Compassionate Reading
← All tags#belief
29 items tagged #belief, across the whole site.
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This Far, But No Farther: Paul's Radical Ecumenism in Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
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The Bad Seed
"verily thou hast done unwisely...vex me not"
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What Happens When the Wire Snaps?
What kept nagging at me -- after the rush of religion and feeling like I had found a church and a faith I could work into my own belief system -- was the ultimate question of the…
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Some Unorganized Thoughts About Riots and Race
The Wikipedia page for the Boston Tea Party has an entire section solely about the destruction of the tea. White men, some disguised as Native Americans (not out of respect for the…
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What Happens When Jesus is Racist?: The Syrophoenician Woman
We are spoiled for choice when it comes to reckoning with Jesus of Nazareth. For atheists, he was just another Jewish apocalyptic preacher. (I think there was a time when "Did…
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How Necessary Was the Crucifixion, or, How I Am Maybe Not a Christian
Last night I mentioned to Zach that I'm sort of "meh" about the crucifixion.
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On the Origin of Navels and Other Things
Did Adam and Eve have navels is a silly question. They didn't, for several reasons:
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Souls, Purgatory, and Ghosts (with an explanation of Plumber Porn as a chaser)
We have to start with what a soul is, which should be easy, it's only four letters, but the thing is, it's not easy, even if it were three letters. We don't have a unilateral…
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In Which I Don't Write Very Coherently About Fig Trees, But At Least Try My Best
A sentence you'll read when you Google "figs and wasps" is in a caption to a photo of a wasp and a fig: "A female fig wasp descends through the ostiole into the center of the fig…
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"Your God Shall Be My God": The Book of Ruth
In many ways, The Book of Ruth is a gentle echo of The Book of Job. In Job, we witness a righteous man destroyed for a wager who remains unwavering in his faith right up until he…
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Lot & His Daughters, or, Hospitality Gone Terribly Wrong
There are Bible stories that aren't in the Bible, and it occurs to me right now that I could spend a lot of time not writing at all about Lot and his daughters and just talk about…
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"An Infinity of Silence": The Book of Job
One of my favorite passages in the entire Bible is Job 42:3: "Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know."
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Evil
Roxanne asked about evil. I'll tell you now, at the beginning, to save you time if you thought I was going to be able to answer this question: I don't know how to answer this…
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The Good Parts: 1 Thessalonians
But we were gentle among you. 1 Thess 2:7
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Martha
Luke tells us the story of Mary and Martha. This is when Jesus drops in for an impromptu visit and Martha says, "I sure could use some help in the kitchen" and Jesus says, "No you…
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God's Love as My Love for My Cat
One way I wrap my head around the idea of God's infinite and unconditional love (as I think of it -- you may have an entire different relationship with God that is so personal you…
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Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
I'm going to start with the easy stuff before it all falls apart.
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Genesis 1:1-2 | Something Out of Something
At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean -- Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses
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Genesis 1:6-8 | What Does it Mean to Be Good?
God said: Let there be a dome amid the waters, And let it separate waters from waters! God made the dome And separated the waters that were below the dome from the waters that were…
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The Vineyard Workers (2 September 2018)
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He…
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When Your Cat May Also Be God
you say "more?" and he says "yes" and then you say "even more?" and he says "yes" and you say "i have no more left" and he says "yes" and you say "but i cannot stop?" and he says
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Universal Salvation, Universal Love
I asked my pastor last night, an amazing woman named Jill McCrory of Twinbrook Baptist, what her most radical belief was w/r/t God and the Bible. She said, "Universal Salvation…
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Some Things What I Believe
When I tell you that I am a Gnostic Baptist, it's not a lasting label. I haven't been anything long enough to safely (and sagely) say, "THIS I BELIEVE," with any sort of lasting…
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Suffering, Part 1: Margaret
Who were the homestead wives? Who were the gold rush brides? Does anybody know? Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages they wrote? The land was free, yet it…
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"Advice" by Ruth Stone
My hazard wouldn’t be yours, not ever; But every doom, like a hazelnut, comes down To its own worm. So I am rocking here Like any granny with her apron over her head Saying, lordy…
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Mystery
"I was here and this house was here, you and I and this evening were here, and they had always been here." -- John Fowles, The Magus
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"I battled the Holy Ghost once on the laundry porch"
Truth is a Gentlemen’s Agreement between two people, neither of whom are gentlemen, neither interested in honesty. Instead, these people are simply polite fictions dressed up in…
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"I Guess I'll Read My Bible Elsewhere"
A few weeks ago, at the Meeting House, Zach was breathing too loudly while he was sitting in quiet contemplation for the still small voice of God. A woman in front of us, panicked…
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"Your Belief Undoes Your Disbelief"
After years of no real belief at all, one late fall I felt called to be a Catholic.