by | Oct 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
We’ll never see the glory of God if we look only to our own brand.
Greek mythology may not be a guide to the Christian life, but I appreciate the clever commentary the ancient stories offer. I was recently reminded of Narcissus, the young man who neglected all other loves and physical needs so he could stare endlessly at his own reflection. In the most common version of the story, Narcissus eventually dies while sitting by the reflection pool—the tragic and ironic conclusion to his selfish love.
The old, dark comedy still applies—maybe especially applies—to our modern ego and pride. If we want to cultivate humility these days, we have more than just pools and mirrors to contend with.
We are God’s image bearers. Yet aided by our phones and social media, many of us spend more time with our reflections than even Narcissus did, certainly more than people have at any other time in civilization. The overwhelming majority of American adults now own smartphones. And with billions of mobile devices in circulation around the world, the situation is the same in many other countries. We are a selfie society, encouraged to view and post about ourselves often, in hopes of attracting more likes and boosting our “brand.”
We forget Narcissus’ peril. But we also forget the grace that is spoken through his story: After Narcissus dies, he is turned into a flower.
Late last summer, I played a concert at a rustic flower farm in Washington State, when the dahlias were in full bloom. Rows and rows of spectacular pompoms swayed like velvet fireworks bursting from their sturdy green stems. With guitar, piano, and drums, we sang at sunset under a white canopy tent, the community and the musicians coming together to lift our voices over the flowers. We shared a palpable awareness …
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by | Oct 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
Medieval Christianity holds up a helpful mirror to the contemporary church.
In recent decades, evangelicals studying faith in the Middle Ages have done much to recover its variety and richness. Yet a popular perception persists of this period as a “dark age” of artistic and cultural stagnation. In Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages, Grace Hamman, an independent writer and scholar, brings this era to life for contemporary believers. Greg Peters, professor of medieval and spiritual theology at Biola University, spoke with Hamman about her efforts to make medieval Christians better known and appreciated.
What made you want to write this book?
The idea first came to me during the COVID-19 season. I had just had a baby and left the academy, and I was feeling sad about leaving medieval literature behind and not knowing what was coming next. I started thinking about how I could make space for people outside the academy to encounter medieval literature in a nonintimidating way. This paved the way for a series on my podcast, Old Books with Grace, where I explored the various ways medieval folks speak about and portray Jesus. From there, I figured I could keep running with this theme. I didn’t want to stop.
In the book, you examine seven images of Jesus as seen through medieval eyes. Do you have one or two favorites?
It’s hard to say! But one that comes to mind is the image of Jesus as a mother. Medieval contemplatives like Julian of Norwich and Marguerite of Oingt were riffing on a preexisting monastic tradition of depicting Christ in this way. To modern Christian ears, this can sound vaguely New Age or slightly heterodox. But the image has deep roots in Scripture, such as when Jesus speaks of himself as a mother …
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by | Oct 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
My outsider experiences have only strengthened my confidence in God’s goodness and sovereignty.
Four years ago, I embarked on a master’s program at a theologically conservative seminary. As a Black, politically liberal woman, I stood out from most of my classmates.
I’m toward the lower end of the income scale compared to most of my peers. I’m also in my late 30s and happily unmarried, while my friends have nearly all coupled off. Three years ago, I began suffering from as-yet-undiagnosed health problems. To top it all off, I run in nerd circles, but I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars, Star Trek, or Harry Potter movies, and I’ve never heard the Hamilton soundtrack.
Sometimes being an outsider has been beyond my control. Sometimes it was a consequence of my choice to pursue certain interests or communities. Other times I sought it out, as with my choices of universities, churches, and living abroad.
No matter how being an outsider has come about for me, I’ve always learned from it. Over time, I moved from insecurity about my difference to neutrality to recognizing the value in it and letting it better me. It has taught me about the bigness of God, his closeness, his power, and his person- and circumstance-specific care.
During a trying season of life, I wrote to a friend, “Are all stations and circumstances that illuminate the true nature of grace a gift? Since Paul boasts in his weakness and hardships because they facilitate his most powerful encounters with grace (2 Cor. 12:8–10), then are all things gifts that bring to rest on us Christ’s power?”
It was my very differences that convinced me of God’s sovereignty over things like the time and place in which I lived and the family into which I was born. The realization that God was …
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by | Oct 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
Adaptations for COVID-19 are helping Christians reach incarcerated people, with eager cooperation from government officials.
To reach the chapel at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution in rural southeast Ohio, volunteers from the worship team at Rock City Church navigate a maze of checkpoints.
First, they sign in and show identification. One state prison official stamps their hands with invisible ink before another inspects the marks with a black light. Then they lug their instrument cases, amps, and coils of thick black cables behind an escort through a series of huge iron doors that beep like a game show buzzer before letting them in.
Rock City, a nondenominational megachurch based in Columbus, Ohio, started hosting worship nights at Chillicothe during the pandemic. Unable to come inside, they’d set up their equipment outside the prison fence and sing from the grass.
Prison officials eventually contacted Rock City pastor Chad Fisher—not to complain, but to ask for more. They noticed the music was having a positive impact on those incarcerated.
Rock City has run a prison ministry for years but had struggled to win over hesitant officials in several state facilities. That changed with the pandemic.
“We started getting calls left and right from prisons,” Fisher remembers of early 2020. “They were saying … ‘If you’re willing to give us your weekend service, worship, and message, we will show it to our entire population within the walls.’ ”
Rock City now sends footage of its Sunday service to 17 state and federal prisons around Ohio, along with a regular team of volunteers who worship alongside the incarcerated people. Most weeks, Fisher begins his sermon by welcoming those watching online, including “those watching from a prison cell.”
It’s not every day the government …
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by | Oct 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
Equipped with Scripture, history, and a defunct restaurant on the southern border, Sami DiPasquale hopes he can soften politics-hardened hearts.
When Sami DiPasquale visited conflict-torn Kurdistan for a research trip in 2009, he did not expect anyone there to know or care much about where he lived: El Paso, Texas. But when he told people where he was from, their eyes would widen.
El Paso! Wow! Isn’t it dangerous?
Aren’t things kind of crazy there?
He was barraged with similar questions about the southern US border in Egypt when he traveled there with a nonprofit in 2015. And in Thailand. And in Italy, which he visited in 2017 for his wedding anniversary.
Even in the United States, it was clear that people he met knew his town mostly as a symbol of chaos and violence at the nation’s border—despite the fact that El Paso consistently ranks as one of America’s safest major cities.
Over time, a wild idea took shape in DiPasquale’s imagination. What if El Paso could instead be sacred ground, a place where pilgrims came to seek the heart of God?
That idea is why, on a sunny March afternoon earlier this year, DiPasquale was leading a nine-person group from Christ Church Austin on a tour along the border wall. DiPasquale is the executive director of Abara, a nonprofit that seeks to build “connections beyond borders through mutual understanding, education, and meaningful action.” One way Abara does that is through Border Encounters, three-day educational immersion trips to the border.
That afternoon, the Border Encounter group shielded their eyes from the sun and walked beside the 30-foot-high steel slats dividing El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Texas and Mexico. On a crunchy patch of dirt, the travelers came to a granite plaque commemorating El Paso pioneer Simeon Hart, who on that spot in the 1850s built his private residence, …
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