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What Does Such a Moment Ask?
What Does Such a Moment Ask? What does such a moment ask of us? Kindness―maybe― but not the kind that cowers in a corner and will not articulate the jarring, rage-inducing, healing, liberating truth. Love―maybe― but not the kind that circles wagons, covers up injustice and provides protection for abusers to continue their abuse. Humanity―maybe―…
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Answer To
I’m thinking of all the evangelical leaders who say ridiculous and harmful things, and wondering if all the ordinary Christians who listen to them know that they don’t have to – that just because someone is a pastor or has a big following (or a lot of media attention) and claims the Christian name doesn’t…
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To the people with power
In Ephesians 6:5-9, Paul gives a series of instructions to δοῦλοι (slaves or servants―people in a position of subservience or subjection), and then to κυρίοις (masters or lords―people in a position of power). Here is the passage in the NRSV translation: 5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart,…
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Wives and participles and Bible and I’m done defending Paul
I thought I might write a post exploring how the original Greek of Ephesians 5:21-33 comes across a little less patriarchal―or at least a little more ambiguous in some ways―than our English translations suggest. And there are plenty of things that could be said to this effect. I could write about how Paul’s call to…
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Y’all, be angry!
As someone who has spent a fair amount of time reading the NIV translation of the Bible, I was surprised when I translated Ephesians 4:26 from the Greek to find that it does not really say “in your anger do not sin” (NIV). It actually says, “be angry and do not sin.” (This is all…
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Each one with their neighbor
Here is a literal translation of Ephesians 4:25: “Therefore, laying aside falsehood, (y’all) speak truth, each one with his/her/their neighbor, because we are members of one another.” I’m interested in the part about speaking truth, each one with their neighbor. Some translations try to make this part sound more natural in English, which is nice,…
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Enduring one another
At the beginning of the fourth chapter of Ephesians, Paul writes this: “Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the…
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Blow Up the Shelter (Apocalypse)
Thinking of the situation over the last few months with Menlo Church (see this article for what seems like a pretty reasonable summary), and also just the general tendency of a lot of church leaders to cover up things that might seem incriminating rather than actually search for truth and try to do the right…
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Gendered titles & getters-of-stuff-done
While reading the biblical books of Ephesians and Colossians in Greek, I have been struck by Paul’s repeated references to himself and others as διάκονος (pronounced de-ä’-ko-nos; it’s where we get the English word “deacon”): Paul says that he has become a διάκονος of the good news of God’s promise in Jesus, according to the…
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These Lines
I resonated with much of Austin Channing Brown’s recent post about “unity” to her e-mail newsletter “Roll Call.” Austin encourages her readers to be aware of ways we might be asked to participate in a kind of unity that works against justice rather than for it. You can check out the post here if you’re…