LITMIR.BIZ

Just thinking about terms like morals, law, and commandments seems dull, maybe even mean-spirited. Still, a quick look at social media, the endless news cycle, and magazines in the grocery checkout line show that we love to hear about failure, recovery, and who has crossed the latest moral boundary. At the same time, the argument over whose boundaries matter or whether they matter doesn't ever end. In fact, all these stories and concerns start somewhere in high school and keep going. Who can tell me what to do? Why do I have to do things this way? I can't wait to be free from all these rules. In Throwing Moses Under the Bus, teacher/author John Cabascango examines the ancient rules and stories that show us why these stone-tablet rules still matter in a digital age. Using examples from twenty-one years of teaching, novels, movies, and the American high school hallway, you are invited to see why boundaries matter to people who want to live freely.

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Jesus is Lord! This scandalous confession is an act of worship, a pledge of allegiance, a call to service, and a saving act. Yet who is Jesus Christ? How should we understand his life, his death, his resurrection, and his work of salvation? This book offers a perspective from the Wesleyan tradition on these vital questions. It introduces readers to christology, the study of Christ. The authors encourage readers to ponder the mystery of salvation at work in Christ's entire life and to make the confession «Jesus is Lord» their own.

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With the advent of the Reiwa era and 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the world's attention is riveted on Japan's grand tradition. Yet these same traditions are the ones that are hindering our efforts for evangelization. A college student knows he will be disowned by his family if baptized, and a Christian wife cannot receive baptism because of her Buddhist husband's strong opposition. How can we combat against these? There are two approaches: 1. We can condemn Japanese practices as total darkness and preach against them, or; 2. We can follow Paul's teaching and deem the Japanese people as worshiping «an unknown god» (Acts 17:22-31), and try to emphasize common grace at each turn. This book follows the second approach, but provides judiciously placed «caution» signs. It will tell you how to engage in conversation with non-Christians while providing an insider's view of Japan's rich cultural heritage. Its main purpose is to obtain conversion among the die-hard Buddhists, Shintoists, and traditionalists. When that is done, God's kingdom will be enriched in a manner similar to the time when Saul of Tarsus became Paul the apostle.

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The Bible makes remarkable claims about people and events in world history. Creation, Adam and Eve, Israel's escape from Egypt, the rise and fall of Israel's kingdom, the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection, the growth of the church–all points of interest by scholars for the historical veracity of the Scriptures. Yet, the Bible does not appear to present the acts of God in history for the purpose of vindicating historical accuracy of the text. The Bible is a story that reveals the living God through inspired writings that communicate the meaning of historical events. In light of the Bible as the revelation of God, and the high stakes of historical veracity for the claims of the Bible, how should Christians approach the interpretation of the Scriptures in a faithful way? Carl F. H. Henry offers guidance as a foremost theologian regarding God, revelation, and the Scriptures. In Did it Really Happen? Jonathan Wood engages the thought of Carl Henry in dialogue with the major alternatives to revelation, history, and the biblical text. The value of Carl Henry's approach is shown to provide a path forward for affirming the historicity of the Bible while interpreting the text well.

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Contemporary artists are engaging more deeply than ever with religious imagery, themes, practices, and audiences. With a bracing, jargon-free style, Aaron Rosen–a leading scholar, art critic, and curator–takes readers into studios, galleries, and worship spaces as he paints a compelling picture of art and religion today. Focusing on individual artists, from eminent names to emerging stars, Rosen's essays and interviews tackle key questions, from how art might sustain communities to how it might offer new approaches to conflict resolution. Drawing on years spent developing relationships with artists around the globe–from Algeria to India to the United States–Rosen gets artists to talk, often for the first time, about how religion impacts their practice. Whether inspiring or unsettling, these brushes with faith challenge and invigorate the artists in question, and those who ponder the results. Replete with more than seventy color images of works ranging from video art to outdoor installations, this volume is indispensable reading for those looking to see contemporary art in a new light.

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Regular worshipers may be believers on Sunday but (nearly) atheists by Thursday. The general public, not making fine distinctions, lumps mainline Protestants together with fundamentalists fighting to hold on to a privileged status already lost. Circumstances favor religious skeptics, who find themselves with rising influence. Church members in mainline denominations feel caught between a rock and a hard place. Thus comes the critical question of the moment: is Christian faith of an intellectually serious and recognizably generous sort still possible? This book invites readers to explore basic questions about faith itself, and classically inclined Christian faith in particular. Faith is a kind of knowing, but a knowing that makes use of doubt and asserts that it is possible to be confident without claiming absolute certainty. Faith is less like agreeing with an argument and more like falling in love. Faith involves learning how to see with the eyes of the heart. Faith embraces realities that can be perceived even by a child, but that cannot always be directly expressed in the kind of language we use for discussing serious matters. Living in faith is and will always be an against-the-grain way of imagining the world.

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This book is for all those who wonder how to hold together spiritual life and the study of the Bible. It asks: «How may we read Scripture for a word of life?» The answer: by reading carefully, critically, imaginatively, theologically . . . in short, spiritually. Richard Briggs offers a series of «spiritual readings» in John's Gospel, going in search of life, and life to the full. Along the way he discovers surprises, love, humor, tears, truth, and suffering, all wrapped up in a profound theology that is designed to be understood by everyone, from newcomers right through to those who have loved John's Gospel for a long time. He leads readers on a life-giving adventure, and models the best of careful reading of the biblical text. In a short concluding essay he helps readers understand what it means to read John's Gospel well; to read it in life-long pursuit of a word of life.

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Many have been taught to see God as a terrifying agent of wrath who spews anger at any sign of imperfection. At the same time, they've been taught that they are inherently flawed and devoid of goodness. Where does that leave us? For Ben DeLong, it left him hiding his skeletons from the monster he believed God to be. This proved to be a perfect recipe for anxiety, depression, and insecurity. But what if God accepts our skeletons? What if he actually embraces them in love? How would that change our outlook? For Ben, it changed everything. This book is about his journey to find what was always true: we are eternally embraced by God, skeletons and all, and he is never letting go.

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Why do so many feel so lonely today? Are our friendships in breakdown mode, or are they just changing? Why are we burdened with the creeping sense that our communities are falling apart? Sociologists report that in recent decades the number of Americans who have no one in whom to confide may have tripled. Likewise, church attendance, participation in local clubs and groups, even the number of times we invite one another over to supper are all in decline. Meanwhile, some of us have more «friends» than ever on social media. The question of friendship, its definition, virtue, and quality, is not a new one to the church or the culture in which Christianity was birthed. Greco-Roman ethicists were fascinated by the virtue of friendship. Taking a cue from Jesus, the New Testament authors transformed Greco-Roman friendship notions to express visions of Christian community that were spiritually fulfilling, sustainably flourishing, and socially just. This book traces the New Testament transformation of friendship in specific passages in Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Philippians, and James, and connects them to contemporary issues and cutting-edge experiments in Christian community. It is New Testament Theology for the twenty-first century.

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Radiohead is simultaneously one of the most experimental and most successful rock bands on the planet. While their lyrics rarely reference religion, in this book Robert Saler argues that the discipline of Christian theology has a great deal to learn from the band when it comes to unflinching engagement with the world's brokenness and its longing for redemption. Market dynamics, the influence of capitalism on art, ecological theology, aesthetics, and Christology all come together as Saler asks what it might mean for Radiohead to «soundtrack» a theology of defiance against the forces that create death in our daily lives.

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