Jesus 301: In the Context of Larger Stories
Photograph: A painting, The Baptism of the Christ, by Daniel Bonnell, called The Baptism of the Christ. Used with permission. It represents the beginning and the end of Christ’s ministry: The Baptism relates to the Crucifixion because it represents a dying and rising. The original is in Saint George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. This version hangs in a humble and small African-American Church in South Carolina. Another version hangs in the Mayo Clinic entrance in Minnesota. Daniel Bonnell teaches art to at-risk inner city high school students.
If you’re getting to know Jesus, exploring why he is real and important, here are some resources below that can help.
The Happy Ending: Will It Happen to Me? To Us?
We like happy ending stories because we long for an actual happy ending for the world. This workshop groups all belief systems into not happy ending vs. happy ending stories; and then internal vs. external villains. See also slides to the workshop version. A 10 minute read.
Text of a message which delves into the biblical story as the original happy ending story, and other happy ending stories as parodies that change the plot arc, villain, hero, and way we interact with the whole story. The message is accompanied by this chart. A 10 minute read.
How Our Choices Shape Our Desires: Humanity Experiencing the Triune God
This is a message based on the biblical and early Christian framework. God is an infinitely good being whose love determines His nature, and vice versa. So He had to make us originally good, with the invitation to love to determine our nature. This is why our choices shape our nature and desires. God calls us to grow and develop in love infinitely, and impact others, as well. But we can potentially grow and develop in a disordered way.
Desires, Beliefs, and How We Know Truth
This is a presentation on how desires are a consideration, but not the first, in how we know truth. Our desires suggest that we have both good and evil in us. This does not prove, but agrees with, the biblical story. After all, we are made in the image of God and wounded by sin. Some desires can be taken up and expanded by Jesus; other desires, Jesus reshapes or transforms. Also, belief systems have an implied story and metaphysics, which results in an ethics, and contains an epistemology, which is a way by which we can examine whether it is true. A 15 minute read.
Christian Restorative Justice Study Guide
This link takes you to a page where you can learn to integrate our Christian restorative justice paradigm into evangelism, discipleship, and spiritual formation. It begins with a 35 minute video exploring four principles of justice: meritocratic-retributive (rewards); distributive (human needs and rights); libertarian (freedom); and restorative (relations). Every public policy debate involves a question about how to order and organize these four principles. Explore how and why Christian faith organizes these four principles, and how and why secular thinking cannot order them. Christians therefore have an opportunity and calling when engaging the public square.
Sex and Social Justice: Does the Christian View of Sex Make Any Sense?
A message exploring how the Western, individualistic framework of modernism and postmodernism does not give us a relational framework for ethics; that means "sexual freedom" also logically leads to exploitative "economic freedom." A 15 minute read.
Introduction to the Trinity: Why God is 100% Good
Links to a page on our website with explanations about God as the Triune Being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Why is it important that personal love existed in God prior to everything else created? Why is it important that God has a nature of love? How does that help us interpret the story we live in?