Home of fiction writer and self-proclaimed King of Chapter One
Hey there. Long time, no blog. I plan on getting back to blogging through Mark soon, but first I wanted to post a little personal news and share a little story about it. The news is that Sakina and I have been going to this storefront Wesleyan church called Resonate since last Fall. It’s been a … Continue reading Go Forth and Resonate
This quote from Dr. King keeps coming up in my timeline: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Honestly, this is a quote I adore, and have adored forever, because it is beautiful and succinct and *true*. But it is a quote I am beginning to hate. Because it is misunderstood and misused, and makes love feel so damn *easy*.
If I ever write my own version of the Bible, "Jesus sighed" will be its own standalone verse, just like "Jesus wept." Seriously, people should quote it more.
This is Jesus as #TheResistance, getting right up in the face of the Kingdom gatekeepers, defending the poor and the weak. This Jesus makes my little liberal heart swell. But then this other story drops in, casually and unwelcome, like a fart in an elevator.
Jesus has been preaching and healing, healing and preaching. And it's going well. We are now past the point where he's a hipster messiah that only the "cool" sick people know about. People are coming from miles around to watch him do his thing. And then, things get really weird. I'm not going to quote the whole … Continue reading Mark 6 – It’s a dinosaur!
The truth is, the Church has a long history of excluding undesirables, sometimes altogether, sometimes from leadership, and sometimes relegating them to second class status. People whose skin color is the wrong shade. People who are the wrong gender. People who love wrong. We are not nearly as evolved from these first century Jews as we'd like to think.
John R. Ford 