The Incarnation & Its Implications

I wrote an article entitled The Incarnation for Holy Culture.  In it I talk about how Christ's incarnation has and is changing my life.  Christmas was different this year.  It meant more and brought with it more weight than years past.  For that I am thankful.  Here is a snippet from the post:

Christmas is almost like a military draft, calling us, as it were, across enemy lines. The incarnation of Christ calls us to life among those who make the outside of our cup physically and emotionally dirty; all the while the One who lives in us makes the inside of our cup spiritually clean. The irony alone should shock us, and even convict us. We have stayed long enough among those who do not inconvenience us, that have the same moral idiosyncrasies as we do, and who will not demand more of us than what is socially acceptable. 


But Christ came to the world, fasted in the dessert, sat at the well, sweat blood in the garden, and shed blood on the Cross. 


Christmas brings us the gift of life through death. We are not in heaven yet. And we should cease trying to drag it down. It will be given soon enough. Becoming a Christian does not mean that we are delivered out of the world. Christian liberty is not about being free from the moral, social, emotional and physical inconveniences of those who have no moral compass, little social skills, who are on multiple psychiatric medications, and who would rather harm us than hug us. Liberty is found by losing one’s life. It is our mark to love the unlovable, to give to those who steal, and to embrace those who would rather us dead.

You can find the rest of the article here.

The Tyranny of Retirement

I wrote another article for Holy Culture entitled The Tyranny of Retirement.  This article focuses on a common mindset that we need to work so that we can make enough money to finally be set free from work - to retire.  I argue that work isn't the problem, fallenness is.  Retirement is not the goal, redemption is.

The message and advice of our culture is tyrannous and dangerous. Focusing our attention upon work itself will do nothing but dig our graves deeper. It misses the problem entirely. Our problem is not work, no matter how difficult that work may be. The problem runs much deeper than what we can or cannot do with our hands. Our problem is sin-deep. And, as implied above, we don’t need retirement – we need redemption.

Simply put: We don’t need to work in order to be free; rather, we must be freed in order to work.  
You can read the rest of the article here.

I would like to make one point of clarification.  I am not saying that retirement from a job is a bad thing.  I am saying that retirement from work should not be the goal of human existence.  When it is, it is tyrannous and enslaving.  Work, when understood from a biblical perspective, is a blessing and deeply satisfying.

Putting Porn to Death (Part 2 of 3)

I believe C.S. Lewis wrote that the enemy will gladly take your cold to give you cancer.  In this post, part 2 of Putting Porn to Death, I talk about how many of us put the idol of porn down only to pick up another.

See the article here on HolyCulture.net