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b506626
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Jesus led her out of the canyon, back to the camp. Mary said, "I definitely want the water." Jesus smiled. "The water you will have." "What will become of the gods?" she asked. "The roots and tunnels of Gaia lead down to Hades. The angels will drag them down to Tartarus and bind them with the others." She blurted out what she had just realized. "You are dispossessing the gods from the land." He looked at her as they walked through the fores..
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Brian Godawa |
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20523ce
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In mere moments, the armed guards were dead, the nobles were dead, and all of Nimrod's potential rivals had been purged in a river of blood. In mere moments, Nimrod had consolidated and secured his absolute power through a swift and mighty show of force, sorcery and bloodshed. He breathed a sigh of great accomplishment. Nimrod was indeed potentate of all the land. Semiramis was his queen. But now, he must rally the mob or find himself overr..
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Brian Godawa |
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a2b30ee
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precious look on John's face. A mixture of revelation and confusion, like he doubted what he had been proclaiming might actually be coming true. Jesus had chuckled and thought of dunking John in the water as a playful prank, but thought better of it because of the seriousness of the moment. Baptism was a serious sacrament indeed. It was a symbolic ritual that recapitulated the cleansing waters of the Great Deluge. In the days of Noah, the f..
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Brian Godawa |
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0cc53a3
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wonder what city the 'Son of David' is going to enter in triumph to claim his universal kingship? Why, Jerusalem of course, where he will claim the holy temple and demand eternal priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. And there you have it. The Messiah as prophet, priest and king. But why wait? Let us go there right now." The wind whipped up around Jesus. Sand got in his eyes. He closed them tight and stood up from the ground. Wh..
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Brian Godawa |
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c226f56
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You will have your earthly inheritance without all the death and destruction and bloodshed of the Day of the Lord." And then he spilled the barley. "All I ask is one teeny tiny thing in return. All you have to do is fall down and worship me." Jesus looked Belial in his eyes, deep dark pools of malevolence. He whispered back, "Be gone, Accuser. For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'" Belial sig..
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Brian Godawa |
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c419ef9
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David had asked Saul for split residence between Gibeah and Bethlehem. He would be gone to shear sheep in the summer months, and during lambing, as well as harvest, when all other hands were needed in the fields. Also, many of his older brothers would be conscripted in the military. Michal already dreaded David's absence and he had not even moved in yet.
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Brian Godawa |
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b5317c3
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Dagon met with Ba'alzebul, Asherah and Molech in the sanctuary of his temple. They had come to discuss the latest intelligence delivered to them by Asherah's spies. Dagon said incredulously, "Nimrod? King Saul is in the hands of the spirit of Nimrod?" "So we think," said Asherah. Ba'alzebul added, "That means he cannot be the Chosen Seed of Yahweh." Molech said, "That means Israel's fall is at hand. I will have them passing their children t..
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Brian Godawa |
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eaa6404
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Anxiety was getting the better part of all of them. They had been seeking to destroy the Chosen Seed for so many generations, they had stopped counting. Ever since they and their two hundred comrade Sons of God had fallen from heaven before the Great Flood, they had sought to corrupt the human bloodline. They made Mount Hermon their cosmic mountain and base of operations. They revealed occult secrets to mankind, took on the identity of gods..
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Brian Godawa |
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9f8be63
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watched Jesus and the disciples. The brothers saw residents of the city that were standing around or near the visitors begin to tremble violently. The people could not control themselves. They fell to the ground howling and screaming as if in torment. But the voices were not their own, for the cries had an eerie, otherworldly presence to them. Evil spirits possessed the people. There were a dozen or more of the spirits, all belching out bla..
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Brian Godawa |
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f2015ef
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Goliath said with somber voice, "Since it is our custom to grant defeated deities some amount of vassal-like privilege, the Lord of Ashdod, Mutallu, thought it only gracious to allow this Yahweh an audience in Dagon's presence. But the next morning when the priests opened the temple, the image of Dagon was on the floor, face down before the Israelite ark." Lahmi and Ittai gasped. Warati sighed. Ishbi said, "That is only the beginning of the..
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Brian Godawa |
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0c7f6ca
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Goliath could not tell for sure until the lad had reached to within fifty or so feet of him. He was puny. And he wore no armor. He was clad as a shepherd without his cloak. He had a shepherd's staff and sling in his hand. He looked like a teenager. In fact, he was quite handsome and Goliath thought it would be a pleasure to sexually violate this stripling. But he was insulted by the challenge. He boiled with rage. He screamed out to his ene..
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Brian Godawa |
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fcc3872
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Philistine Lords knew the Rephaim ranks were too crucial to their success as an army, so instead, they decided to take responsibility and get rid of the abominable offense. They sent the ark away on a cart pulled by two unblemished milking cows and accompanied by a guilt offering of images; five rats and five tumors made out of gold, one for each of the Philistine Lords of the pentapolis. They reasoned that if it was Yahweh that had harmed ..
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Brian Godawa |
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53902b5
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Simply put, the representation of events in the media does not track their frequency in the world. As sociologist Barry Glassner notes, the murder rate in the United States declined by 20% over the course of the 1990s, yet during that time period the presence of gun violence on American news increased by 600%. If you want to be a good intuitive Bayesian--if you want to naturally make good predictions, without having to think about what kind..
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Brian Christian |
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522123c
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She headed out into the hall and knocked quietly on his door. "Come in!" Megan took a deep breath and stepped inside. "Hey." Finn looked up from his desk as if startled. "Hi," he replied, pushing his hands against the thighs of his jeans. He glanced past her at the hallway, but when Megan turned around, she found they were alone. "What's up?" Megan asked. "You really shouldn't be in here," Finn said. Megan's heart dropped like a stone. "I k..
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Kate Brian |
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b433fc3
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I'd hesitated as I followed him down through the high-vaulted entrance hall with its mahogany panelling and terrazzo floor, and the glass cases covering beautifully detailed models of straight-funnelled merchantmen long dissected by the breakers' torch. The splendour of a bygone age in miniature, where even the scaled likenesses gleamed with the proud craftsmanship of the men who had built them. They didn't make models in the yards today. N..
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Brian Callison |
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231e930
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Squaring her shoulders, Megan stepped out into the hall and her bare foot was almost flattened by a remote-control car. She jumped out of the way just in time and watched the thing zip down the hall and hop a makeshift ramp. Megan's eyes widened in horror as she saw what was at the other end of the jump. The car slammed into a mountain of wrapped tampons, which exploded all over the hallway at impact. Ian raced past her, laughing maniacally..
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Kate Brian |
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676c7db
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All the heroes in the Hebrews Hall of Faith (Heb. 11) had sinful moments, lapses of obedience and even periods of running from God's call or struggling with their Creator. It would not be heresy to suggest that Noah may have had his own journey with God that began in fear and ended in faith. In fact, to say otherwise is to present a life inconsistent with the reality of every human being in history. To say one is a righteous person of faith..
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Brian Godawa |
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f4af5f0
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In the carnival hall of mirrors which is our memory, we distort what we see. In Ernie's mirror image of me, I am magnified, elongated into a girl who led him on, the object of his great, unhappy, unfulfilled love. While he, in the equal if opposite distortion of my mind's mirror, is reduced to a squat manikin from my past, a dull stranger, remembered only for his minor quirks.
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Brian Moore |
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3acc391
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With every fall of the sun and rise of the moon, I can hear it. The Prophecy. It echoes through the halls of time. It is written on the surface of every star. Even the sun and moon cannot withhold the news of the second coming. I hear it. And I fear it.
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epic-fantasy
fantasy-fiction
fiction
light
moon
novel
sun
young-adult
young-adult-fiction
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Brian A. McBride |
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ab66f51
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Martha, this hotel doesn't pay enough for you to play Wonder Woman. These fools look like they will stuff you in the trash compactor. Take that money, let these Negroes in that room, and stroll your ass down this hall like nothing happened.
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Brian W. Smith |
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0f965ae
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He came to save sinners, to heal the sick, to preach the good news to the poor, and to live a common life hidden from his people for thirty years. He did not come to entertain kings and be served in palace dining halls.
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Brian Kennelly |
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6fca4d8
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Postmoderns are not less interested in religion than ever before. Indeed, they are exploring new religious experiences like never before. The church has simply given them a less interesting religion than ever before. Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic
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Brian D. McLaren |
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b8d3e80
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Don't we need some "secular" social space where diverse people of faith can encounter one another with some level of privacy and anonymity? Isn't the real scandal not that our religious leaders might be imagined walking across a road or talking as friends together in a bar, but rather that their followers are found speaking against one another as enemies, day after day in situation after situation? Questions like these have always mattered...
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Brian D. McLaren |
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f07e3d7
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Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy--Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human--are deeply embedded not just in Christian history, but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous vices often lie hidden. . . . We are coming to see in the l..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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d9ba4c8
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globalism (for better or worse) transforms personal and ethnic identities, creating hyphenated and cosmopolitan identities--in which people consider themselves first and foremost citizens of the earth and members of the earth's ecosystem more than as citizens of a nation or members of a religion. This identity disruption creates fissures and fractures among existing elites who are still managing parochial national, cultural, ethnic, or reli..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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21ba55c
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If, for you, orthodox means finally "getting it right" or "getting it straight," mine is a pretty disappointing, curvy orthodoxy. But if, for you, orthodoxy isn't a list of correct doctrines, but rather the doxa in orthodoxy, which means "thinking" or "opinion," then the lifelong pursuit of expanding thinking and deepening, broadening opinions about God sounds like a delight, a joy."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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6e65310
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The new dimensions of the message are examples of the Spirit of truth doing what Jesus promised he would do: continuing
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Brian D. McLaren |
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c12d540
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I have a confession to make.121 Almost every time I tune in to religious radio or TV, I want to change my religion. I
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Brian D. McLaren |
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e4c9d43
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Because I follow Jesus, then, I am bound to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, atheists, New Agers, everyone (even religious broadcasters, I was just reminded by a still, small voice). Not only am I bound to them in love, but I am also actually called to, in some real sense (please don't minimize this before you qualify it), become one of them, to enter their world and be with them in it.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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917ce81
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there is no way to peace, but rather peace itself is the way to life in God's kingdom. (This
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Brian D. McLaren |
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c0aaf4a
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He creates a new kind of hero: not warriors, corporate executives, or politicians, but brave and determined activists for preemptive peace, willing to suffer with Him in the prophetic tradition of justice.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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d10e7ca
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We must, therefore, never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God--whether in prose or in poetry. Romano
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Brian D. McLaren |
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4372c90
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A generous orthodoxy is like that. It acknowledges that we're all a mess. It sees in our worst failures the possibility of our deepest repentance and God's opening for our most profound healing. It remembers Jesus' parable that wherever God sows good seed, "an enemy" will sow weed seeds. It realizes that you can't pull up the bad without uprooting the good too, and so it refrains from judging. It just rejoices wherever good seed grows."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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0bb4537
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Here's the papal proclamation of 1455 that empowered the Christian kings of Europe to enslave, plunder, and slaughter in the name of discovery: invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their pers..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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861699e
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Surely many courageous Christians spoke out against the savagery of their so-called civilized fellow Christians? And surely many compassionate Christians spoke out for the humanity of the so-called savages? Sadly, very, very few actually did, notable among them a Dominican friar, Bartolome de las Casas. His
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Brian D. McLaren |
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4738ea0
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With my own eyes I saw Spaniards cut off the nose, hands, and ears of Indians, male and female, without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it....Likewise, I saw how they summoned the caciques and the chief rulers to come, assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were taken captive and burned....They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill ..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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8ef816e
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Oddly, I've never heard of a church or denomination that asked people to affirm a doctrinal statement like this: The purpose of Scripture is to equip God's people for good works. Shouldn't a simple statement like this be far more important than statements with words foreign to the Bible's vocabulary about itself (inerrant, authoritative, literal, revelatory, objective, absolute, propositional, etc.)?
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Brian D. McLaren |
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6881a15
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The surface causes of environmental carelessness among conservative Christians are legion, including subcontracting the evangelical mind out to right-wing politicians and greedy business interests. Too often we put the gospel of Jesus through the strainer of consumerist-capitalism and retain only the thin broth that this modern-day Caesar lets pass through. We often display a reactionary tendency to be against whatever "liberals" are for. T..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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32d1297
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The wise preacher of Ecclesiastes might say, "There is a time for everything--a time to be laid-back and a time to be outraged; a time to be tolerant and a time to stand up and say, 'I'm not going to take this anymore.'" The challenge for all fighters, of course, is to be sure they find out what is now truly worth fighting against, and then to be sure they have something that is truly worth fighting for."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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c129e52
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The popular and domesticated Jesus, who has become little more than a chrome-plated hood ornament on the guzzling Hummer of Western civilization, can thus be replaced with a more radical, saving, and, I believe, real Jesus.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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278f525
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And we are coming to see that this repentance and conversion do not express infidelity to Christ, but fidelity, because we are coming to see in the life and teaching of Christ, and especially in the cross and resurrection of Christ, a radical rejection of dominating supremacy in all its forms.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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3053b45
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In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old discredited paradigm of supremacy: God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all. The king of kings and lord of lords is the servant of all and the friend of sinners. The so-called weakness and foolishness of God are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human regimes.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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ddc4fac
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Motivated thus by their beliefs in God and their lust for gold--as dangerous a cocktail today as then--the Spanish Christians ravaged Latin America, as did their Portuguese counterparts. Bartolome concludes, "We can estimate very truly and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe with..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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db06479
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In the aftermath of Jesus and his cross, we should never again define God's sovereignty or supremacy by analogy to the kings of this world who dominate, oppress, subordinate, exploit, scapegoat and marginalize.3 Instead, we have migrated to an entirely new universe, or, as Paul says, "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) in which old ideas of supremacy are subverted. If this is true, to follow Jesus is to change one's understanding of God. ..
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Brian D. McLaren |