The Goodness of God

We like the way this scripture sounds. "Love is patient. Love is kind." It's a glorious example of what Paul is capable of as a writer, but it's not a romantic or nice text. He's reaching the height of some hard hitting rhetoric about the Corinthians arrogance and lack of love. This ode of love is a master stroke in an extended argument. It's a challenge. Love is the greatest of all. Is that refle...

Daryl Van Tongeren is a Professor of Psychology at Hope College, and he researches life's biggest question - including the psychology of religion. In 2024, he published Done: How to Flourish After Leaving Religion, which looks deeply at folks who have left religion - who decided that they are done. His words carry a strong message for churches everywhere. We are going to live into our mission of m...

The Body of Christ is one interconnected body, and we are all a part of it. We each have a piece of the puzzle and a part to play. It's easy to get comfortable, to sit on the sidelines, to use our gifts for our own purpose. It is also easy to ignore how we are all connected together. When we do that, we miss something vital. Us, using our God given gifts, form God's plan for the transformation of...

(Editor's Note: The original version of this video had an editing mistake that made it unwatchable, and then, we were out of the studio for 3 weeks. This is the fixed version!) Melisa Winburn is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Appalachia Service Project - an organization that has been helping Appalachians with their homes since the 1960s. It's an organizations that strikes the bal...

We can all feel like imposters sometimes - like everyone around us is more gifted than we are. Christians can also get obsessed that whatever gifts that they possess are the most important or most spiritual. People clearly felt both of these things in the 2000 years ago as much as we do now because Paul devotes a good chuck of 1 Corinthians to yelling the opposite of both at the top of his lungs....

Mary, the mother of Christ, plays a huge role in the first chunk of Luke's Gospel. She remains a global celebrity today with churches, art, apartment complexes, and entire nations devoted to her. She is a tremendous historical anomaly. She's not a queen or an empress - just a normal teenager for Galilee. Her faithfulness rather than the situation of her birth makes her worthy of her lasting follow...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas - everywhere you go. You house is filling with objects, boxes, and shipping envelopes. John the Baptist's call to simple and connected economic existence can feel particularly hard hitting. "If you have enough, share the rest. Don't exploit people." How can I do this, when I've got four more people on my Christmas list? This probably isn't a tension that...

Angel Studios decided to tell the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and we decided to go see it. Neither of those decisions were great ones. The movie is more earnest, better acted, and more in line with Bonhoeffer's life and theology than one might imagine. Does that make it a good film? No, no, it does not. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After naming John the Baptist, Zechariah gets his voice back and belts out a prophecy of his own. Those promises from of old, that felt like they dwindled over time, are back with a vengeance. God will speak. A king from the House of David will rule God's people. God will make all things well. It's going to look way different than before, but that difference is its strength. Christ's birth kicks o...

Every Christian year begins with a scripture about the end of the world. This isn't to scare people, but to give people hope. In the end, God wins handily. It won't always look like that's what's going to happen, but God has kept every other promise. So, we being every year with a reminder of the promise still hanging out there unfilled, and God's history of righteousness. We can carry this with u...

Jesus's trial before Pontius Pilate does start to feel like two men quipping at each other about the nature of true. Pilate gets portrayed as hapless or spineless, but history reveals him to be absolutely ruthless. On the other hand, Christ won't even raise a hand in his own defense. He dies willingly out of love. This conversation functions on a symbolic level for the difference between earthly e...

1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture, on one level, is a film about how the word "homosexual" entered the canon of Scripture less than a lifetime ago. It was done via the translators for the Revised Standard Version (RSV), and its use has only risen with later translations. However, the team behind the RSV retracted its usage. That shift reveals one of the real themes of the movie that...

Most people with Depression would recognize Hannah's story. She's crushed by a weight that she can't shake. Some people in her life try their best to help. Others go out of their way to make it worse. Hannah seeks help from her religious leader and gets accused of being drunk. Fortunately for Hannah and all of us, God always sees clearly our need and situation and always responds with love. Hosted...

In our attention obsessed world, it's easy to feel forgotten and left out - that no one sees or appreciates what you're doing, and that you don't matter. The real nature of the universe doesn't work that way. God has perfect sight and sees perfectly what you are doing. For the most important audience, your devotion is always seen and appreciated. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...

Ten years ago, Central UMC in Galveston restarted with four people, a young pastor, and a dream to be more connected to their community. Instead of building a mountain of plans, the got to listening and learning. Out of that came a mission to serve folks without homes and folks who for whatever reason don’t fit into church as normal. They rip out half the pews, replaces those with couches, started...

God sure does seem to love a good irony. The blind man sees Jesus most clearly and walks away from the encounter completely healed and inspired to follow Christ. However, due to his faith, he had a different kind of wellness long before his direct encounter with Christ. His soul knew God so intimately that he lived spiritually well even as his blindness limited other aspects of his life. Our world...

Lovett Weems Jr. and F. Douglas Powe Jr.'s book Sustaining While Disrupting leans into the tension of trying to do something radically different with church. You have all these people tied and attached to the old way being. However, you need to be doing things that are radically different to reach folks who aren't interested in what you are doing. Navigating that requires intentionally leading fol...

Job throws what might get described as a temper tantrum, and God responds. God doesn't zap Job or judge Job harshly. God doesn't really answer Job's question either. God simply states that God is in fact God, and Job very much is not. This ancient pondering on human suffering and the feeling of divine absence ends in mystery. God works on a scale that we cannot comprehend, and, on some level, we m...

Jesus doesn't place a limit on discipleship. He call us all to live after his example and give everything that we have. As humans, who are not in fact God, we need to walk more carefully. We can do great harm, when we substitute our own voice for the voice of God. Christians are all called to absolute devotion, but we each have the responsibility to discern it for ourselves. Hosted on Acast. See a...

Contemporary worship, as we know it, is like 25-30 years old at this point, yet it's still receiving this same criticism that it did at the beginning: "Isn't this just a concert but with the name Jesus added?" This time, the criticism is coming from a new generation. Joshua Abraham, a writer for Texas A&M's student newspaper, The Battalion," levels the "all concert, no substance" argument at t...

God upended the entire cosmos for love of us. What are we doing in respond? God suffers willingly, everyday, for love of us? Do we even come close to matching God with reciprocal passion? Romance may seem an odd angle to approach to the Letter to the Hebrews, but Scripture contains a long tradition of interpreting God's relationship with humanity in romantic terms. Approaching it this way, we have...

God isn't a character in the Book of Esther, yet it's all about doing what God wants. It's a realistic telling of uncertainty and needing to act, when you don't have all the confirmations that you want. God has arranged things in perfect order, but Esther and Mordecai can't see the full picture. They act. It works. God's people were saved, and God's will was done. We too live in that situation mos...

Love UMC, in Baytown, Texas, was born out of a sudden need for a United Methodist witness in a city that was once well served. Right now, they are a scrappy new church start that first met in a decked out barn and now meets at a local college and various locations around the community. At the core of their vision is an inclusive theology that leverages the power of diversity. Suburbs and suburban...

Humans seem dead set on claiming every advantage possible. The greater the power that they have merely raises the stakes of what they will try to claim. God has literally all the power in the universe. Jesus as a God among us contained that power. How did he use it? He died for us rather than demanding a life of advantage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jesus was just as human as we was divine. He was God among us, but he felt and had all the same instincts as every other human - including the instinct towards self preservation. In calling Peter, "Satan," we see some of that instinct bleeding through. Across the Gospels, we see Christ wrestle with this idea that he is to die That struggle opens up for us an opportunity to witness the true charact...