More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Megan Westra
Read between
February 3 - February 7, 2022
In his encounter with Zacchaeus, I want to suggest that Jesus sets forth a reparations ethic. . . . Zacchaeus is expected to give back that which he has stolen so that he can be reconciled with others and God. Reconciliation cannot occur until he has given back what he has stolen.31
It became increasingly clear to me that if I was going to love my neighbor as myself, I would need to consider the ways in which the land my neighbor and I lived on was being affected by our presence.
Bearing the image of God is not only a statement about the value of human life; it is a statement about the responsibility humans have to the rest of the created world.
God’s justice is always restorative and transformative, not consumptive. God’s justice takes what is corrupt or broken and makes it new but does not extract revenge or payment for the sake of God’s gratification.
These unexpected interruptions, among many other memories, are part of what has led me to believe that caring for the earth and our resources is part of my discipleship as a follower of Jesus.
With the climate crisis we’re facing today, perhaps the most needed response is in the form of public witness. While personal and small community steps certainly help, larger systemic change must be made to effect the change needed to mitigate the effects of the shifting climate on planet Earth.
getting saved does not magically transform a person into a respecter of the dignity and autonomy of others—and especially not of women.
These views often function to turn women into objects to consume. They constantly define women by their relationship to others as someone’s wife, mother, or daughter.
Along with his version of the gospel, Graham began proclaiming extrabiblical teachings about the role of a wife. “The Bible teaches that the wife is to make the home as happy as possible . . . as near like heaven as possible,” Graham preached.
The word for the “side” from which the woman was taken is the same as the word used to refer to the sides of the ark of the covenant. It’s a word used for equal opposing sides that work together to make something strong and steady. The phrase “suitable helper” used to describe the woman, tragically translated by the King James Version as “help meet,” is used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to military reinforcements in battle or to refer to God directly as a divine helper.
While a handful of verses have been used throughout the years to relegate women to particular roles within the church and in life, the Bible as a whole gives no such picture. The movement throughout the text is toward what the prophet Joel declared, and what Peter echoed on Pentecost: the new reality that the Spirit of God is poured out on all flesh, old and young, male and female alike (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:17-21).
refuse to be okay with my daughter growing up in a world where hundreds of thousands of women around the world have reason to rally behind #MeToo and #ChurchToo, and where every woman I know can recount at least a handful of times they were verbally harassed or physically assaulted.
My femaleness is not a liability—it is intentional.
This is what a consumeristic Christianity had taught me—a husband was something to be found, won over, and possessed. Men were for consumption, and eventually one man would fulfill the insatiable hunger in me.
What if beauty lies in the expansiveness of gender, and not in the narrowness of the gender binary? Scripture tells us that God made the day and separated it from the night, yet we speak as though night and day are wholly opposite and apart from one another. But this polarity does such a disservice to God’s creation. Have we forgotten about the sunset and sunrise, which bleed so beautifully from day to night and back again?
Rather than giving readers a literal command to cut off limbs and gouge out eyes, this passage points to the extreme measures that followers of Jesus are commanded to take to prevent harming others. While the command is directed at the individual, it is given not for the sake of the individual alone but for the shared life of the community.
a pastor, deacon, or any other prominent leader within the community desires their own elevation of status, the solution Jesus poses is to cut the leader off and throw them out.
Why do Christians care more about the crimes and oppression halfway around the world than that in American churches? One of the painful responses is something culture at large accepts, and something the church is slow to admit. Church leaders have not just made foolish decisions.
The vast majority of victims are telling the truth.
The latest Gallup polls reveal that over 85 percent of people who identify as LGBTQ grew up in a faith community, and that 54 percent of those who grew up in a faith community have chosen to leave it, largely because they felt unloved by their congregations.16
But the idea of the nuclear family is not a biblical one. Jesus invites us to consider all who do the work of bringing about God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven to be our siblings (Matthew 12:48–50).
Throughout this book I’ve invited you to consider anew what it looks like to be saved, that perhaps our conversations about Jesus as a “personal Lord and Savior” are not wrong but are decidedly incomplete.
It’s a way of being in which we are also invited to act and speak and love and move.
Christian faith as expressed in the United States has largely been shaped by our consumer mindset, teaching us to focus on our own needs and wants: I want Jesus on my side, and in my heart.
Salvation is a way of being with God, yourself, your neighbor, and the world around you, and that means the ways of “being” extended to us in salvation move and flow and change.
The antidote to the consumerism plaguing our view of salvation is a commitment to both maintain our particularities as the gifts from God that they are and simultaneously commit to a posture of self-giving love. The opposite of consumption is connection. Bread broken and passed from hand to hand. A cup poured out for me and for you, and for them too.
