There are a lot of good things on the internet. This collection includes white privilege, blackjack, liberal Jesus, sexist tabloids, smartphones, and a cartoon about theologians. Enjoy!

Safe :: Saturday Stories
by Stephen Lovegrove

I vowed to myself in that moment that I would never talk about my sexual orientation to anyone. I made crazy promises to myself. “You will check into a mental hospital before you ever tell anyone. You will move to a foreign country before you admit to someone that you are gay.” Even this one, which I hesitated to write here: “You will take your own life before you ever come out of the closet.”

 

Five Signs You May Have a Wrong View of God
by Jason Clark

There is one foundational truth about God’s nature by which every other aspect of His nature should be measured: God is love (1 John 4:8). Jesus is the perfect expression of what love looks and sounds like, of what love does. He is perfect theology.

 

Why Was Ben Affleck Banned from Blackjack at Hard Rock Casino?
by David Drury

All the casinos knew me by name. I saw my face coming out of a fax machine in the pit more times than I can remember. Still, I found ways to get plenty of play, and never had my thumbs broken. Card counting’s protections under the law have been upheld in every court case I have ever read. Remember—You are using your brain to compete at a game which casinos have invited you to use your brain at to try and beat.

 

Tabloid Headlines Without the Sexism
by Joe Veix

There’s no question that celebrity tabloids are awful. It’s essentially a whole industry held up by casual sexism. To hilariously point this out, Vagenda Magazine asked Twitter followers to re-write recent tabloid headlines, omitting the sexism. What results is a beautiful deconstruction of magazines that seem like relics of the ’50s

Jesus Trumps Biblicism: A Tale of Sticks and Stones
by Brian Zahnd

The Bible is not the full revelation of God. Jesus is! This is what John means when he dares to say that no one has seen God. It’s Jesus who reveals God. Jesus makes a clear distinction between Biblicism and what we will come to call Christianity

Q & R: A Nasty Piece About You
by Brian McLaren

I see the gospel challenging all human categories – premodern, modern, postmodern, whatever. But if people are considered liberal because they follow their conscience and their best (and growing) understanding of the Bible and Christ – even when doing so means disagreeing with contemporary gatekeepers of tradition – then, yes, the shoe fits. But by that definition, Martin Luther was a liberal, and so were C. S. Lewis and John Stott and Dallas Willard. So, in fact, was Jesus.

Smartphones Don’t Make Dumb People
by Jennifer Neyhart

I have friends on Twitter that I hope to meet in real life one day. Friends that inspire and encourage me with their words. (They even inspire me to write!) Behind a screen or not, we are all choosing how much to let people see of our hearts, of our pain, of our mess.

Should Jesus Inform Our Christianity?
by Rachel Held Evans

We have created a culture in which Christians tend to see Jesus as a sort of static mechanism by which salvation is secured rather than the full embodiment of God’s will for the world whose life and teachings we are called to emulate and follow. Basically, we believe that Jesus died to save us from our sins, but we haven’t yet embraced the reality that Jesus also lived to save us from our sins. We haven’t embraced the reality that following the ways of Jesus leads to liberation and life more abundant – not only for ourselves but also for the whole world.

White Privilege Doesn’t Mean What you Think It Means
by Kristen Howerton

White privilege isn’t about me individually. It’s not a personal attack. White privilege is a systemic cultural reality that I can either choose to ignore, or choose to acknowledge and attempt to change. It has nothing to do with my worth as a person or my own personal struggle.

Do Theologians Need to Grow Up?
by David Hayward