The Common Un-Good
Americans live in a culture that resists common good. I once worked for a company that (briefly) preached to its employees, “What is good for you personally will be good for the company.” The absurdity of that statement quickly became clear as aggressive office politics and fraud escalated.
In public life, that word ‘public’ takes a beating. Public transportation. Public utilities. Public education. Public health. Public housing. Public lands. It seems any shared benefit is Socialist. Socialist! But no one talks about public harm in the same way. Carbon, VOCs, and particulates in our air. Forever chemicals in our drinking water. A strained power grid. Communicable disease. We share these costs in common. Common un-good.
What if we flipped the script and labeled public harm ‘Socialist’? Would it make any difference? Or, would the term be defanged and just come to mean ‘common investment’ or ‘shared cost’ of civilized society?
Let’s not keep two sets of books, where we privatize benefits and socialize costs.
All of a Piece
A Church that works for integrity under God and with him.
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. — Matthew 12:30
Sanctification. Restoration. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Invitation. Welcome. Redemption. Jubilee. Repentance. Evangelism. Rectification. Healing. Repair. Defragmentation. Reconstruction. Exorcism. Communion.
These are wholeness words that, themselves, are squares in a ministry quilt.
Upside Down Kingdom
The grittiness of a 'Jesus is Lord' gospel.
Better said, God's kingdom is the right-side-up one. In the Beatitudes (Matt. 5), Jesus says God's favor is on the humble, the mourning, the gentle and kind, those who seek the repair of unjust systems, the merciful, the innocent, the peacemakers, and the oppressed. His kingdom consists of self-giving to God and neighbor. It's something Paul echoes in 1 Cor. 13, and details in Gal. 5. The challenge is to turn this from a religious abstraction to daily discipleship, to deny myself, take up my cross every day, and follow Jesus' lead, along with others in my church family.
- love
- Holy Spirit
- humility
- church
- politics & society
- mission & witness
- holiness
- parable & metaphor
- identity
- eternal life
- doubt & deconstruction
- leadership
- grace
- justice
- scripture
- spiritual life
- advent & christmas
- poverty & compassion
- imagination & creativity
- technology & ai
- knowing God
- human dignity
- faith & trust
- incarnation & cross
- kingdom of God
- community
- reconciliation
- spiritual formation
- epistemology
- prayer
- gratitude
- culture
- creation & nature
- discipleship
The God of the Bible looks like Jesus, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. It would be just like him to go to the cross.