Tag Archives: Spirituality

The Evangelical-Catholic Heresy and the Betrayal of Jesus

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Heretic

Chapter 1: Heresy Heresy: now there’s a word we don’t see very often anymore. Of course, I encountered it when I was in the seminary, studying the history of the Christian Church. Even when I was studying the matter, heresies were little more than strange Greek-sounding names that we had to memorize in order to pass our exams: Adoptionism, Arianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism, Nestorianism, Manichaeism, etc. ad infinitum. It’s such an anachronistic word, and such a foreign concept now. It originated in centuries long past, when academic clerics wrote long letters to one another arguing about arcane details of belief. At Continue Reading →

The War on Christmas? (Part 1)

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War on Christmas

Today (during the 3rd week of the liturgical season of Advent), I’m going to start a multi-part article on the so-called “War on Christmas” that some people believe is being waged in our culture. Needless to say, I am most decidedly not one of those people. It is almost as if our culture needs another excuse to find fault, lay blame, avoid responsibility, increase hatred and division, and, generally, offer service to the satanized god of death. I believe that I am among a small minority of people who actually understand the feast of Christmas and I have an opportunity to prepare Continue Reading →

The Mantle of the Prophet

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Prophet

The first book of Kings describes the word of the Lord coming to Elijah at Horeb. The LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you have arrived, you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram; and Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint king over Israel; and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place.1 So Elijah went and did what he was told. So he departed from there and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, while he was plowing with twelve pairs of Continue Reading →

A Voice Criying In the Desert Make Straight the Way

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As I write this, I’ve been living in the desert now for over 8 months. Yes, we have pretty houses and gardens and swimming pools and everything; but it’s still the desert. After these 8 months (I’ve been through a summer and I now consider myself a “desert rat”) I can honestly say that “I get it.” Right now, I’ve been away from it for a few days and I long to be back to what is now “home.” I miss the parched, dusty earth that you can let pour through your fingers like water. I miss the scraggly creosote Continue Reading →

Conversion

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This morning (June 11: the feast of St. Barnabas), I was thinking about the story of  Barnabas of Antioch, the Christian apostle and companion of Paul of Tarsus, and how the two of them went around preaching and converting people to Christianity just a handful of years after the events of the crucifixion of Jesus. I thought about the concept of “conversion” and the sorts of proselytizing that continues to go on all around us, a couple of millenia  since then. I’m reminded of the line from the movie, Princess Bride, where Inigo Montoya says, “I do not think that means what you Continue Reading →