Jonathan Sprang - March 6, 2016
Consumerism
Our Consumeristic culture tells us that the way to the “good life” is to get more, buy more, have more. But God prescribes that the “good life” is found by giving. When the Israelites were about to enter the land, God gave them some specific instructions of how to handle their resources. Don’t take it all for yourselves, leave some for the poor and foreigner among you. What practices can the church give us that will help us resist consumerism and embrace generosity.
From Series: "System Failure"
We often treat sin as personal moral failings but Sin has an institutional component too. What institutions in our culture form us to be sinful? And how can the Church act as a counter-institution that forms us to be holy?
More From "System Failure"
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Today’s about Ghost stories. Though they appear in many forms, the quintessential ghost story involves the spirit of a dead person who’s stayed around (usually a haunted house) because they have unfinished business. Maybe they have to deliver a message or ensure proper burial or get revenge. Whatever the case, once their business is complete, they leave into the afterlife.
Unlike our previous two monsters, today we’re not ghosts. Rather, to quote Peter Rollins,
We are the haunted houses. — Peter Rollins
We move through life collecting hurts, wounds and scars, evidence of pain inflicted on us by other people. Some may be slight, exaggerated in our heads – maybe someone who cuts us off or says something cruel or who causes us harm by accident. Others could be huge, life-altering. A spouse who left. An abuser. And there’s a whole range of hurts between.
Whatever their source, however legitimate or not, these people, these hurts don’t just exit our lives.
We carry them around with us, in our heads and in our souls. They haunt us, returning again and again out of the ether to drag us through the past, to relive history, to reopen old wounds.
The problem is we don’t know what these ghosts want. We don’t know how to resolve their business and get them to leave us. We can’t escape their haunting – especially if the person who hurt you is still a part of your life.
