After an almost one year hiatus I will soon be posting again on this blog with this new format and a new direction. Where I Have Been: The first three years this blog examined how current day churches are doing in following Jesus’ words as found in the red letters of most Christian bibles. That study was concluded in August of 2011 and is still … Continue reading Welcome to the Re-Purposed Red Letter Living Blog
I just went another short round with my radical right gun totting evangelical friend on helping those less fortunate than us. Here are some of his words replying to a post I made on FaceBook. The root cause of most of our deficit problems is still those that work and produce must pay for the existence of all those that do not work or produce … Continue reading My Evangelical Friend…
I recently watched an interview of a Christian clergyman of twenty years. He was having doubts about his faith. All of us have doubts and one time or another. Even Mother Teresa was troubled by them. Having doubts is not too unusual but this particular minister’s doubts were leading him to make the leap back to an agnostic or even worse. This is sad but … Continue reading The Clubhouse Effect…..
Some Christians believe that each and every word in the Bible is literally true and without error. Even though I did not believe in a literal Bible I belonged to one of those churches at one time. I often asked embarrassing questions during our weekly bible study. Questions the clergy leader really didn’t care to try to answer. Asking those questions is probably one of the reasons … Continue reading What Language Did Adam & Eve Speak??
The following is an exerpt from a recent Sojourners.com emailing relative to Franklin Graham who now heads the Billy Graham Ministries. The author of the article is shown at the bottom. When Franklin Graham expressed doubts about President Obama’s Christian faith during an interview on Morning Joe last week, it reminded me of an uncomfortable dinner I had in the late ‘90s. I sat down … Continue reading Black Evangelicals, White Evangelicals, and Franklin Graham’s Repentance
I have been thinking lately about the words of Jesus and how he interacted with those he came across. Except for some of those in the religious establishment I couldn’t find any instance where he chose to automatically exclude from his saving grace or the wisdom of his teachings. He treated men and women pretty much the same; he welcomed all to his ministry. The poor … Continue reading The Practice of Exclusion…
I have had a Sojourners membership for a number of years now and enjoy the monthly magazine. One reason is that it shows me that I am not alone out there in believing what I do about Christianity. Jim Wallis, who is the editor-in-chief of the magazine always has an editorial at the beginning of each issue. This month is was about how the word … Continue reading Defining Evangelicals…
Here is an extended quote from the second chapter of James for our discussion today: You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless ? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made … Continue reading Fire Insurance???
Dear R.J., “Jim, Christianity has nothing to do with racism.” That’s what my church elder told me when I was a 15-year-old boy. Can you believe that? “That’s political, and our faith is personal,” he said. That’s the night I left my church. This kind of story is all too common. So that’s exactly why we founded Sojourners 40 years ago – to call Christians … Continue reading Not as Much as We Would Like to Believe…
Here is an interesting article from the blog quakerquaker.org that I thought worth putting here. He has quite a few valid arguments but I’m sure most will ignore them due to him coming to the “wrong” conclusion. The Progressive Gospel (according to me) Posted by Dave Salyers on 12th mo. 8, 2011 at 11:00am Send Message View Blog The essence of the Good News of the Gospel as … Continue reading Salvation According to a Progressive Quaker
I got to thinking recently about what did Jesus teach us about where we were supposed to come together to worship God. As I have mentioned before there is actually almost nothing in the Bible about this topic. But I can take the many other words of Jesus and postulate what he would likely say if he had addressed this area. Here is what I … Continue reading Today’s Church Building, What Would Jesus Do……
The title to this post certainly sounds like an ultra pompous statement doesn’t it? But this is indeed what some Christians are saying when they cling to the “Sola Scriptura” doctrine. To say that God has nothing else to teach us besides what is contained the documents that were collected more than sixteen hundred years ago is depriving them of much needed help in living … Continue reading I Don’t Care To Know Anything More About God….
Lets jump a little further in the chapter of John cited in the previous post. This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does … Continue reading My Commands (again and again)….
I have been away from the red letters for too long in this blog. For that reason we will spend the next several posts getting back to the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and that is to take his words and especially his commands to heart. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is … Continue reading Getting Back to the Red Letters….
When we insist that our version of God is the only true one are we putting God in a Box? That is are we limiting him to how we currently perceive him or maybe just want him to be? I think that is the case with many Christians today. Here are some examples of putting God in a restrictive box: The Bible contains everything we need to know about … Continue reading Putting God in a Box….
This post will be sort of a first review of the book entitled The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith. I say sort of because I will primarily be discussing something that the book brought to mind and not the book itself. The book is primarily about how many evangelicals have put the Bible into an impossible position by their very narrow interpretations. It goes into … Continue reading What We Read….
This is a continuation of my discussions of the book entitled “When God Is Love” by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. Here is the quote for today: Working to make the world a more gracious place wasn’t a priority in the churches of my childhood. Some of this negligence was a result of apolcalyptic interpretations in which the world was doomed and damned anyway. One … Continue reading If God Is Love (Part 5)
Trying to determine the nature of God is something many who are much smarter than I am have been doing since our very existence. I don’t pretend to have any answers that they have not considered. But, I have been looking at a different understanding of God at least from a personal perspective. This new approach came from a comment on a previous post here on … Continue reading The Nature of God….
It is amazing to me that this blog is almost three years old and now contains 300 posts. It also humbles me that so many really care enough about what I have to say to come back so often. If you want to see what I have talked about in the past the best way is to click on one of the topics in the … Continue reading I am Humbled….
Since this is my 300th post to this blog and as I am coming off a rather long hiatus, I thought I would handle an impossible topic and that is the nature of man. I apologize in advance for this post’s length but describing the nature of man will take a few more than the five hundred words I try to limit my posts to. 🙂 The … Continue reading The Nature of Man…
I seem to have a medical condition that is somewhat rare today. No I am not talking about Cochlear Otosclorosis that caused my deafness many years ago but one maybe even more rare. That condition is called a “Bleeding Heart”. I know this is a condition that my fellow Republicans loathe. Whenever they want to diss someone they call them a “bleeding heart liberal”. But … Continue reading My Rare Medical Condition….
This is the fourth post in the series on a book by Philip Gulley entitle If God Is Love. Here is the quote for this one. This wrestling with our theology, though absolutely necessary to spiritual growth, often puts our lives out of joint. On several occasions, I thought, “Remind me again why I wanted to question and challenge the beliefs I was taught.” The … Continue reading If God is Love – Part 4
This is a continuation of my expose of the book by Philip Gulley entitled If God Is Love. In this post he talks about Dualistic Theologies. Dualistic theologies reduce the questions of life to one: Are you saved? Nothing else matters. The purpose of life it to answer that single question. Of course, simply saying “yes” is not enough. You confirm your salvation by accepting … Continue reading If God is Love… Part 3
This is a continuation of my collection of snippets from the book by Philip Gulley entitled If God is Love. The Psalmists boats, “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hate. I count them my enemies” (Psalm 139:21-22). Hatred, when directed at those we have judged wicked, becomes … Continue reading If God is Love (Part 2)
Since judgment day seems to be on the short list of things Christians talk about lets look at the story about it as spoken by Jesus Christ: “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. “All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from … Continue reading The Least of These…. The Final Judgment
I have been getting hit by some because I don’t quote the Bible often enough for them. As I have stated many times before I am just not a “chapter and verse” Christian. I do read the Bible frequently but instead of memorizing the words I try to learn the lessons behind the words and then attempt to make those lessons a part of my … Continue reading Lessons Learned….
I am going to start a series of posts around quotes from some of the many books I have read. One of the favorites is the book “If God is Love” by Philip Gulley. Here is the quote for today: When Jesus redefined kinship, he was challenging their exclusive circle by declaring that anyone in any place who did the will of God regardless of … Continue reading If God Is Love… (Part1)
The Old Testament has always been a struggle for me. I find far too many places where God’s wrath is brutally shown. This is in such a total contrast with Jesus Christ I know in the New Testament. It is almost like the good cop/bad cop scenarios that play out so much on the TV cop shows. I tend to refer to it as the … Continue reading Contemplating the All Powerful God and the All Loving God…
Source: Wanted: 1,000 Pastors For the Poor – Jim Wallis – God’s Politics Blog. Sojourners, which is a Christian based organization founded on the principle that Christians are called to be their brother’s keeper and that governments are accountable for the well-being of all their citizens. The source post is a call for 1,000 pastors to come forward and say cutting the safety net out from … Continue reading Wanted: 1,000 Pastors For the Poor
This is going to be a short post about the religious establishments of today. I hope this closes out my recent thoughts in this area. I really want to move on to other things about Jesus. This post is based on some words in the book entitled If the Church Were Christian by Philip Gulley. Here are those words: We have built a vast institution based on these … Continue reading A Vast Institution Based on a Few Bones…..
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