#spirituality

The Upside Down World ~ The Blog

Sep 3, 2012
4 min

Bloggy Linky Goodness

OK, my week had eight days in it this week. But it’s a holiday, so you won’t notice anyways and we’ll just keep it to ourselves, k? BTW, can anyone tell me if hyper-dramatic 6 year old girls ever work the histrionics out of their system. Or is this just our ramp up for her teen years? Cuz if she keeps this up, her bedroom door might end up as damaged as mine is from all the slamming. Although maybe that would help – I haven’t slammed my bedroom door in ages because it’s compl

Sep 2, 2012
4 min

Let’s All Be Fundamentalists!

Statement of (The Upside Down World’s) Fundamentalist Faith: There is great disagreement within the church regarding whether the bible should be taken literally and if so, which parts must be taken literally. Unfortunately, this ongoing disagreement has often kept us from paying enough to those verses which we can all agree ought to be taken literally. So, although there is freedom in Christ which allows for a variety of ideas and understandings to be held by those who follow

Aug 30, 2012
6 min

Judging Christians

What would happen if we all stopped judging each other tomorrow? Would everyone start sassing the boss, not realizing they could be fired? Would families start roasting each other for dinner, knowing no one would judge them for it? Is judging properly the only thing that’s standing between us and a world of complete chaos (as opposed to the one we currently inhabit!)? Or to put the question another way – what effect do we think we are having when we observe for others what is

Aug 29, 2012
7 min

A Christian Feminism*

When I first started looking at the issue of women in the bible, I wasn’t attached to any particular set of ideas about women and men. As a child of our times a more egalitarian ideal made a lot of sense to me. But I also knew that we get a lot further by conforming ourselves to God’s ways than to our own ideas. I wasn’t closed off to the idea that a subordinate role for women was something I would need to make peace with. In fact, it was trying to make peace with a subordina

Aug 28, 2012
7 min

When The Good News Becomes The Really Good News . . .

In late July, 1549, the first Christian missionary reached Japan bearing the “euangelion” – the “good-message” – the “good news” – English “gospel” to the people of Japan. The missionary carrying the good news of Jesus Christ was Francis Xavier. The Japanese he found there lived in a society completely arranged around their religious beliefs – various ancient forms of Shintoism. Shintoism actually teaches that there were spirits outside of one’s own tribe spirits who can some

Aug 26, 2012
7 min

From Greek to Latin and Grace to Condemnation

When Willow Creek Community Church was celebrating their 20th anniversary, I was a regular attendee. At a celebratory anniversary service, Bill Hybels, the head pastor, shared the story of how WCCC came into being. One of the main driving forces behind the founder’s efforts was the idea that so many people were facing an afterlife of eternal torment because they had not come to faith in Jesus Christ. I remember him talking about all night prayer sessions in which this issue b

Aug 18, 2012
5 min

Forgiving God*

We’ve all heard that we need God’s forgiveness, but rarely do you hear people speak of our need to forgive God. More’s the shame because anyone who has ever had or will ever have a real relationship with God will at some point struggle with the necessity of forgiving Him. It may not be theologically sound, but it’s true nonetheless. We are hurting people. I don’t know anyone who isn’t. Or wasn’t. This world is filled with wonder and joy, but it’s also hard. People die when th

Aug 16, 2012
10 min

What the Hell?

There’s a long tradition in Christian circles of painting vivid images of hell in order to scare people into acting right, believing the right things and buying books. In fact, some people claim that the popularity of early colonial pastors who gave particularly vivid or gruesome hell and brimstone sermons was due to attendees coming seeking a good scare and some entertainment. The colonial version of horror movies, they say. Believe it or not, to this day those people who st

Aug 15, 2012
7 min

Eternal Punishment or An Age of Chastisement?

It’s Hell Week! And no, there’s no burpies or hazing involved. Unless you consider discussions of ancient Greek a form of hazing. But don’t worry, I’ll make it easy. The only thing going down here are old ideas about hell that we are well rid of. Our first Hell Week installment showed that nowhere in the bible does it actually say that hell or punishment or torment is eternal. It’s for an “age” – an undefined, but limited period of time. Today we’re going start by looking at

Aug 14, 2012
7 min

A Word With One Meaning or 30?

Let’s pretend that you are a bible translator and you are working on creating an English translation of the bible from ancient (kione/biblical) Greek texts. And let’s say that there is one word – a noun – with a clear, agreed upon meaning. Every time you come across this word, all you have to do is substitute the English version of the word into the text and it works just fine. There’s just one hitch: if you do this your translation will be accurate and faithful to the ancien

Aug 13, 2012
8 min

Hell Week – Back to the Beginning

Allow me to take you back to the halcyon days of the early aughts. Wikipedia was new. Destiny’s Child was still together. The first Lord of the Rings movie was coming out. And I was re-reading the Old Testament. I think a lot of people have had the experience of re-reading something like the bible and realizing that you didn’t absorb any of it the first time through. This was exactly what was happening to me. As I read the bible again, I was a bit overwhelmed by a lot of the

Aug 12, 2012
5 min

Bloggy Linky Goodness

Well, it’s been a slow week around here as you might have noticed. Next week will be different, but you’ll have to head down to the bottom of this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness to find out more about that. In other news, I shaved my legs and pits for the first time in months. Most exciting thing to happen around here in a while, I tell ya! But I do have some good writing/reading for this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness to share with y’all: Radical Practice Needs Deep Roots in Doc

Aug 5, 2012
3 min

Bloggy Linky Goodness

Before I get started, allow me to share one of the weird things I’ve been thinking about. First, the number 40. Remember how it rained for 40 days and 40 nights for Noah? And how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. And Jesus retreated to the desert for 40 days before starting his ministry. And it takes 40 days to gestate a human baby. Coincidence? I think not. Now on to Bloggy Linky Goodness: Looking Out For Number 1 (Part 1) In this post Joe Thorn shares his

Aug 4, 2012
4 min

Holy Spirit Raining Down and Welling Up

Have I ever told you about the time that I stopped listening to Christian music, threw away my Christian t-shirts (“Color Outside the Lines – Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind – Romans 12:2” was my fave) and took down anything from my living space with a bible verse on it? Believe it or not, I did it so I encounter God again. For years after my first encounter with God, I would have experiences in prayer or worship or even jus

Aug 3, 2012
4 min

“High Priests of Caesar’s Court”

I came across a post by Greg Boyd today which I think makes a great follow-up to my post earlier this week – Our Faithless Culture Wars – that I hope you will go read. The choice excerpts for me: We sadly assume our highest calling is to be the high priests of Caesar’s court, telling it how God allegedly wants it to spend its money. Of course, being the high priests of Caesar’s court means you’ve got to get into the messy complexity of this court. How do we know that fighting

Aug 2, 2012
6 min

It’s the Prime Directive

Yesterday, I saw a blog post by an atheist asking, “If I had the power to save everyone at the theater that was just shot up because I was all-powerful and all-knowing, and I didn’t do it, wouldn’t I be evil?” The old theodicy question – how do we explain a world of evil if God is all loving? It’s a legitimate question. And one that we have a hard time answering well. So, I was thinking about that atheists’ question last night while laying in bed. And then because I was drift

Jul 31, 2012
3 min

The Feel Good Church vs The Church of Blessed Suffering

Do you realize that we are supposed to feel good about ourselves? God declared creation good and upped it to “very good” once man and woman were in place. After all that got messed up at the fall, he then sent his Son to live, die and rise again so that we could be redeemed – be very good – again. Our desire to feel good about ourselves comes from a deep, God-created place and should not be mocked or belittled. The problem is that it’s not easy to get to a place of feeling go

Jul 31, 2012
3 min

Our Faithless Culture Wars

A while ago, I finally realized that I needed to take Jesus’ teachings much more literally. He said, “don’t judge” and I said, “I’m not judging, but clearly some things are wrong. It’s not judging to say that.” He said, “love, pray for and serve your enemies” and I heard, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” He said, “do not resist the evil man” and I signed petitions against groups and politicians in order to protect Jesus’ values. Jesus said, “so do not worry, saying, ‘What sha

May 30, 2012
4 min

Being Passive is a Discipline

Passivity is a discipline. In fact, sometimes I think it is the hardest discipline – particularly in a culture like ours. We humans like to DO things. We like to build. We like to invent. We like to build relationships and parse them out when they breakdown. We like to plant and grow and make. We like to talk and write and sing. We like to be masters of our fate, captains of our ships, directors of our plays. We seek, we strive, we fight, we climb mountains simply because the

Aug 29, 2011
1 min

Walking the Labyrinth

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