Opinion

Some time ago I answered a knock on our door and looked straight into the face of a friend. He said, “I was just passing by and thought I would stop and see you.” It turned out he was there on purpose, not “just passing by.”

(RNS) — The space program used technology to advance the cause of the human race. We should hold our technology today up to the test of whether it inspires society toward wonder, hope and courage or increases fear and insecurity about our shared future.

Over the past few years, some Christians have reduced the concept of religious liberty to merely serve as a counter-value to the rights of LGBTQ persons. This misinterpretation of what religious liberty actually means hurts the historic freedom to practice our faith.

The early church had everything to lose because of their faith in what they believed God was doing through them and what God was calling them to do. But they never gave up.

I believe — with my conservative Christian brothers and sisters — that Christians have an essential role to play in modern-day America and that the Bible has something to say about politics. To learn more I determined to go to a Southern Baptist church in Dallas on Fourth of July weekend.

It’s being as kind, gentle, and loving as possible when saying this: The Southern Baptist Convention is in a mess of its/our own making, and it’s time to move in a positive direction.

Finding the moral courage to be first can be difficult. We need more Deborahs, Jaels, and Jackies.

Just when I thought my life was calm, predictable, and manageable, an AF-3 tornado ripped through our city with winds up to 160 mph. So much for the arrogant assumption that we are in charge of our lives.

We are not going to be able to just come together over racial justice, have Kumbaya moments, and really expect for anything to get done. If we really want to rid ourselves from the sin of racism — that hurts non-white people and white people alike — then we will have to repent and repair.

In the book The Last Week, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan suggest that on that Palm Sunday there were actually two processions entering Jerusalem. "The two processions, they state, "embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’s crucifixion.”