christian living on Oppression

Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts re...

For though [something] be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

The kingdom of God: God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.

How do we overcome the spiritual “power” of money? Not by accumulating more money, not by using money for good purposes, not by being just and fair in our dealings. The  law of money  is the law o...

When we are bitter, we delude ourselves into thinking that those who hurt us are more likely to be punished as long as we are set on revenge. We are afraid to let go of those feelings. After all, if w...

In this tragic world, we are surrounded by discontented people. Every minute of the day, it is possible to see evidence of this restless discontentment in the way people respond to circumstances. Peop...

Lord, our King, we confess our tendency to build homes and kingdoms that are more for us than they are for you. We confess the pride we take in our own security and ability to protect and to preserve....

In her engaging treatment, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes both the beauty and pain of seeing our own sinful nature: It is often true that once we are made to see, we don’t like w...

The ultimate reason for our misery, however, is that we do not love God supremely. As Augustine so famously put it in prayer, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they fin...

Almighty God, we take pride in our self-sufficiency while we look down on the weak who cannot provide for themselves. We praise others for their efforts, yet we demand perfection from our own families...

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is th...

Martin Luther King was shot because he preached and practiced allegiance to a different kingdom and rigorously opposed our present system.

If I withhold mercy, I have lost touch with the gospel. I have lost touch with God’s undeserved kindness and pardon.

Some people call religion the opiate of the people. Karl Marx had Christianity and our eschatological hope in mind when he said that. Some contend that pointing to the future as the Christian’s ultima...

Sometimes our successes can be more devastating than our failures. We fight, strain, and struggle in pursuit of something or someone that looks to be good, and after days or months or years, we obtain...

Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious tha...

Dave Nessia was starving himself to death while hoarding food. It was on the hit reality show Alone. After 73 days alone in the wilderness, he had lost 40 lbs. and his blood pressure had fallen to 80/...

Humility rests upon a Holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naug...

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.

God of all times and places, we confess that we try to limit our exposure to you. We try to limit your presence to a tidy little box, safely tucked away where we can pull you out as needed. We try to ...

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.

What can we say, O Lord, to justify ourselves? You shower us with grace upon grace. Your mercies are new every morning. And we find it hard to forgive others. Sometimes we are petty and hold grudges f...

Even in our moments of doubt, our lack of faith, and the blindness which means we fail to see God amongst us, God is still at work. God is still healing. God is still forgiving. Even when you fail to ...

The Christian who cares only for God’s approval lives free of the tyranny of conformist pressures, relaxed under the steady direction of the God who loves us and gives himself for us. Those who try to...

Living in the kingdom of God is a matter of living with God's action in our lives.

At issue here is the question: ‘To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?’ Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, an...

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the tension that all ministries must live in; the focus on this world or the wor...

Lord of glory and honor – You are worthy of our worship and allegiance. You are Faithful and True. With authentic justice You judge the world, and each of us in it. You’re the Word of God – made fles...

LORD, too often we live for ourselves instead of how You have called us. Please forgive us for the times when we don’t strive to bring about Your kingdom here and now. Forgive us for the lack of imagi...