status on Politics

As people seek out the social settings they prefer—as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable—the nation grows more politically segregated—and the benefit that ought to come wi...

Leader: Friends, Paul reminds us that we are "called to be saints.” But we know that our lives often do not reflect this high calling. We forget who we are. We forget whose we are. But the invit...

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfac...

Have you ever wondered how people keep elephants, whether at a circus or as means of transport throughout Asia, from throwing off their shackles and marching to their own tune? A single metal chain is...

Status Quo is Latin for the mess we are in.

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

Peacekeepers are conflict avoiders, sweeping important issues under the carpet so no conflict manifests itself. This often happens in families and churches. This also happens between alienated ethnic ...

All crises are judgments of history that call into question an existing state of affairs. They sift and sort the character and condition of a nation and its capacity to respond. The deeper the crisis,...

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

The final thing leaders will need is courage … the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable. … The most common expression of the courage to tell the truth i...

Systems are perfectly designed to get the results they are getting.

If you have money, power, and status today, it is due to the century and place in which you were born, to your talents and capacities and health, none of which you earned. In short, all your resources...

It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea...

Unfortunately, the world has taken some of the greatest minds God has given us and locked them up in cages. Most very brilliant or creative people seem strange to ordinary people. Geniuses are almost ...

Introduction  Luke 16:1-13 isn’t an easy parable to preach on. It looks for all the world like Jesus is commending a guy who’s basically a dishonest rascal. You will sometimes see interpreters tying ...

If we lack money and power, we can still feel successful if we have the respect of our peers. As a young minister without wealth or power, I loved being called “Reverend.” It was an ego trip for me wh...

Truth be told, whether we realize it or not, we all harbor romantic notions of aristocracy. Though we claim equality as a cultural value, there is a part of us that dreams of leisure, luxury, comfort,...

In order to exercise leadership on that challenge, they had to go beyond what people expected of them, risk testing some relationships, and move themselves and their organizations into unfamiliar terr...

We can “know” something to be true, and then find it is not true after all. I recall confidently assertive to a student that, of course, the name of the region Perea (to the east of the Dead Sea) appe...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Broader Context of Philippians Paul is concerned that Judaizers (those that require Christians to follow the Torah) are going to corrup...

I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady.

The suffering addressed in 1 Peter is not random misfortune but the social cost of a new identity that challenges prevailing cultural norms.

Introduction  Luke 16:1-13 isn’t an easy parable to preach on. It looks for all the world like Jesus is commending a guy who’s basically a dishonest rascal. You will sometimes see interpreters tying ...

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling or changing or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo, even when it is not working. It attaches to past and presen...

I read that Thornton Stringfellow, pastor of the Stevensburg Baptist Church in Virginia, had made one of the most popular arguments for slavery when Baptists in the mid-nineteenth century were decidin...

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote in his classic study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity that the term stigma originated with the ancient Greeks, roughly during Jesus’ tim...

Guests? Or Hosts? After picking up the first verse of the chapter in order to provide a setting for Jesus’ words, this week’s gospel reading contains two teachings. The first (v. 7-11) is addressed t...

Guests? Or Hosts? After picking up the first verse of the chapter in order to provide a setting for Jesus’ words, this week’s gospel reading contains two teachings. The first (v. 7-11) is addressed t...

People who blame things rarely change things. Blame is an unassailable change-avoidance strategy.