Loved by God.

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* It's good to suffer loss, for it draws me to the Cross where God's loss is more than what anyone ever lost. * We cannot hear what the stories of the Bible are saying until we hear them as stories about ourselves. * Let go of control. * Trust God. Thank God. Think about God. Talk to God. Talk about God.

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Discipleship, Jesus rejects using force

The encounter between Peter and Jesus (Mk 8:27-9:1) makes clear that the story of Jesus, like most good stories, changes the hearer. A story that claims to be the truth of our existence requires that our lives, like the lives of the disciples, be changed by following him. Jesus asks what no man should ask from another--his life. To be a disciple of Jesus requires a training beyond what any of them had imagined.


"Jesus deliberately rejected force and chose truth. Whenever Christianity shows an inclination to use constraint in its own defense or support, it thereby furnishes presumptive evidence that it has become a thing of this world, for it finds the means of this world adapted to its end." Walter Rauschenbusch, The Righteousness of the Kingdom, 1968.

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