“Don’t reduce holy mysteries to slogans and Christian bumper sticker cliches and memes…Don’t paste what is holy on people’s pages who are unholy and unreceptive to spiritual things. Don’t throw your pearls and treasured convictions before social media swine! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you with their own strong opinions.” -JESUS
“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister [on social media] is guilty of murder…Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister [via Twitter] and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.” -JESUS
In this 4-part series we ask, “How would Jesus conduct himself on social media?” Listen to this adaptation of Jesus’ most famous teaching — Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) — applied directly to online interaction.
Every day we find ourselves back in Eden standing before the Tree of Temptation faced with two types of wisdom. Based on what I’m watching and reading in the media, we’ve set up a buffet line at the forbidden Tree.
Let us seek to be a breath of fresh air with our words, not fire breathing dragons. As the wildfires burn uncontrollably across the west, we do well to ponder the fiery wisdom and warning of James on the power of the tongue.
“The monastery is a school of love because it teaches us to forget ambition, convenience and self-gratification in order to open our hearts to love.”
Jesus offers more than a small puddle of spiritual refreshment that appears momentarily but vanishes quickly in the afternoon sun.
“Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers.” -C. G. Jung “We are not unaware of the Devil’s schemes” (2 Cor. 2:11). In 1978, spiritual writer Richard Foster wrote: “In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, […]
We live in rigid and graceless times. “Cancel culture” is the new fundamentalism, and fire and brimstone is preached from many media outlets.
Last night my 5-year old asked, “Daddy, if Jesus lives in Heaven, and he’s going to bring us there when we die, then why did he put us on Earth at all?”
Pop culture’s films and music give you the impression that love and romance is a young person’s game; but the truth is this: Love is like wine, and gets better with time.
