In this post I would like to explore two of the horizontal love commandments– ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ and ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (the ‘I’ in question being Jesus). Let’s start with the observation that love is commanded. It’s not optional. It follows as well from this that the sort of love we are talking about in this post, while it certainly may involve feelings is not basically grounded or based in feelings one has for others. Feelings are notably unresponsive to attempts to command them. The sort of love Jesus has in mind then is commandable as well as commendable. It has to do with a decision of the will, resulting in loving actions.

Read it all.

From Dr. Witherington’s blog:

One of the things I have grown weary of in the last decade or so, is anti-ecclesial rhetoric. What I mean by this is the pitting of the ‘church’ over against Jesus, or ‘the established church’ over against more ‘organic’ models of Christianity (e.g. house churches, and the like). I suppose we all from time to time look for something or someone to blame our problems on, and the Christian church has become something of a punching bag, even for a goodly number of devout Christians. Sometimes this is because they have joined the ‘I’m spiritual, not religious’ movement, or the ‘I love Jesus, but the church…. not so much’ band wagon. Some of this frankly is caused by a profound misunderstanding of the word church/ ekklesia. Perhaps then, it would be wise to start this post with some basic definitions.

A good piece. Read and reflect on it all.

From Christianity Today online.

I recently posted a piece from Dr. Rob Gagnon regarding his perceived shift in Exodus’ stance on reparative therapy for gays. Today Dr. Ben Witherington chimes in on the underlying theology behind the shift. Drs. Gagnon and Witherington both make the point that it is entirely an unloving thing for Christians to encourage folks to remain in their sin, whatever the sin is, under the guise of God’s grace. I would wholeheartedly agree.

Robert Gagnon has a right to be disturbed about Mr. Chambers’s recent pronouncements. It is not an act of compassion to encourage people to embrace a view of salvation or sexual behavior that requires less in regard to holiness than both Jesus and Paul required of us. Indeed, it is recipe for disaster.

Read and reflect on it all.

An excellent piece by professor Witherington on the Satan.

C.S. Lewis once said it is perhaps the greatest trick or smoke screen or deception of Satan to convince people that they are too wise to believe in him. But at the same time, it is a mistake to give him too much credit as well. There is a balance between the extremes reflected in the NT, and this is in part because all of the writers of the NT believe they live in ‘this present evil age’ which, now that the Kingdom is breaking in, is passing away. Satan, after the death and resurrection of Jesus is fighting a rear guard action, for he has already lost the battle of D Day, and V-E Day is coming when Christ returns.

Check it out and see what you think.

Another fine post by Dr. Witherington, who, like Tom Wright, is not afraid to use his God-given faculties to wrestle with issues of faith and life. Worth your time to read.

You will notice that ‘critical thinking’ often comes up in the context of persons trying to decide what to believe and what not to believe. Unfortunately, ‘critical thinking’ has sometimes gotten a bad name, especially in very conservative Protestant circles because it is associated with people negatively assessing or even criticizing the Bible. This is unfortunate on various grounds.

Read it all.

An excellent Valentine’s Day gift from the gifted Dr. Witherington.

It’s  St. Valentine’s day,  a day which once was a holy day, and now has become a holiday. While I could spend some time as I have before on this blog on the subject of who St. Valentine really was, in the wake of the recent provocations by Jennifer Wright Knust and Michael Coogan trying to reinvent the wheel in regard the Bible’s supposedly mixed message on sexual ethics, in particular on the ethics of same sex  sexual intercourse,  it’s time to say— enough, is enough.

Neither the Bible, nor for that matter, my own Wesleyan heritage can be used to further the sort of agendas  Knust and Coogan want to promote.  The Bible is not an ink blot which one can read whatever way one pleases on controversial issues such as sexual ethics, and when the pontification involves absurd remarks like, Paul has no sexual ethic (has the author actually read 1 Corinthians 7?), or there can be little doubt that the love that David and Jonathan shared involved  eros not just philos,then it is indeed time to say, enough is enough. These are not only not plausible interpretations of key Biblical texts,  in light of the highly conservative sexual ethic of honor and shame cultures in the ANE [Ancient Near East] and in particular Jewish culture when it came to such matters, they are not even very possible interpretations of such material. What follows here is an expanded version of a piece I have offered before, with some tune ups in light of the recent salvos by Kunst and Coogan, and in preparation for the next batch of salvos on this subject that the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Read it all (and Happy VD!).

One explanation of Easter that will not do is the au courant academic fantasy that the disciples of Jesus worked themselves into such a frenzy of grief over the death of Jesus that they succumbed to mass hysteria and said, “You know, when we get together it’s almost like Jesus is still with us.” This is the old he’ll-live-on-in-our-memories rationalization of Easter.

Sorry, such an explanation explains nothing. For one thing, we have noted that the main reaction of the disciples to “Jesus is raised” was fear. They didn’t expect Jesus to be raised from the dead; in a sense they didn’t really want him raised from the dead. For another thing, has anything you have learned thus far about Peter suggested to you that he had a fertile imagination or a creative mind?

–Will Willimon, Methodist Bishop of the Birmingham, AL Area, Why Jesus?, 132

Another excellent piece on Christmas from one of my favorite Methodist writers. This also appeared as a chapter in the book, Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas.

We prefer to think of ourselves as givers — powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we — with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities — had little to do with God’s work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn’t think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it. A gift from a God we hardly even knew.

Read it all.