From the post Progressive Christianity and the Bible

There definitely is uncertainty inherent in the progressive Christian outlook. But the view that it is a bad thing is based on a faulty understanding of “faith.” In modern English, that word has come to mean “believing incredible claims in spite of lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary.” Historically, even in English the term meant something different, and more importantly, the Greek word usually translated “faith” in the New Testament has overtones not only of faithfulness but also of trust. Trusting is not what you do when you are certain you are right. It is what you do when you know you could be wrong. Being willing to live with uncertainty can be an expression of faith in God rather than its antithesis.

From the post Rachel Held Evans | When grace is just a doctrine

Now we could get into a rather ungraceful argument about the true meaning of grace, but as I see it, grace is about giving without expecting anything in return. It’s about cutting ourselves and one another some slack. It’s about letting go of grudges and extending love when it is not deserved. It’s about acknowledging all the brokenness within us and around us…and loving in spite of it. 

The ultimate denial of grace, then, is not to misunderstand it theologically, but to withhold it. The minute we withhold grace because of some prejudice or fear on our part, it becomes nothing more than a doctrine. 

From the Amazon.com page for the book If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics

Let us calmly celebrate
that we are held
by an order that emerges from the chaos,
and by a chaos that loosens suffocating structures,
and let us learn to trust
that this play of Order and Chaos
is Spirit
dancing its way
into a sanctified future.

I would like to read this book of prayers.

From the post When Being “Saved” Isn’t Enough by Shawn Smucker. The whole article is worth a read.

“Save yourself!” It seemed the common cry of everyone taunting the man being executed: passers-by, those who caused his conviction, his executioners, even his fellow criminals. “Save yourself!”

But he didn’t. He didn’t save himself, because he knew the part he played in the redemption.

If you follow this man, have you taken the bait – have you “saved yourself,” and then congratulated yourself on a choice well made, a new life found for yourself?

Or are you participating in the redemption? Are you seeking out what your part might be in redeeming the world?

Michael Horton blogs about Harold Camping being a false prophet because the predictions that he’s made haven’t come to pass. But in this paragraph he gets sloppy with his pronouns and makes it sound as though Jesus is the false prophet because his predictions failed to come to pass. “What??” some will say, but then others will reply that Jesus predicted he’d return within a generation of his ascension.

Of course, Jesus may return tomorrow, or the next day, or long after we die. We simply do not know. However, we can be sure that the errors that he teaches—quite apart from his failed predictions—are enough to regard him, tragically, as a false prophet.

From the post Rachel Held Evans | The Great Disappointment

I confess that beneath my playful derision lies a hint of fear, not that I’ll be “left behind” but that I’m already caught up—in a delusion, in false hope, in a God of my own making…and perhaps, in a looming Great Disappointment.  

Like it or not, Harold Camping and his followers make us laugh because we see a small piece of our faith in theirs. They are exaggerated caricatures of ourselves. 

We too are guilty of projecting onto God our expectations and desires. 

We too can get overconfident in our interpretations of the Bible. 

We too expect God to judge the way we think he should judge, act when we think he should act, be who we think he should be. 

And, you gotta admit,  there’s a chance that we too might be absolutely, devastatingly, irrecoverably wrong.

From the post My Understanding of Christianity at Exploring Our Matrix comes a quote about trying to get both our Christian doctrine and practice right:

… I suspect that it may be more Christian to actually follow in practice a Jesus we do not completely understand, than to get as close as possible to understanding a Jesus we don’t really follow.

A post at Otagosh quotes from a book review by Thom Stark.

These apologists are perpetuating an insular Christian culture, giving well-meaning Christians permission to switch off their brains and their consciences and go about their business, pretending everything is all right. The apologists don’t care to convince those struggling on the margins of faith – they’re preaching only to the converted, only to those who are looking for easy answers to questions others are asking them, but which they aren’t asking themselves.

Thom Stark, Is God a Moral Compromiser?

James McGrath speaks about confronting proponents of Young-Earth creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

I think that one aspect [of expressing doubt to conspiracy theorists] is to learn to speak confidently about our uncertainty, so as to be able to not merely say “Perhaps” and “Possibly” but a direct and forthright “You have no way of knowing that” and “Your confidence is simply a feeling you have, but it isn’t justified by the evidence.”

Quote from Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. Found at blog A Holy Experience

I slept and dreamt life was joy, I awoke and saw life was service, I acted and, behold, service was joy.