Medical Substitutionary Atonement and the Early and Eastern Christian understanding of divine restorative justice must be part of our response.
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Which shows this: Something is seriously wrong with Christian spiritual formation in the U.S.
Explore why Penal Substitutionary Atonement and the theory of divine retributive justice contributes a great deal to that spiritual malformation.
Meanwhile, Trump portrays himself as someone embraced by Jesus, comforted by Jesus -- after taking down an image of himself as Jesus the healer.
Lots of American Christians protested the AI image. But they didn't and don't protest the retribution.
Against a Pope who criticized Trump's double-tap missile strikes on a Iranian school which killed over 170 people, mostly children, on the first day of his illegal and unjust war on Iran.
"I am your retribution," Trump said. Against who? Apparently...
Against children who cross the border unaccompanied, and the Catholic Charities folks who serve them, who now have $11 million less in funding because Trump just cancelled it.
Please, join us to talk and workshop around this topic!
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Practices like this reflect an experience of partnership with God, and a desire to partner with Him more and more.
Also, I was recently recommended John Gottman's Raising an Emotionally Healthy Child, and will summarize it.
I think this has a nice resonance with God inviting humanity to name the animals and other things in creation and later their own children. Implicit in the biblical story are naming emotions and other internal experiences.
Our friend Candice Gormley, with her husband Matt, use the Wheel of Emotions (there are variations on this) with their three kids.
Another Parenting Workshop!
When: Friday, April 17th at 8pm
A few months ago, we gathered to talk about restorative justice in parenting. This time, we'll gather to talk about emotional connection.
Mako was on the podcast of The Allender Center! Thank you Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen!
Why is scapegoating immigrants a spiritual formation problem? Why is it made worse by the theology of penal substitutionary atonement?
theallendercenter.org/2026/04/refr...
Thanks, Rachel! The relevance of your series is becoming very, very clear!
Please, friends, take a listen!
✨New Episode!✨
Was the spirit of John Knox at January 6th? You be the judge.
youtu.be/mcOnMLcY328?...
We'll be discussing C.S. Lewis' classic. Two possible cohorts.
Starting March 21 (Saturdays) and March 25 (Wednesdays)
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What if Heaven and Hell are the same thing - the love of God - but some people feel eternal conscious resentment about it? Because God calls us to not just receive His love, but share it with others. And feel it.
When Jesus taught on Hell, he was often warning people who did not want to love their neighbor (e.g. Mt.3:10 - 12; 5:22; 13:40 - 42; 25:41; Lk.16:19 - 31). How do we explain that?
De La Beckwith made a name for himself by publishing editorials in the local newspaper that mixed Christianity and white supremacy.
Medgar Evers, a friend and associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beckwith’s fingerprints had been found on the murder weapon, a rifle. He had been a member of the White Citizens’ Council in Greenwood, Mississippi. He attended and actively served the Greenwood Episcopal Church of the Nativity.
... to protect our wives, children, and ourselves from bad [n-word]s.” (Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, p.45 - 46)
De La Beckwith was a Mississippi white supremacist who was declared guilty of murdering Civil Rights activist and organizer...
...When you get to heaven, you will find me in the part that has a sign saying ‘for whites only,’ and if I go to Hades, I’m going to raise hell all over Hades until I get to the white section… For the next 15 years, we here in Mississippi are going to have to do a lot of shooting...
I've kept Hell in my toolbox to teach against Christian Nationalism. This is a good example of why.
Byron de la Beckwith said, “I shall oppose any person, place, or thing that opposes segregation. And further when I die I will be buried in a segregated cemetery...
What if heaven and hell are the same thing - the love of God - but some people feel eternal conscious resentment about it?
Discuss C.S. Lewis' classic. Two possible cohorts.
Starting Mar.21 (Saturdays) and Mar.25 (Wednesdays)
Register at anastasiscourses.thinkific.com
As the song For Good says, "I do believe I have been changed for the better."
If character growth is really growth and not just changing opinions or shapeshifting, then we are in a framework of personal struggle between good and evil, objectively.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV3L...
Postmodernism gave us fascism instead.
Maybe returning to a personal struggle between good vs. evil, truth vs. lies, and beauty vs. ugliness, can give us hope.
As Elphaba says, "We can't let good be just a word. It has to change things."
The Wicked movies show us that we are probably Post-Postmodern.
In Modernism, people made truth claims, which were really power claims in disguise.
In Postmodernism, people thought if we undermined truth, we would have more equal power.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV3L...
Might a more biblically faithful, evangelistically attractive, ecumenically honoring, and socially constructive expression of Christianity emerge?
Journey with us to recover Early and Eastern Christian restorative justice.
If the Sinai covenant actually expressed God’s restorative justice, and Jesus expressed its climax in restoring human nature, then we have an entirely different paradigm to proclaim.
What if the difference between the Sinai covenant and Christ is not "law and the punishments for breaking it" and "the legal satisfaction of the retributive lawgiver"?
Then the entire edifice -- emotional and intellectual -- that White American Evangelicals have built would fall.
But what if this whole evangelical embrace of retribution is based on a very faulty premise? What if the difference between the Old Testament and the New is not "threat of retribution" and "legal pardon"?
