Attack With Love

“The drama of the book of Job is a vigorous, artistic invitation in Israel to rethink in radical ways the theodicy explanations that over time were undoubtedly reduced to moralistic clichés. Over times Israel had become too familiar with God, too much able to predict and control, so that ethics was programmed into a series […]

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Though the fig tree does not bud, and the vines are without grapes;
Though the olive trees disappoint, and the fields produce no food;
Though the flock is removed from the fold, and the cattle disappear;
Yet I will rejoice in YHWH! I will rejoice in the God who saves me!
YHWH, O Adonai, is my strength! He has […]

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Here is (a good guess at) a list of books I’ve mentioned so far as we’ve journeyed through the Gospel of John (in no particular order):
1. The Light Has Come, L. Newbigin
2. God Gave Wine, K. Gentry
3. Celebration of Discipline, R. Foster
4. Peculiar Treasures, F. Buechner
5. The Message of the Psalms, W. Brueggemann
6. John, J. […]

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“Akiva ben Joseph was born in the Judean lowlands in 50 C.E. He was illiterate and despised scholarship; he worked herding sheep. Then he fell in love with a rich man’s daughter. She agreed to marry him only when he vowed to devote his life to studying the Torah. So he did. He learned to […]

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“The Protestant cleric who used to look down on the manipulation and forced emotionalism of the old-time tent revivalist does not shrink from using modern liturgical gimmickry such as balloons, dance, clowns, drama, and contrived gestures of intimacy to induce various emotional states in his own congregation. ‘Anything to shake them up a bit’ was […]

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Augustine said to a group of people, “We are talking about God. What wonder is it that you do not understand. If you do understand, then it is not God.” - Quoted from Annie Dillard’s wonderful book, For the Time Being (New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 47
Buy this book… everyone should.

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“Men and women are mysteries known only to themselves until they speak a word that opens up that mystery… The words people speak have their life in them as surely as they have their breath in them… Words people speak have dynamite in them and that word may be all it takes to set somebody’s […]

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“In this completely revised and expanded version of his underground classic, Rev. Jim West takes you through centuries of Christian history, looking at the role alcohol played in the church during the Protestant Reformation, in the American colonies, into the time of Charles Spurgeon and beyond.
With humor and wit, West winds through time showing in […]

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