ken wilson online

Seems to be a preoccupation of religion these days.  Let me show you how wrong the world is about sin, righteousness, and judgment.  Let me show you how wrong the world is about abortion and gay marriage,  and evolution and climate change and on and on and on it goes…..    The three-fold preoccupation of much religious discourse it seems: what is the worst of sin, the pinnacle of righteousness, the certainty of judgment?  If we can only be clear on these, we will be right, orthodox, faithful.   When the Spirit comes, surely he will show the world how wrong it is.   How wrong they are.  But will it turn out as we expect?
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Well I’ve gone and made a few of you nervous, which means we’ve got a good conversation going about Jesus and Paul and understanding this book that is so important to us or we wouldn’t bother.  In some of the comments to my previous post I detected a certain unease about the idea that there might be any difference in the relative weight or significance of various biblical writers or books in the Bible.  As if any suggestion of such a difference entailed a rejection of parts of the received text of Scripture.
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My father-in-law, Stanley Rozell, used to talk about hitting the ball “down the center of the middle.”  What was the center of the middle of the church’s message?  They devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching” said Luke, the author of Acts.  What did that refer to in historical context?  It referred to the remembered words and deeds of Jesus now compiled  in the gospels and to whatever the risen Jesus taught between the first Easter Sunday and Ascension Thursday. The only references we have to this post-resurrection instruction indicate that it was focused on the messianic meaning of Moses and the Prophets and Jesus’ take on “the kingdom of God.”   That’s what they devoted themselves to.  How about us?
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