Meditations, Ep. 1: Holding Jesus Salvation

-

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hagar & Ishmael (Genesis 16-17 & 21)

-
Image
We come now to a narrative that in some ways is the worst story in all of scripture. The reason it is so bad is because many trace the present-day conflict between Jews and Arabian peoples back to the story, the narrative of Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael. A deadly feud that is always in danger of breaking out in full out war, like now - that many see this story as the start of it all certainly makes it a haunted story. It all begins in Genesis 16. The story basically goes like this: Abram and Sarai grow increasingly impatient that the child God promised them isn’t arriving. Sarai especially is having difficulty waiting. Without consulting God, Sarai hatches a plan. Have Abram marry one of their enslaved. Hagar is chosen. Hagar and Abram consummate their union and indeed a child is conceived, a boy who will be named Ishmael. But as the story goes in Genesis 16, the pregnant Hagar makes her lack of fondness for Sarai increasingly known. Sarai responds in kind and worse. A feud begin...
Read more

Buddhism & Christianity: Sin, Salvation, Overlap

-
Let’s move on to two other questions: For Buddhism and Christianity: Are humans fundamentally good? What goes wrong? For Christianity, as we know, humans are created in God’s image, enlivened by the Spirit of God. Life in Eden marks the original plan for human beings. Unity between humanity and God and balance in creation was the reality in the beginning. But with Adam and Eve’s fateful decisions, a shift occurs. Christians have deemed it the Fall. A fall into what? Into the reality of sin. From the bite of the bitter fruit thereafter, sin marks human life. There are differences of opinion on how deep the effect of Adam and Eve’s sin goes. The line of Augustine, which crosses the Catholic-Protestant divide into Luther, and Calvin, says sin runs very deep, arguing that the guilt for the original sin of Adam and Eve is passed on to every human born thereafter. Even infants carry the guilt of original sin, and thus deserve the consequence of judgment and punishment sin carries...
Read more

The Kingdom of God: Heavenly Commonwealth

-
In the summer of 2019, after watching all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe catalog - the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman, etc - Corey and I attended the long awaited Avengers movie called The Endgame. Seeing that movie with my son stands as one of my fondest memories of fatherhood. Corey calls it a core memory of his childhood. He got that idea of a core memory from another movie, Inside Out. We love movies! The Endgame was one of those movies where the whole crowd stands at the end and cheers. We stood too, laughed, even cried. It's a precious memory, a core memory, that we both cherish. For Christianity, it has its own version of the Endgame. The kingdom of God fully actualized on earth, that is the endgame. That’s what Jesus’ return, his second coming, will bring about. Jesus will return and usher in the kingdom of God, making it a present reality here, a reality that will last an eternity. Jesus’s return. What do I think about this? While many folks believe ...
Read more