Theology

In my work as a business professor over the past four years, I have been researching what happens to our brains when watching online lectures.

Synod 1968 established Sunday, July 14, as a day of prayer for racial reconciliation. This year, July 14 once again falls on a Sunday.

We call on members of the Christian Reformed Church to dedicate this day of prayer for a renewal of society through racial reconciliation, and to labor unceasingly to cause the light of the gospel of Christ’s love and peace of to shine upon all. (Acts and Agenda of Synod, 1968, page 18)

Prayer

God of every nation, tribe, and tongue,

The divisions in North American politics are sharp and create upheaval over what exactly it means to be Christian.

There is racial unrest so deep, it threatens to undo the ministry of reconciliation to which the church is called.

Reformed theology is used to justify white supremacy and isolationism.

When I started attending a Christian Reformed church in 1973, my only interest in the church was it had a basketball court inside the building. Over time, I found the pastors were gracious and kind. The interracial congregation felt its mission was that all African American lives would flourish on the west side of Chicago.

There is a man I know. More than a man – a friend and a prophet. He is Indigenous, tall, with small piercing eyes that bore into you with gentle kindness. He is a stranger longing for a heavenly country. His home on his back, he wanders deserts and back alleys. He lives in caves and parkades. Did I mention that he also has an amazing mullet?

Six months ago, I was rushing to bring materials to a church presentation. On my way there, I was pulled over. When the officer asked if I knew how fast I was going, I honestly said I did not know. He informed me that I had been going 47 mph in a 25. I was shocked. It was one of those moments that, even if I was focusing on my surroundings, the rush I was in distracted me from paying attention to how fast I was going. I was completely appalled at myself.

Christ is risen from the dead,

and creation celebrates!

Have you ever thought about what Easter means for the created world? Have you ever thought about why it matters that Christ’s resurrected body was in a physical form? Christ’s body was recognizable by its scars. It could be touched. Christ’s resurrected body has implications for the creation around us, because matter, the things of this earth, matter to God. They will be changed, renewed, restored, but still recognizable, scars and all.

This is the first post of our Power Over/Power With series, a collaboration between Safe Church Ministry and Do Justice.

We all have some power. Power to act, to choose, to alter our world and affect others, is part of being image-bearers of God.

Yet power can so easily become corrupt and be used to marginalize, manipulate, or control others. When we are unaware of or not careful with the power we hold, we can cause deep harm.

Jesus’ way of wielding power looks different from our own sin-corrupted ways of using our power.

Emmanuel, God with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and Second Advent splendor. – Charles H. Spurgeon

On August 16, 1967, Martin Luther King was interested in the soul of America. At the eleventh Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention in Atlanta, he observed the domestic terrorism in the South, northern indifference to structural inequalities, and a stubborn resistance from the evangelical community to realizing its own hypocrisy.