Archive for the ‘readings’ Category

black friday

November 23, 2007

“Distance does not decide who is your brother and who us not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in the world – and stop being its apologist.” –Bono, rock star/prophet

I am already getting sick and tired of Christmas – not of the celebration of Christ’s birth or fellowship with friends and family, but of the countless commercials, news stories, and traffic jams promoting and producing mass consumerism and debt. Coming off fresh stories about how much we eat on Thanksgiving, the news reports quickly turn today to Black Friday, the day many businesses begin generating a profit for the year. This is the high holy day of Theocapitalism.

To me, this concept of Black Friday is both scary and telling. It means that our entire economy is dependent on this buying frenzy. For many this frenzy only leads to greater levels of individual debt; and with the trade deficit only getting larger, we seem to be consuming much more than we produce. The result is an unsustainable economy. (more…)

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everything must change, pt. 1

November 16, 2007

You expect to fall short of the Gospel, which makes the disappointment easy to swallow. When you grow up in church culture, you learn to live with a certain level of guilt; knowing that you’re not quite measuring up. You also learn how to live with a certain level of grace; knowing that you will always be imperfect and make mistakes, but that your heart is to do better and that God ultimately forgives us for being human.

Out of necessity, disappointment in self becomes easy to live with. But when you live in church culture, especially in American church culture, it is difficult to handle disappointment with your religion or country. It’s also difficult to handle disappointment with your local church or a particular politician – but luckily you can easily move from one to another without ditching the broader body of believers or citizens.

When you grow up in American church culture, you are indoctrinated into believing the core ideals of America and Christianity are as perfect as Jesus Christ – when practiced and lived correctly. That’s why it can be difficult to find that both are so flawed, based on incomplete pictures of the Gospels. (more…)

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cannot serve both god and money

November 13, 2007

The organized church comes immediately under a compulsion to think of itself, and identity itself to the world, not as an institution synonymous with its truth and its membership, but as a hodgepodge of funds, properties, projects, and offices, all urgently requiring economic support…

If it comes a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of the building fund the organized church will elect – indeed, has already elected to save the building fund…

No wonder so many sermons are devotes exclusively to “spiritual” subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history’s most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.

– Wendell Berry, by way of Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change, by way of jamespedrick.com

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