The Little Friar

Is not this the fast that I choose: to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? to loose the bonds of injustice, Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; a...

Believe, NIV , edited by Randy Frazee, is a book in search of a genre.  Frazee, Senior Pastor of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, previously gave us The Story , a popular self-help spirituality text, and has now produced Believe, NIV , and its soon-to-appear companion volume, Think, Act, Be Like Jesus .  At first, when I requested the book for review, I'd thought it was a new study Bible, much in the tradition of its predecessor .   But it's not. Instead, Believe, NIV , is designed as an abridgement of the New International Version, perhaps the best-selling translation in the publisher's (Zondervan) line-up. As an abridgement, Believe, NIV , is organized around 10 key beliefs of the Christian faith, 10 practices of a Jesus-follower, and 10 key virtues that make disciples more like Jesus.  It's divided into 30 chapters, all of which begin with a key idea (the chapter title) and a key verse, followed by a thoughtful selection of biblical texts that directly ...

Forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.  Forgiving ... is the only reaction which does not merely act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven. -- Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition , p. 241.

Recently, Duke University announced that it would begin allowing Muslim students to use the Chapel tower for the adhan -- the Muslim call to prayer -- every Friday afternoon.  I was excited for the idea and supported it. As an alumnus, I know what Duke Chapel means to that community.  I know what it means to me.  As a student, I regularly sought refuge in its nave for daily prayer every 5 p.m., as the bells tolled.  A former classmate and friend, Sam, climbs those stairs everyday to chime the bells in an act of Christian devotion and love for his alma mater.  As a student, I served as the Faith and Arts Intern at the Chapel, and learned so much about ministry alongside others. So it may seem odd that I supported the idea of Muslims calling for prayer from atop my beloved Chapel.  But for those who care enough to hear me out on this, here's my reasoning. There's something else I know quite well:  The recent attacks in Paris and Pakistan and ren...

I'm a critical person -- or, more to the point, I like to complain.  A lot.  I'm far more gracious in writing because writing makes me convert my whining to a point.  And sometimes I find that my whining is better left unwritten.  I have begun many a blog post here, only to stop, mid-sentence, and step away.  Upon returning, I just delete all I've written.  Because there's wisdom in knowing the difference between a genuine criticism and a childish whine.  And in what you do about both. So I was rather convicted this morning when I read the appointed Psalm for morning prayer:  Psalm 62.  Here are verses 2-4: How long will you assail a person,    will you batter your victim, all of you,    as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence? Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence.    They take pleasure in falsehood; they bless with their mouths,    but inwardly ...

Like most preachers who preach the lectionary, I'm preparing to preach on Jonah 3 in a couple of weeks.  As I sit at my desk today and eat my lunch, I'm pondering what one could possibly preach on Jonah. It is, after all, one of those stories we teach to kids in Sunday School.  In my estimation, this is probably the one story that captivates a young boy (girl) enough so that it stays in their imagination.  And what's not to remember?  Jonah gets a word from God:  "Go at once to Ninevah, that great city, and proclaim judgment upon it; for their wickedness has come before me".  Ninevah is an ancient and powerful enemy of Israel.  Jonah makes a beeline in the opposite direction (the story doesn't say why yet) and sails away from the city.  God raises a storm that endangers the whole crew. Jonah has them throw him overboard.  Now this would normally kill Jonah.  But God sends a fish to swallow him, and Jonah remains in its belly fo...

Author Talk: Frank Schaeffer from PPLD TV on Vimeo . I hardly agree with Frank Schaeffer on everything, but I find a compassionate wisdom here. Even if I'd say things very differently.

As a new feature here on The Little Friar , Wednesday will be devoted to answering questions.  Feel free to email your questions to me, and I'll select a few to answer here every Wednesday.

Several conversations, of late, have circled around what I think about Christian marriage -- particularly in relation to divorce.  In order to know what what's dying, I maintain, you have to know what's been living.  Sadly, this just simply isn't true for lots of Christians.  Having inherited some really sloppy philosophical commitments from Medieval Aristotelianism, we have a bad ontology of love and marriage.  But I don't intend to wax academic here.  Instead, I want to offer a reflection on what Christian marriage actually is. That said, this is a fine place to offer an article I submitted earlier this week for a publication. Let me know what you think. I've placed the article beneath the break.

Some days, if you're like me, you just need a little encouragement, especially when you've stopped to take notice of how the days are flying by and your life is marked more by the years that have passed than by the years you are promised.  Today, is one such day.  So, Karl Barth: [We] have no option but to take what we are given -- a limited life in an allotted span of time.  And this simply brings us back to the starting-point.  Does life really have to be like this?  And when we raise this question again we again shake what we think are our prison bars and angrily or anxiously contrast our determination with the conditions under which we are forced to live.  And the question itself is still unresolved. We still do not see why things have to be as they are, and not otherwise.  The whole picture changes, however, if we are not concerned abstractly and generally with the limitation of our life, but with the God who limits it; if we are not ...

Some weeks ago, I wrote a post on why the virgin birth is so important, theologically . Apparently, it's led someone to think that I don't consider the virgin birth to have happened historically, in the way Matthew and Luke write it. Barth's famous discussion of the virgin birth is in Church Dogmatics I/2, the section on "The Miracle of Christmas".  Barth always insists that acts of divine revelation are "not historical", and I agree with him.  But by that, neither he nor I mean these events never happened.  All we mean is that revelation is a unique event, an act of God.  It's not part of the normal historical sequence, it doesn't belong to a chain of cause-and-effect, and so there's no use trying to verify or disprove it on historical grounds. So in the case of the virgin birth, Barth argues that it's not  subject to the methods of historiography.  Its truth isn't for historians to decide.  But he certainly believes ...

Duane Garrett's Commentary on Exodus is the newest volume in the Kregel Exegetical Library.  While primarily known for his work in Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs in the NAC series, Song of Songs / Lamentations in the WBC, and a forthcoming commentary on Job in the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary series from Logos) as well as the Hosea and Joel volume in the NAC series, readers here will be familiar with his textbook of Hebrew grammar (B&H). A Commentary on Exodus is a brilliant exegetical commentary for pastors.  And the Introduction makes this book a gem for pastoral and church libraries alone.  Garrett there brings together Egyptian history, culture, language and geography with critical scholarship on reading the Book of Exodus as Christian Scripture.  The most important feature of this commentary is that Garrett sets the text in its historical context.  He offers "evidence and arguments over crucial questions", like th...

There's much to that distinction. 1.  In college and seminary, I was drawn to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, even though nothing really ever came from that wooing.  That's probably because at my very core, much like my Anglican sisters and brothers, my faith has always had a distinctive flavor and independent spirit.  Irish missionary monks evangelized the Britons, and it wasn't until the 7th century, at the Synod of Whitby, that Rome established its authority over Christianity in the British Isles.  But those tensions maintained throughout the 700 or so years to follow.  See Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People . 2.  While the break from Rome in the 16th century certainly had political motivations, it also saw the emergence of an evangelical tradition.  The Church of England wasn't just a protest over the Pope's power (no matter what The Tutors told you), because it was a church that produced a genuine evangelical theo...

From a "Confirmation Sermon" Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached on April 9, 1938: You do not have your faith once and for all.  The faith that you will confess today with all your hearts needs to be regained tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, indeed, every day anew.  We receive from God only as much faith as we need for the present day.  Faith is the daily bread that God gives us. You know the story about manna.  This is what the children of Israel received daily in the desert. But when they wanted to store it for the next day, it was rotten.  This is how it is with all the gifts of God.  This is how it is with faith as well.  Either we receive it daily anew or it rots.  One day is just long enough to preserve the faith.  Every morning it is a new struggle to fight through all unbelief, faintheartedness, lack of clarity and confusion, anxiety and uncertainty, in order to arrive at faith and to wrest it from God.  Every morning in your ...

Having never been an artist, I was intrigued by Carol Marine's idea of Daily Painting:  Paint Small and Often to Become A More Creative, Productive and Successful Artist .  As a genuine internet phenomenon, the Daily Painting Movement has picked up steam since around 2005, with Marine hosting her own blog of her daily painting.  The movement represents a genuine sea-change in the way artists relate to audience.  Marine, in particular, has become noted not only for her small paintings, with their inventive compositions, geometrically strong forms and bold colors, but as one of the primary proponents of encouraging others to take up daily painting -- thorough articles on her blog , a series of online tutorials and in-person workshops . So I expected a book like Daily Painting to be a light-weight introduction to the movement and to the art of painting a picture-a-day.   I was wrong. Daily Painting is an extensive, well-reasoned and well-written explorati...

David Watson and Paul Watson have given us a useful guide for following Jesus into the world God loves with Good News in Contagious Disciple Making:  Leading Others on a Journey of Discovery.  It's filled with a very simple, yet proven with experience, method of developing disciples for Jesus Christ.  But the book avoids those pitfalls that usually come from Church Growth guides.  There's no new method here, because Contagious Disciple Making  is most certainly not a book about theory.  It's engagement with the principles and practices of discipling have worked in a variety of places -- Asia, Africa, Latin America and here in the United States -- because it utilizes a "Discovery" model, in which folks follow Scripture and bring others into that journey of discovery.  The book itself is divided into two sections:  "The Mind-Set of a Disciple-maker" and "The Practices of a Disciple-maker".  The first helps us develop the philosophical min...

From Karl Barth's The Christian Life :  Grace is the presence, event, and revelation of what the human cannot think or do or reach or attain or grasp, but of what is, in virtue of its coming from God, the most simple, true and real of all things for those to whom it is addressed and who recognise it.  Grace is the factual overcoming of the distinction between God and humanity, creator and creature, heaven and earth -- something that cannot be grasped in any theory or brought about by any technique or human practice.  ...  Grace is God's sovereign intervention on the human’s behalf.  The work and gift of this grace of his is the freedom of the children of God -- their freedom to call upon him as Father. From TF Torrance's Apocalypse Today : [The Gospel] is indeed God's almighty power, and so the Gospel is still the secret of what happens in the world.  This Gospel of pure grace, which deals with [us] solely on the basis of the death of Chr...

There are two graphs that have held my theological moral imagination for the past few weeks: First, a graph that documents the "Rise and Rise of the Top 0.1 Percent": Second, a graph that demonstrates income growth for the bottom 90% compared to the top 10% as each group bounced back after great US recessions.  Note how since the 1980s recoveries from recessions (bouncing back) have been disproportionately experienced by the top 10% with the bottom 90% bouncing back from recessions less and less, falling further and further behind: I'm a theologian and ethicist who takes the Old Testament prophetic tradition seriously.  So these graphs connect with my vision (and Jesus' vision!) of the Kingdom of God. But not in the way conservatives might expect. I haven't mentioned Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century .  The book is a long and detailed historical analysis of capitalism, but the overarching conclusion and implication of t...

A friend asked me yesterday, "What is sin ?"  In response I said, "Sin is a no-thing.  It is the absence of the good, because it is an absence of God".  In expounding what I meant by that statement, I began to formulate some ideas about sin.  Here are some of those ideas: 1.  Reinhold Niebuhr famously said sin is perhaps the only verifiable theological claim.  He was wrong.  I know why his claim gets traction -- in no less than CS Lewis' Mere Christianity :  The omnipresent reality of self-alienation and social disorder.  But sin is a theologoumenon, and, like all theologoumena, it is a matter of faith, not disinterested observation.  To be specific, sin is a matter of faith because, definitively, it's a disruption between human beings and God -- and the knowledge of God is itself a matter of faith.  Sin is the suffered absence of God, which can only be known as a grace itself, in faith. 2.  What is the nature of that d...

Christoph Blumhardt's Action in Waiting , a collection of sermons that contain some of the most important theological ideas to arise from Germany in the first part of the twentieth century, is no doubt one of the least read theological texts, but, as Karl Barth says in the Afterward, nothing short than a representation of "God's cause in the world", a demonstration of God's "love for the world" that leaves Christians with a prophetic voice in how to simultaneously "be faithful to God". I took my time with this collection precisely because it challenges so much that's wrong with Christendom in the early twenty-first century:  Individualism, modern piety and the rest.  This is a prophetic call to leave behind the bad faith and dying faith of Christendom and embrace the essentials of the Faith without falling into the twin traps of Fundamentalism or Progressivism.  And, make no doubt about it, Blumhardt's ideas were so demanding of a...