parables of a prodigal world

My grandmother and grandfather used to tell me the story of how they were each the sole remaining survivor of their individual families subsequent to the Armenian Genocide of 1915 . They grew up in the same orphanage, and were eventually married. I grew up hearing those stories. Everybody Armenian kid I knew heard similar stories from their grandparents. Those stories defined us, quite literally. Those stories were good enough for us. But they're haven't been good enough for the world... Until now?... It's time... Grace and Peace, Raffi

I ran into these two articles on the same day. Individually, not too interesting. Together, they made me sad, then ashamed, then angry. Grace and... Ah, never mind. Raffi

Amid much fanfare and fireworks, the $400-million retail juggernaut that is The Americana at Brand opened for business this weekend in Glendale, CA, complete with its 75 retail outlets, about a dozen eateries, hundreds of ridiculously overpriced residential units and its brazen-image-of-gold statue as its glorious centerpiece, appropriately emerging from the waters of the man made lake at the nucleus of the place. About a mile from my home. If I were a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, I would be being hauled off in handcuffs for standing amidst the legions and telling anyone who would listen about the madness that is this temple of modern Western consumerism. I would urge anyone who would listen, in tears, to consider the billion men and women who survive on less than a dollar a day, and the billion more who do not have even that luxury. I was not hauled off in handcuffs. I was there with my family. It really is a beautiful place. Open-air strolling. Large grassy area and sand-...

As many of you know well by now, Ann Coulter touched off another heated and polarized/polarizing debate a few days back when she said that Jews need to be perfected by becoming Christian . I'm not one to give Coulter's words/thoughts much credence, much less to assess them at a rationalistic level, to say nothing of theology. But sometimes the most ridiculous comments can, at least, frame the parameters of a discussion even if they add nothing of substance to that discussion. And the question that struck me when I heard about Coulter's comment was "Do we, as Christians, perhaps need to examine the issue the other way around?" In other words, would most modern Christians benefit, be more "perfected," by becoming more Jewish? In other words, more like Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, the first century Jew, whose worldview was so clearly and so thoroughly Jewish? Would most modern Christians benefit by recapturing the Jewish Jesus' vision of the nature...