I learned this song for Christmas this year and I really enjoy it. I was going to post the Casting Crowns version but I thought I would just go for it and record it myself as a gift to you. I hope you think of it as a gift. Merry Christmas. Shalom.
OK it's time. This is my favorite Christmas song and I love this version of it. Listen to the lyrics and you will discover that it is an abolitionist song. The Christian abolitionists in the British Empire looked forward to the day when Christ would break the chains of our brothers and sisters held in cruel bondage by an evil economic system. But in a larger sense, we are all slaves - slaves to our pettiness and our greed, slaves to our selfishness and to our fears. Christ came to break those chains too. If you don't know him, I hope you will find him. And if you do, I hope you will share his love. Merry Christmas. Shalom.
Much of Christian anxiety about the sad state of the nation comes from the ridiculous notion that the nation was based on “Christian” principles and supposedly was and ought to be again a "Christian" nation. This is wholly inaccurate both historically and theologically. We can't expect people who are not Christian to live by Christian values, especially when the reprehensible behaviors and rhetoric of so-called Christians offers so little that is compelling.
When you hear Dobson saying those kids died because of God's judgment, that doesn't make a very compelling case for God, does it? Do you really think Jesus would make such a statement? And would you want to follow a God who did?
We can stand around on Sunday morning singing about how deep is the Father's love, but it is noticeably absent on Monday. On Monday many of those who claim Jesus fade chameleon-like into their surroundings and don’t stand out, don't look anything like Jesus, and are apparently not too bothered by it. Jesus didn't command his followers to fix the government, he commanded them to make disciples.
I think a more successful strategy for making disciples includes assuming at the outset that, like the first century world, we are surrounded by and in the midst of and called to witness to a pagan culture that hungers for deliverance from evil. And we make disciples like Jesus does: by compassionate action, by forgiveness, by healing, and by loving with a self-forgetting, self-sacrificing love. This is what the Jesus of the Bible looks like. If we are his followers, we ought to look like him.
They have been called the "The Greatest Generation." The generation that fought WWII. I just watched the last episode of Ken Burns' "The War" the other night and was reminded of Sen. Inouye's enormous battlefield sacrifice in France for a country that only a couple of years earlier had barred him from service because of his "race." For all of its flaws, a remarkably selfless generation. We will miss them, and you, Senator. Mahalo.
My experience tells me that only when I have no other recourse will I turn to God. Only brokenness will allow me to trust Him. That is why it is said "You can't have the glory without the cross."
"Paul’s way of speaking also eliminates the idea that a Christian is anyone who merely holds to right theological beliefs. Much popular Christianity makes this destructive error, suggesting that as long as you simply confess that you are a sinner and believe that Jesus is your Savior and “receive him,” whatever that means, you are right with God and will certainly go to heaven. Do not get me wrong here. I know that there are degrees of understanding on the part of Christians and that many true Christians are yet babes in Christ, perhaps because they have never been given adequate teaching. Many might be unable to describe their faith in any terms more adequate than those I have just given. I do not want to deny that they are Christians. But what I do want to say is that it is possible to confess those things and still not be a Christian, simply because being a Christian is more than giving mere verbal assent to certain doctrines. It is to be born again. And since being born again is the work of God’s Spirit, it is right to insist that those who are truly born again will have their minds set on what God desires."
