Entries Tagged 'Diversity' ↓

Every wondered how two people can look at the same passage of the Bible and come away with such different applications? Take Scot McKnight’s little quiz (he calls it an interactive assessment). You might be surprised. [take the hermeneutic quiz]

There’s a subculture within mainstream society today that is extremely antagonistic toward communities of faith because they perceive them as oppressive, homophobic institutions. I’m part of that Christian community and I love God’s people, but I’m also brave enough to stand up and admit that at times the church has been homophobic, unjust, and downright mean.

Do we extend grace to the people who have tasted the pain of divorce? Do we show grace to people who are divorced and remarried, an area Jesus specifically called sin? If so, then how do we not show grace to people in a sexual relationship that Jesus never mentions?

If we’re going to stamp out the lingering antagonism and have any legitimacy to speak out on the issue of marriage, it will have to come out of the reality of our lives, not simply our doctrine.

Here’s a thought.

Is the church brave enough to step out of the box and champion the call for justice on behalf of gay and lesbian people? If we stand on the other side of the aisle and allow discrimination against homosexuals and lesbians to continue without a hand raised or a voice uttered, we’ll find it’s difficult to say convincingly, “But we love you in the name of Jesus.”

To show the love of God we must stand up for the civil rights of those whose orientation is homosexual on the basis of discrimination. When we stand with them they’ll see us as their friend. It’s not compromise, neither is it a statement that says we have bought into homosexual eroticism. We simply recognize that discrimination is wrong and stand with them on the matter.

When we minister to this growing population of God’s creation, in that setting, and on their turf, we’re going to be surrounded by people not living the biblical ideal. I don’t affirm that, but neither do I condemn them.

Take a trip to your local college campus and what you’ll discover is that non-Christian religious groups conspicuously outnumber the Christian groups. Wicca, Bahai, Muslim, and Buddhist groups dot the campus landscape as never before. Religious diversity is not only encouraged but also considered supreme in this new culture. Harvard professor Diane Eck states that, “Before 1965, we could conceive of ourselves as mainly a Christian nation but the influx of people of radically different religions and conversion of others to those religions — Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism — has resulted in two kinds of change: 

• first, we must relaize that the diverisites we find in religions today are changing the face of American, and
• second, that America is changing the religions, evolving in a climate of diversity and freedom.” Newsweek Magazine recently pointed out “…young people are openly passionate about religion—but insist on defining it in their own ways.”   

In the transition from the old era to the new we have a mix of people with copious worldviews. But in the very near future we will watch a generation be born in an exclusively unique environment. The United Kingdom, Western Europe, Australia, and Canada have been post-Christian for a decade or more. America is just now transitioning and Latin America is a decade behind us in this transition. This being so, we need to see ourselves as missionaries; what do missionaries do? They cross borders.

from ReclaimingtheMission.com

Among the new missional leaders, church is the name we give to a way of life, not a set of services. We do not plant an organized set of services; we inhabit a neighborhood as the living embodied presense of Christ. Missional leaders now root themselves in a piece of geography for the long term. We survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among “the poor (of all kinds)” and then by the Spirit water them, nurture them into the life of God in Christ. [read the complete post]

In his fine book peppermint-filled piñatas, Eric Bryan says …

Christianity hasn’t fared well when it comes to race relations. Those who claimed to follow Christ have attacked, oppressed, and killed Arabs during the Crusades, Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and Africans during slave trade. Within recent memory, white “Christians” who were part of the Ku Klux Klan actively sought to segregate, intimidate, and even kill blacks, because of their skin color. We may try to navigate the world with political correctness, but what are we doing to show the world that we represent God’s love for all people?