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814031b
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So my argument in this book is this: we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bodies and spirits of people, we should rethink those teachings.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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562b28f
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Because the holy things we need for healing and sustenance are almost always the same as the ordinary things right in front of us.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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4923eb4
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I keep making mistakes, even the same ones over and over. I repeatedly attempt (and fail) to keep God and my fellow humans at arm's length. I say no when I should say yes. I say yes when I should say no. I stumble into holy moments not realizing where I am until they are over. I love poorly, then accidently say the right thing at the right moment without even realizing it, then forget what matters, then show tenderness when it's needed, and..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1eb836e
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Oh hey, God told me to tell you something: Get over yourself.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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365e4b6
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New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn't live..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2dd95bb
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In the Jesus business, community is always a part of healing. Even though community is never perfect.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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53b2d18
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hoping perhaps that their virtues -- their ability to have faith in God in the face of an oppressive empire or a failing crop or the blight of cancer -- might become our own virtue, our own strength.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f4aee7f
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There's a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference between good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way truth has. Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because, when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I've substituted being good (or appearing t..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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7ca655a
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Her relationship to God wasn't doctrinal. It was functional.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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9b7bc7b
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Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is all about Jesus's lavish blessing of the people around him on that hillside, blessing all the accidental saints in this world, especially those who that world -- like ours -- didn't seem to have much time for: people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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5c5d749
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And the strangeness of the good news is that, like those in Matthew 25 who sat before the throne and said Huh? When did we ever feed you, Lord?, we never know when we experience Jesus in all of this. All that we have is a promise, a promise that our needs are holy to God. A promise that Jesus is present in the meeting of needs and that his kingdom is here.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c69d4d4
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Chloe kept drawing and hiding and peeking out to look at my tattoos again. "Did those hurt?" she asked, which was right around the time I noticed the shiny thin lines on her arms. I thought to myself."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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59ed044
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I knew Catholics existed, with their saints and candles and rosaries, and all their other exotic ways of being wrong.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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16d5372
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The week that the gospel text was that awesomely weird story of Jesus casting a legion of demons out of a naked dude and into a herd of pigs, pigs who then threw themselves over a cliff and drowned in a lake? My pastor friend Heather posted the following question on my Facebook wall:
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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cf282b2
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What makes us saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather God's ability to work through sinners.
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lutheran
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0968472
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As I wrote in I, like any good middle-class mainline Protestant, tend to arrogantly look down my theological nose at talk of demon possession as superstitious snake-handling nonsense, as though it's the spiritual equivalent of a monster truck rally.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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80483cf
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Sin is the self curved in on the self.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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844732f
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We met the next day for coffee and when I asked her what was up she said, "I think I'm having a crisis of faith." To which I thought, "Yeah," she continued, "I-I think I believe in Jesus." "
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c63257a
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And anyway, it has been my experience that what makes us the saints of God is not our ability to be saintly but rather God's ability to work through sinners.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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0894357
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Maybe we want the people who care for us and lead us to not be like us, to not struggle like us, because if we realize they, too, are hurting and needy, then maybe the spell -- the illusion that we're okay, that we're in good hands -- breaks.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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92d3f60
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makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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5484c4a
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Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore. The
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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82726a5
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pas * triks) noun 1). A term of insult used by unimaginative sections of the church to define female pastors. 2). Female ecclesiastical superhero: Trinity from The Matrix in a clerical collar. "What on earth was that noise?" "A pastrix just drop-kicked a demon into the seventh circle of hell!" 3). Cranky, beautiful faith of a Sinner & Saint. --NewWineskinsDictionary.com" --
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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335e70b
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Personally, I think knowing the difference between a racist and a saint is kind of important. But when Jesus again and again says things like the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, and the poor are blessed, and the rich are cursed, and that prostitutes make great dinner guests, it makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin. Knowing what category to place heml..
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judgment
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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8d8c77c
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Sometimes God needs some stuff done, even though I can be a real asshole. There is absolutely no justice in the fact that Larry loved me and that church. But if I got what I deserved in this life, I'd be screwed -- so instead, I receive that grace for what it is: a gift.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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48edd88
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My outrage feels empty because what I am desperate for is to speak the truth of my burden of sin and have Jesus take it from me, yet ranting about the system or about other people will always be my go-to instead. Because maybe if I show the right level of outrage, it'll make up for the fact that every single day of my life I have benefitted from the very same system that acquitted George Zimmerman. My opinions feel good until I crash from ..
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outrage
self-righteousness
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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7bdcfd4
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The fact is, we are all, at once, bearers of the gospel and receivers of it. We meet the needs of others and have our needs met. And
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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f67097d
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the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because if it's real it means we don't "deserve" it. No"
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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c9fdd31
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I looked harder at Matthew 25 and realized that if Jesus said "I was hungry and you fed me," then Christ's presence is not embodied in those who feed the hungry (as important as that work is), but Christ's presence is in the hungry being fed. Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisoned but in the imprisoned being cared for. And to be clear, Christ does not come to us as the poor and hungry. Because, as anyone for whom th..
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romanticizing-poverty
service
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2d7bef8
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There are some Christians who talk about the rapture as if the good people in heaven will be given these awesome box seats from which to watch the bad people suffer on earth. This is the good people's reward for never having any fun while in this earthly existence. This sort of fear-mongering bullshit sells like hot cakes. People eat it up. And why wouldn't we? It panders to the selfish, hateful, vengeance-seeking parts of ourselves, like G..
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rapture
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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2bdb745
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We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape ..
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self-presentation
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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8543b9d
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On All Saints' Sunday, I am faced with sticky ambiguities around saints who were bad and sinners who were good.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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529b8d0
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I often think that the effort we put into trying to pretend something about us is true -- that we are less than we are or more than we are or that one aspect of ourselves is the whole story -- is based in a fear of being really known, of being truly seen, as we actually are. Perhaps we each have a wound, a vulnerable place that we have to protect in order to survive. And yet sometimes we overcompensate so much for the things we are trying..
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vulnerability
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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1b3b0c8
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I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins.
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sin
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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cb9dcb8
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When all of it is given meaning in the larger story of Jesus Christ, it destroys us, then pours our melted selves back into another form that still bears the marks of how we got there. Then we become something that can bear light, the brightness of which is not diminished, even when divided and borrowed.
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light
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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3200df3
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when Jesus again and again says things like the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, and the poor are blessed, and the rich are cursed, and that prostitutes make great dinner guests, it makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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05bda79
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There are many reasons to steer clear of Christianity. No question. I fully understand why people make that choice. Christianity has survived some unspeakable abominations: the Crusades, clergy sex-scandals, papal corruption, televangelist scams, and clown ministry.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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17812d9
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Because, after all, it was Jesus who had all the powers of the universe at his disposal but did not consider his equality with God something to be exploited. Instead, he came to us in the most vulnerable of ways, as a powerless, flesh-and-blood newborn. As if to say, "You may hate your bodies, but I am blessing all human flesh. You may admire strength and might, but I am blessing all human weakness. You may seek power, but I am blessing all..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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653105f
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being loved, really loved, can sting a little, reminding us of all the times we have loved poorly or not at all, all the ways in which we have done things that make us feel unworthy of real love.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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d6295fc
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But as much as being the person who is the best Christian, who "follows Jesus" the most closely can feel a little seductive, it's simply never been who I am or who my parishioners need me to be. I'm not running after Jesus. Jesus is running my ass down."
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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765dced
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I told them that when I heard Billy was bright, an artist and musician, and when I heard that he loved his family and loved people through difficulty in relationships, and when I heard that he struggled with heroin and booze addictions and an unhelpful brain chemistry, and when I heard that he was beautifully queer and passionate and sometimes played piano in his sister's dresses, I knew. I knew that Billy was pretty much exactly the kind o..
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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78120a5
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Many of us would pray not to die in a car crash before we were baptized, like other people pray to not get sick before their employee benefits kick in.
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humor
fundamentalism
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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cf41c61
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The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ.
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |
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e5566d1
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I remembered that, at one point in my life, my own depression had felt so present, so much like a character in my life, that it had actually felt right to go ahead and give her a name. I named my depression Frances
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Nadia Bolz-Weber |