The Goodness of God

God's innate goodness is one of Christianity's core tenets. We agree. We named this show the Goodness of God. However, God is not a vending machine or a bad version of Santa Claus. It's not just insert a prayer and get out your desired result. Things we pray for don't come to pass. Things that we pray against happen. So, we have to zoom out and dig deeper into the goodness of God. Hosted on Acast....

Human life pulls us in a lot of directions. Our culture values the right grindset. Social media companies hope that you never rest and just keep clicking away. We can hear the story of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and see it as wildly unrealistic. Get back to work, Mary! While we can't let go of every responsibility, we can be more intentional in seeking God in the midst of it all and limitin...

We want exceptions to who we have to love because the alternative challenges us in a deep and dark place. Humans are shockingly good at dehumanizing other humans to create lists and categories of people that we don't have to care about, who we can harm, who we can exclude. Jesus obliterates all of that with one parable - the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The hated enemy gets cast as the hero, who...

God just is. God is everywhere. God is in your life. God has power. God is constantly moving. As humans, we develop tools and techniques that help us comprehend, access, and see what God is doing. We have religious words for them like "ritual," "worship," or "sacrament," These things can help us find God, but they are not themselves God or powerful. In the story from 2 Kings, the great general Naa...

Freedom is a fascinating thing. Paul gives us that Christians are free in Christ, but what is it that we are free to do? It certainly doesn't seem to be freedom as often culturally defined. Instead, it's the freedom finally live free of things that drag us down and away from the life that God always intended for us. Christians are free to live and love a more whole and constructive human life. Hos...

In what feels like a spot on description of life with major depression, Elijah flees into the wilderness and essentially collapses. God sends angels to care for him. Then, in what one of the Bible's best known scenes, Elijah experiences the direct presence of God not in some grand gesture but in stillness and silence. We long for the grand gestures, but so much of how God moves and so much of what...

Proverbs lyrically declares God wise and personifies that wisdom, but this should lead us to ask the next order question: what is wise? As humans, we often conflate complexity and wisdom, when if fact, the wisest answers are often deceptively simple and elegant.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The story of God's people is a never ending relay race, where one generation passes the baton to the next in an unbroken chain. The Holy Spirit continually moving in people is what facilitates that. In the story of Pentecost, we celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit, but it just kept going from there. We can struggle to believe it sometimes, but the Holy Spirit will always keep things moving al...

We are promised by Jesus that God, in the form of the Holy Spirit will continue with us as our guide and advocate. However, there is a fair corollary question to that we don't answer often enough - how exactly does that work? People often talk of feelings or mystical experiences, but what if you want desperately to have one of those, and it just ain't happening? The answer is that we should look a...

Peter really thought that he understood how God worked. Even after Jesus's earthly ministry, he thought that some things remained true. Specifically, Gentiles were still on the outside of what God was doing. Then, all of sudden, God tells Peter that it's otherwise and then directly demonstrates in no uncertain terms that Gentiles can receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Peter then sets a great ex...

The Book of Revelation has a fearsome reputation. Thus, it gets avoided consistently by most folks not interested in the End Times Industrial Complex. It will get shouted at you by very sweaty people with an ax to grind and world to end, but it seldom gets calm consideration as a piece of Scripture. It's actually a story of hope, of hanging in there, and of God's inevitable victory. It's also a wo...

A lot of people suffer from an internal perfectionism that we then project on to God. Yes, God cares deeply about how we behave. Yes. God sets standards and does expect us to rise to them. However, when we see Jesus encounter a well meaning follower, Peter, who screws up royally, Jesus offers Peter a way back. Jesus doesn't ignore what Peter did, but Jesus also doesn't damn or reject Peter for it....

More often than not, responsible consideration ends up saying, "This scripture isn't about you!" Or, at least, you might be able to gain something from this scripture, but you were not its original or primary audience. The story of Doubting Thomas (or more accurately Late to the Meeting Thomas) is absolutely about you. It's about anyone who tries to find faith in an era, when you can't just stick...

Easter is Christianity's highest of the high holy days. Jesus rose from the dead, and reality shifted on its axis. At the heart of the entire Holy Week journey is God tipping God's hand about how God approaches humanity. Despite a never ending series of disappointments, stretching back through time and stretching into the future, God choose to make love us God's first priority. Hosted on Acast. Se...

Jesus has one more night to try and drive home what he needs his disciples to know before everything gets blown into chaos. He has to make his point about what it really means to be him and to be a follower of him. The stakes at the Last Supper are weirdly high. Jesus knows what's coming. Judas has made his choice. The wheels are in motion. So, Jesus takes off his outer robe, kneels down at before...

The normal order of things goes: 1. Plan the battle. 2. Fight the battle. 3. Declare victory in the battle. At the root of Christ's triumphal entry is a novel ordering of a battle. 1. (Before the beginning of time) Plan the battle. 2. Declare victory in the battle by triumphally entering Jerusalem. 3. Fight the battle by going to the cross. From a human perspective, the result of the battle is in...

Mary anoints Jesus with incredibly expensive perfume, and Judas pipes up inquiring if it was better meant for the poor. To many of us, this probably seems cut and dry, and a rare point for Judas. Jesus rules in favor of Mary. Why? How? It all boils down to the squishy mix of motivate, passion, and timing. The right thing isn't always the right thing, and the obliviously wrong isn't always that eit...

God has tremendous love and joy for a wanderer of who finds their way back home. We deeply love this aspect of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and it's absolutely true, deeply, and truly hopeful. When we wander, we can always come home and be welcomed with open arms. However, the other question that the parable asks, that we like to glance over, is whether, we, would have found our way home, are...

Humanity longs for more than mere existence, but we are not always great at finding that meaning in good and healthy places. That missing spot in our souls is meant to filled by the presence and power of God. That is the thing that will never leave us emptier than when we started. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What matters the most in life? What helps us overcome our existential fears? When all our physical needs are met, and we can finally appear out to deeper concerns, where do we turn? These are humans most profound and enduring questions, and we've come up with a whole hosts - including lean into decadence and excess. Paul uses his call to Christian unity to the Philippians to posit another answer....

After 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus gets tempted by Satan. In the exchange, Satan quotes scripture at Jesus, and Jesus counters with quotes from scripture. Jesus's temptations may look way different from ours. Satan can only tempt with doing the wrong good thing. We may have baser temptations, but we are not left alone to deal with them. God pours out strength if we will take the time and creat...

Peter and James and John get a powerful window into the true nature of this semi-homeless, traveling rabbi, son of a carpenter. Turns out, he's God, and at the Transfiguration, he gets wardrobe and company worthy of that. It's a cosmic tip of the hand to the deeper reality of our reality. Things may seem perpetually mundane, but God is in the world. So, our actual actuality has much deeper dimensi...

Our world feels utterly ripped apart, and it can appear impossible for the chasm to mend. When massive harm happens, forgiveness and healing seems unreachably far away. Joseph's brother did an extreme degree of harm to Joseph. The tried to kill him, chose to sell him into slavery instead, and robbed him of home, comfort, and love. For years, his life was a desperate struggle for survival. Yet, whe...

We can all too easily over spiritualize this whole religion. We can imagine a God that cares for souls, and thus, we should be in the caring for souls business. We trust in Heaven and serve no earthly good. God does care for souls, but God cares holistically - for the immaterial and the profoundly material. The Sermon of the Mount points to the soul. The Sermon of the Plain grounds us in reality....

Jesus leads Peter and friends to catch a massive amount of fish. This, my friends, is a metaphor for life in God's Kingdom. It's easy in our modern moment to feel massively disconnected and cut off, and it's even easier to believe that we cannot bridge the divides that rend us asunder. Yet, God can forge an abundance of connection. It's hard to believe that's possible, but that is exactly the kind...