Tag: Scripture

But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62 Reflecting on this saying of Jesus raises questions. What is the “looking back” behavior or orientation that Jesus is referencing? What does it mean to be be “fit” for…

I am convinced that we should read the holy scriptures as telling us more about who to follow rather than how to follow. If we have to choose a chief way to understand these texts, and we naturally have to prioritize some reading over others, we need to read these words as foremost speaking about…

I suppose that all of us at some point in school were assigned a play to read for a literature or English class, probably one of Shakespeare’s classics. Mine was Macbeth. Since the dialogue was so very difficult to understand, the teacher spent considerable time explaining what was happening as we read. We discussed each…

I am guilty of taking scripture literally, but not very seriously. For example, as a 20 year-old preaching for a rural congregation (what possessed them to ask me to do that I will never know), we were studying the Gospel of John in our Sunday morning Bible class. When we ran across passages such as…

The sacred writings recognized by the Church are trustworthy accounts of how others have encountered God, replete with honest admission of failures and missteps. Through the long story told by all these smaller ones, the glory and truth of God becomes clearer while human misconceptions of the divine nature are exposed. Scripture testifies to the…