Tag: God
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I came to believe
Anyone who believes in God has to make a leap of faith to do it.
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A brief history of Christmas
The Christmas celebration is a relatively recent thing. It’s not commanded of us. So if others don’t celebrate, leave them be.
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Forgiveness isn’t reconciliation
After you forgive someone, must you reconcile? I think the answer is, sometimes, no.
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The mechanics of forgiveness
What I’ve learned through painful experience about how to forgive so that I can be at peace.
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Things I wish Christians would stop saying: “There’s a war on Christmas”
The Bible tells the story of Jesus’s birth twice: once in Matthew, once in Luke. But in neither telling, nor anywhere else in the New Testament, are we told to celebrate the event. It is our choice to do this. God does not command it. The closest the New Testament comes to telling us to…
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Things I wish Christians would stop saying: “The Bible is our instruction manual”
What do I do now? We all say this more than once in our lives, at times when we seem to have no options or when all the things we know to do aren’t working. At these times, many of us naturally seek counsel, coaching, or advice. Those of us who are Christians also turn to God…
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The opposite of love
When I was young, I thought the opposite of love must be hate. This seemed obvious to my forming mind. Love is a strong emotion at one pole, and hate is an equally strong emotion at the other. But as I grew up, I started to see that the fires of love and hate need…
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Getting the love we always wanted from the perfect parent we never had
When we were small, our parents were godlike to us. They had all power over us. We probably thought they had all power in the world. This experience imprinted on us, and subconsciously we assume that God is like our parents. Better said, we project our parents onto God, and so expect God to treat…
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Things I wish Christians would stop saying: “Joy means putting Jesus first, others second, and yourself last”
I first heard this phrase when I first taught Sunday school at a particular church. A plaque on the door read “J.O.Y. Classroom.” I had to ask what J.O.Y. stood for. Outspoken Shirley, unofficial class spokesperson, shook her head at me as if I had been living under a rock since my baptism. “How have…
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Things I wish Christians would stop saying: “God won’t give you more than you can handle”
It’s meant to encourage someone going through a hard time — and I certainly support building up someone who has troubles. But saying, “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” can actually hurt and alienate people. Also, it’s utterly not true. First, God doesn’t give us hard times. Hard times come because we live…
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Forgiveness isn’t reconciliation
It makes me crazy when I hear it said (especially by preachers or others teaching the Christian faith) that when you forgive someone, you must reconcile, returning the relationship to where it was before. It’s not true. In my last post I wrote about why and how to forgive – to suffer the loss and bear…