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What Being "Pro-life" Truly Means
Abortion was supposed to solve many of the social problems that have now become endemic. If pregnancies could be planned and women had ready access both to contraception and abortion, then rates of illegitimacy should go down. Likewise, if every child was a wanted child, then of course child abuse should become a thing of the past, or at least it should become a rarity. Logically, safe, legal abortion makes perfect sense...
Review of “Preaching from Home” by Gracia Grindal
This book intrigued me in the first place because of my interest in Lutheran hagiography: I figured it might direct me to some givers-of-Christ I hadn’t known before. And it certainly did that—but learning about some remarkable Lutheran women is only a piece of the whole book’s project, which is packed with far more than the title would lead you to believe...
2013 Theological Reading Challenge: The Martyrdom of Polycarp
Polycarp was not quite the earliest Christian martyr—there’s Stephen in Acts, and the other apostles too, of course, and then Ignatius—but the story of his death by burning at the stake in the year 156 was widely circulated and powerfully inspirational to early Christians and has continued to be so ever since. (He’s commemorated on the ELCA and other calendars on February 23.) In the best tradition of hagiography, his story teaches about the gospel and gives the glory to Christ, but through the medium of another human life, one to which we can relate, a life into which we can even imagine ourselves. Chapter I already spells out the remarkable gospel qualities of Polycarp’s death...
2013 Theological Reading Challenge: I and II Peter
It wasn’t till this time through that I really grasped the “gestalt” of the Petrine epistles (which seems to be the recurring theme of reading large swaths of the Bible). I Peter is pretty well summed up in 4:19: “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” The new believers in Christ seemed to have expected a smooth passage; after all, they were on the side of the mighty, good, saving Lord! So the persecution that followed quickly after they faith startled them and shook them badly. Peter is trying to bolster them up: suffering doesn’t mean that their faith is wrong or that God has turned against them...
2013 Theological Reading Challenge: Matthew
As I observed with the Pentateuch, it’s quite a different experience to read a book of the Bible all at one go instead of in drips and drabs. But while the first five books of the Old Testament contained plenty of surprises and forgotten tales, the Gospel of Matthew surprised me with how much of it I already knew, and quite well, at that. This can be attributed to the lectionary, I suppose—though the parts left out of the lectionary leapt out at me for their lesser familiarity. (Why aren’t we allowed to preach on the temple tax in the fish’s mouth, anyway?)...