parables of a prodigal world

A while back, I did a piece on those little words of wisdom on the sides of Starbucks cups, called Will There Be a Starbucks in Heaven? It was a critique. Yesterday afternoon, Starbucks evened the score with this gem... The Way I See It, #76... "The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the very tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier of your life." Amen. Grace and Peace, Raffi

The human brain is a gift from God. Failure to use it, therefore, is a sin. Here's this week's most egregious sinner... Grace and Peace, Raffi

What is Christianity? Big question. To answer it, I did what I do with all of life's great questions... I Googled it. Welcome to the Post-Christian internet. Grace and Peace, Raffi

"And he said to them, 'Follow me...' Immediately they left their nets and followed him." The accounts of Jesus calling his disciples always troubled me. He goes up to these guys and says "Follow Me," and they drop everything, everything , and do it?! It always presented me with this image of a magic, shining Jesus simply overwhelming these poor souls with His radiance; of the disciples as these mindless, mad-scientist-assistant types, stripped of their will, chanting "Yes, master." The evangelists must've shrunk down the accounts, I figured. No need to write about how Jesus had to haggle and convince these guys that it'd be worth it to take a chance on Him. So they must've chopped down the stories, causing them to sound like Jesus was this eerie hypnotist. Then one day, someone highlighted to me that Jesus was a rabbi , and explained to me how every good Jewish boy's first dream would have been to study under a rabbi. As only the be...