very clear to me that I could do better in this respect.

We are what we speak most of the time, and it's important for us to speak compassion, acceptance and love. Now, don't get it twisted and confused. What I'm talking about here is how we really feel about those who are lost and in need of God's guidance.

You see, it's easy to witness to those who are open to being witnessed too. But our quest should be one that endeavors to labor among the lost. Christians are charged to love those who are difficult to love. It's no feat to love someone who likes you. However, loving someone who doesn't know Jesus or who doesn't like you is a different story. And mind you, we can't expect to enter into the gates of heaven flaunting a limited list of hand picked individuals, who we discriminately chose to pray for. More Here...

Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship. This is, perhaps, the most common naïve Christian slogan. I consider it naïve for two reasons. First, because it is not true, and second, because while it is used to counter one valid problem, it implies a view of the Church which is just as large of a problem.

When Christians claim that Christianity is a relationship and not a religion, they intend to distance it from cold ritualism. I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. Performing a service for the mere sake of performing a service, or saying a prayer merely for sake of saying a prayer are both wrong and ought to be avoided. Worse yet is for a man to perform a service or say prayer for the sake of convincing himself that he is not a bad man, or for assuming that these acts prove his goodness and allow him to stand before God. The purpose of our services and our prayers is to both worship God and be edified in our pursuit of Him; our righteousness before God is Christ alone, not anything of ourselves.

The trouble, then, is not the sentiment of the statement. The trouble is the statement. My copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines religion in the following words.

Religion: 1) the service and worship of God or the supernatural; 2) a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.

Clearly, the dictionary entry contained more than those first two definitions, but none of the other definitions could be construed in any way that would disqualify Christianity as a religion. Christianity is and always will be a religion. More Here...

By Justin at BeDeviant

I dropped off our not-so-trusty Vue today at our local mechanic.

“I know something’s wrong,” I said. ”We’ll take a look at it,” was the reply.

Look, they did.

They did so much looking, they needed to look at it overnight. “FREE LOANER!” I celebrated silently to myself. (It’s the little things.)

This particular body shop has a deal with a car rental place down the street. I dropped off my keys with the front desk and waited as one of the staff came around the front with a shuttle van to take me to the rental place.

I hopped in the shuttle and we began to make small talk for the short, five-minute drive down the street. The drive was short, but the conversation with my driver, Wade, was long enough to give me pause. More Here...

The lectionary texts for this past Sunday included Luke 14:7-14, the parable of seating at a wedding banquet. During a discussion with some members of my congregation after the service, the following question was raised: "How do we as Christians make room for others at our table?"

The gist of my response to this question is that making room has nothing to do with the "petty" things like dressing more casually to go to church or having the right style of music or putting on the right programming or making the church "seeker sensitive" -- what the heck does that even mean, anyway? My hunch is that making room at the proverbial table has far more to do with being willing to be wrong and eager to question beliefs that have always been taken for granted.

The more I immerse myself in theology, the more that I realize that, unlike most academic fields, theology becomes the site of fierce battles precisely because there is so much at stake. If historians made some amazing discovery that proves that George Washington was never a president of the United States, most people would probably be surprised, some people would not care, and a handful of crazies would construct an elaborate theory to prove that the new findings were part of some sort of government conspiracy. In general though, after the initial hubbub around the issue died down, we would correct our history books, the debate would become a distant memory, and we would go on with life as normal. 

But theology is not like history. More Here...