Liminality

In Mark 7 when asked why they eat with defiled hands Jesus says to the Pharisees: “You hypocrites . . . Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” (Mark 7:7,15) In other words, what defiles a person is not the cleanliness of their food but rather the inner workings of their heart. Within the human heart there resides all manner of evil. Jesus lists twelve in Mark. They are: Fornication, Theft, Murder, Adultery, Avarice, Wickedness, Deceit, Licentiousness, Envy, Slander, Pride, and Folly. (Mark 7:21-23) All of these vices derive from an inflated sense of one’s own importance. They list humanity’s inability to become self-restrained. They invoke a ‘haughtiness’ and an arrogance one can have. This list is what humanity uses to hold itself over and above the spiritual and to say its way is better than God’s. But the sad part is we as humans have the capacity to ...

Ephesians 6 talks about the Armor of God. We, like the Christians in Ephesus, are in a battle. But the battle, if we are honest, is against ourselves. When I started out my time in college I wanted to change the world. I envisioned leading a multimillion dollar corporation that was completely nonprofit and totally run by volunteers to give homeless people a place to come for psychiatric, physical, emotional, and spiritual treatment. I envisioned a homeless hospital. I got into class at Belmont and decided I wanted to learn everything in its original language. I wanted to read books in Latin. I wanted to study everything from Genesis to Revelation. I wanted to come up with the new system and new thought that would revolutionize Christianity forever. I knew I could crack the case on who the Historical Jesus was and I knew I could even understand Freud if I just spent enough time thinking. I was eager and I was ready. But the classes got hard. Languages are tough. Li...

I honestly believe our marriage mandate is to love our spouse as Christ loved the world. We are to be subject to one another. We are to love one another. No one person has dominion, domination, or final say-so in a marriage relationship. The roles are equal. The functions (who washes and who cooks) are for each couple to decide. The Bible is quite unclear about the roles for spouses. On first glance Ephesians 5:21-33 seems to be saying women are not as good as men. Women are unequal. They are beneath and below the role and function of men. But the Bible is written from a 98% (purely a guess) patriarchal worldview. We, post-Easter, post-Enlightenment, post-modern people must attempt to read scripture through the idioms of our generation so we can communicate the majesty and message of scripture with startling freshness of the original text. What does this mean? It means we must take what we know about first century living and juxtapose it to our worldview and then plac...

Last week I performed a wedding for a cute couple in my church. During the festivities I managed to speak to several friends of the couple that I had never met before. In our conversations I was asked a question in which I had no ‘on the spot’ answer. The question was, Why do we need to become members of a church? In other words, why do I have to make an official commitment? How official is the commitment to joining a church? Why isn’t it obvious that me showing up each week means I’m devoted? I thought about this question and this was my immediate response. I know for some people salvation only comes through the church and I respect that opinion. Baptist Heritage seems to carry more of a soul freedom response that suggests salvation is not through the church but through the individual. The church is the housing place for those individual souls. It is a place for souls to work together to become the hands and feet of Christ, to partner with God in the ‘ongoing creati...