Author: Adam
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Why We’re Relationally Dumb
Part 2 – Respect, Trust and Loyalty Tangles of Reciprocal Harm In my previous post I suggested that even though we have advanced technologically we are going backwards when it comes to managing our relationships. As Dallas Willard says, our “most intimate relations are tangles of reciprocal harm, coldness, and resentment.” In a number of…
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Why We’re Relationally Dumb
Part 1 – Driving with a blindfold Progress In many ways the modern world seems to have advanced in just about every way conceivable. Few die of dysentery (at least in the developed world), we carry enormous multi-media libraries in our pockets, and travelling across the globe is easy and affordable. Yet, one only has to…
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Cruciform Love
Cruciform love takes it cue from the cross; Christ’s death was the ultimate act of selflessness that focused not only on others as individuals (“Christ died for me”) but on others as corporate bodies, as communities in need of reconciliation and harmony (“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”). Cruciform loves resists the…
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Do Not Fear (the right way)
“The maxim of illusory religion runs: ‘Fear not; trust in God and He will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you’; that of real religion, on the contrary, is ‘Fear not; the things that you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to…
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Praying for Enemies
“We assault others when we act against what is good for them, even with their consent.” Dallas Willard Who is an enemy? Using Willard’s insight we have a basic way to understand the difference between a friend and an enemy. As Christians (like most people), we don’t usually like to think of anybody as an…
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Good Debt
Even the Gentiles I became a Christian at 15. Before that, I hung out with kids in the city who were not strangers to abusing alcohol and other substances. We had an unspoken code of ethics among us that you share and share alike. If you were unwilling to receive “gifts” from others, that meant…
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A Green Community
Here’s a few recent pictures of the community’s property.
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Friendship and Suffering
Substitution or Recapitulation? The substitutionary model says Christ suffered so we don’t have to. The Orthodox perspective is that Christ identified with humanity so we could partake of His divinity. Christ suffered so we could know how to suffer and not be broken. He identified with humanity in both its sympathies and antipathies. In other words,…
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Christmas at the Goodwill Store
Our strings ensemble is very busy this time of year. We have several performances planned in hospitals, churches, a nursing home, and the rescue mission. We also have a full-fledged Christmas concert scheduled on December 21, 2012 at 7:00 pm at the community. If you can make it we would love to have you! One of…
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Following in the Footsteps of God
By Rembrandt [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Most Christians are familiar with the passage in Isaiah 53:5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” As a young Christian I heard this passage used almost…