parables of a prodigal world

Just kidding. Grace and Peace, Raffi

I am not a Roman Catholic. OK, now that that's out of the way, the issue is this: Pius XII was the reigning Pope during World War II. On Thursday, which happens to be Yom Kippur, Pope Benedict XVI strongly hinted that he was in favor of the beatification of the late pontiff , after having previously tabled the issue for "a period of reflection." Many have criticized Pius XII for not doing enough to oppose the Holocaust. His supporters, which now apparently includes the German-born Benedict XVI, point out that Pius used a few pointed public — but mostly private — acts of diplomacy to try to prevent what turned into the slaughter of 6 million European Jews. Pope Benedict cited Pius' 1942 Christmas radio message. "With a voice broken with emotion, he deplored the situation of 'hundreds of thousands of persons who, for no fault of their own, only for reason of nationality or ethnic roots, were destined for death or for steady deterioration,' " Benedict s...

Dear Readers, It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising that we didn’t hear Tom Brokaw ask a question about global poverty during last night’s presidential debate—even though more than 122,000 ONE members signed our petition to him. We all know these are tough economic times; many Americans are understandably focused on conditions here at home and how the candidates plan to get our economy moving again. Because the final debate focuses exclusively on domestic issues, it looks as though we are not going to get Barack Obama and John McCain to answer “Just ONE Question” on global poverty in the 2008 presidential debates. Still, this setback takes nothing away from the important work ONE members and our allies have done to make the fight against global poverty a political priority. With recent victories on global AIDS funding and the hunger crisis, plus the increased attention our issues are getting on the campaign trail, the outlook is still positive overall. One of our most import...

Last week I wrote about a few things I discovered while preparing to teach an introduction to Romans . Here's one other thing I discovered. The NIV is a pretty blatantly agenda-driven translation. Yeah, I already knew that. And poring over its choices of translation in Paul, and specifically Romans, the point really hit home. But something else caught my eye that makes me want to aggressively go out and tell everyone I know to dump their NIV. While immersed in Romans, I noticed how Paul has a little habit in his writing style. It comes out prominently in Romans 5-8. After every delineable segment of argument, usually around 8-12 verses long, he signs off his thought with a little Christological marker, either "in Christ Jesus" or "through Jesus Christ our Lord," or something to that effect. Now take a look at Ephesians 5:21-22. You know, the famous "Wives, be submissive" passage. C'mon, all you hubbies, you know you've used that one before (or ...

Brother Maynard sums up the issue better than most. The term "Emerging Church" is dead. Good riddance, I say. Too misunderstood. Too much reading into it. Too ill-defined. Too much having to defend the term against what it isn't. Here are 10 other terms that are too misunderstood, too ill-defined, requiring too much of my time and energy to defend them against naysayers and detractors. I'm therefore dumping all of 'em: 1. Jesus 2. Christianity 3. Atonement 4. Justification by Faith through Grace (along with "Justification," "Grace," and "Faith") 5. Sin 6. Righteousness 7. Cross 8. Bible 9. Disciple and, of course... 10. God I might have some trouble communicating from here on in in. Pardon me if my posts become a little vague while I try to come up with different terms to express theses concepts. It's all for the greater good. [ Still working on this one ] and Peace, Raffi