Jesus defied all exceptions. He still does. Here is an honest look at the real Jesus.
It is so easy to enumerate what I am done with when it comes to religion. It is profoundly more difficult to figure out what to hang onto. I feel like I should occasionally ask myself that question to see if I am total heretic or just a free spirit. … Continue reading
John 20-21 Each mealtime has a special feeling to it. Breakfast is refreshing because it has been a long time since dinner. In our day, many people skip it or eat a pop tart on the way to work. Almost never does someone fix breakfast for you. So, when we have… Continue reading
“Follower of Jesus” is the new cooler way to say “Christian”, a word loaded with centuries of baggage that no longer seems very Christian. Yet, “follower of Jesus” sounds a little smug to me. It reminds of those church-goers in ancient Corinth who weren’t in the camp of Paul or… Continue reading
It was nearly a half of a year ago when my cousin reminded me of the “Prayer of St. Francis.” Lately, I have been reading it over nearly every day. A monk from the thirteenth century penned something so counter intuitive, so aspirational, so challenging, that I wonder if I… Continue reading
Saw this somewhere and decided to take the challenge. Jesus. Christianity is based on Jesus, not a church or a prescribed set of beliefs. Love. Christianity is based on love, loving God, loving others (especially those we do not understand), and loving ourselves (in a healthy, non-arrogant sort of way,… Continue reading
It’s demoralizing when you take a step in good faith only to find out that it was a mistake and then realize that we need to change your route. That’s where hundreds of thousands of people have found themselves in relationship to their faith and the institutional church. So, I… Continue reading
Interested in Jesus, but not the church? Used to go, but not anymore? Find the whole church scene irrelevant? You may be one of the 38 million individuals who stopped attending church in the last decade in The U.S. With honesty and a wry wit, Glenn Hager tells his story… Continue reading
Here is my most recent column in The Kenosha News. Don’t talk about religion or politics. People tend to have strong opinions about these matters, and they really don’t want to re-examine what they believe. Their minds are made up. Today, I am ignoring that sage advice to write about… Continue reading
What does it mean for me to follow Jesus? If I think about it in daily life, nitty-gritty terms, it looks something like this: I would stop worrying about the church and would not confuse it with Jesus or his kingdom. I would realize following Jesus is a personal matter… Continue reading
Jesus was not only counterintuitive back in his day, even today there is still a gigantic contrast between his ways and the ways of the religion that goes by his name. The Non-Agenda We have sacred creeds, sacred places of worship, sacred objects, and sacred leaders or clergy. Jesus had… Continue reading
Image: marcia furman, Creative Commons Jesus could and did draw a crowd, until his teaching became more cryptic; then people started scratching their heads and staying home the next day. It was as though he deliberately thinned the crowd, sending away the religious moths that always flew to the brightest light. He… Continue reading
Photo by NYCArthur I wish I could spin a yarn like Garrison Keillor, but, alas, I am a concept guy, not a detail guy. Popular author, Donald Miller, recently tweeted, “A good story is more powerful than an army.” Keillor has been spinning his meandering yarns about Lake Wobegon for… Continue reading
We get together with our friends Christie and Cory a few times a year to try out new restaurants somewhere in or between Chicago and Milwaukee. (We live between Chicago and Milwaukee and they live in Milwaukee.) We eat. We laugh. We linger. That’s what we do when we get… Continue reading
I cannot help but see the stark contrast between Jesus and present day Christianity. It is almost as if they are two different faiths… one separated, cloistered its own subculture; the other, on the streets, in the slums, and the suburbs, alike. One, trying to be holy through self-improvement and dissociation,… Continue reading
If you read the Gospels and you didn’t have any religious background, you would swear that Jesus was doing everything he could think of to agitate the religious establishment of his day. He wasn’t the ultimate hippie or some sort of crazed rebel; he knew exactly what he was doing.… Continue reading
In Jesus day, the Old Testament scriptures had been interpreted very legalistically. Things were spelled out to take out all of the guess work about what it meant to obey (and what counted as sin). According to the Talmud, the 6,200 page rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament, there are… Continue reading
I wish Peter Faulk were still living and wearing his crumbled Colombo trench coat. I would love to hear him approach a church leader at a convention and say, “Excuse me, sir. Just one more question. Did Jesus come to start a religion?” Good question, detective. Religions have their sets of… Continue reading
Contrasts: We have sacred creeds, sacred places of worship, sacred objects, and sacred leaders or clergy. Jesus had none of it. We are part of a subculture that insulates us from real life. Jesus talked about a different way of living real life. We obsess over trying to be better… Continue reading
A cursory of the Gospels would lead you to believe that Jesus was doing everything he could think of to agitate the religious establishment of his day. He wasn’t the ultimate hippie or some sort of crazed rebel; he, of course, knew exactly what he was doing. He was defying man-made religious rules that… Continue reading
I wish Peter Faulk were still living and wearing his crumbled Colombo trench coat. I would love to hear him approach some church leaders at a convention and say, “Excuse me, sir. Just one more question. Did Jesus come to start a religion?” Religions have sets of beliefs that its… Continue reading
John 12:12-19 Twenty years later, I remember the opening scene. Jesus is playing with the children, palm branches are being waved all over the place as the little ones sing and dance while running down the aisles of theater up to the stage. It is that festive, moving, celebratory picture that is my… Continue reading
