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Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

3 Dec

"It's not the government's job to take care of the poor."

I'm regularly told this by a certain type of Christian.

Allow me to expose the theology behind their assertion:

Jesus is Lord.*

* Does not apply to governments; governments are exempt from the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Governments are simply a way that people organize themselves.

Is it good Christian theology to claim that there is a way people can organize themselves that exempts them from the Lordship of Jesus Christ?

No, that is not good Christian theology. #ItsReallyJustADodge

Beware the comments.

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Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

7 Nov

I wrote this on July 18, 2018.

It's in "Postcards From Babylon" on page 142:

The presidency of Donald Trump has been a relentless tornado of chaos. The controversies connected with Donald Trump seem to change by the hour—it’s neo-Nazis having “some fine people,”... 1/4

...then it’s paying off porn stars, then it’s children in detention camps, then it’s Putin and Russia. As I conclude the writing of this chapter, I’m on a flight from Toronto, and for all I know what I’ve written will be out of date by the time I land in Kansas City;... 2/4

I’m certain it will be out of date by the time this book is published. But I write it anyway. I write it in memory of my father. I write it so I’ll be on record... 3/4

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Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

27 Oct

Perceiving the kingdom of God as an actual political reality is a game changer. Once you see that Jesus has his own political agenda, his own vision for arranging human society, his own criteria for judging nations, then it’s impossible... 1/7

...to give your heart and soul to the power-based, win-at-all-costs partisan politics that call for our allegiance. Unfortunately, what I’ve learned through bitter experience is that a lot of people don’t want the game changed. They want to win the game—not change the game. 2/7

My most vehement critics tend to come from those who regard my deep ambivalence toward a political “take back America for God” agenda as a scandalous betrayal. They simply cannot imagine how God’s will is going to be done if “our side” doesn’t win the political game. 3/7

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Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

12 Oct

During Columbus’ governorship of Hispaniola the Arawak people were either sold into slavery or forced to supply a certain quantity of gold every three months. Those who failed to meet the quota had their hands cut off. That’s when the mass suicides began.

Modern scholarship places the population of Hispaniola in 1492 at no less than four million people. By 1520 it had fallen to 20,000. Do the math! The Niña, Pinta, and Santa María had brought Death to the Americas.

Bartolomé de las Casas, a young Spanish priest with the Columbus expedition, was so appalled by the barbaric cruelty of his fellow “Christians” that he spent the rest of his life documenting the abuses.

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Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

9 Oct

One of the most remarkable things about the first Christians is that they didn’t try to hide, downplay, or gloss over the fact that the One they worshiped as King of Kings had been crucified. Paul says “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”

The early Christian hymn that Paul quotes in his letter to the Philippian church doesn’t merely say Jesus died, but that he was crucified. The earliest Christian creed doesn’t flinch from confessing that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate and was crucified.

For Christians living at such a far remove from the first century, the depth of this scandal may be hard to grasp, but your hero being crucified would be the last thing a Jew or a Roman living in antiquity would boast about. And yet the early Christians *did* boast about it.

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Brian Zahnd

@BrianZahnd

8 Sep

For most Western people “God” is the amalgamation of all the philosophical “omnies”—omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-everything. What we end up with in this approach to understanding God are our own ideas, preferences, prejudices, fears magnified to the omni-degree. 1/4

But a Christian understanding of God is entirely informed by Jesus. It is Jesus who gives definition to God, not the philosophical “omnies.” We don’t know God according to philosophical categories, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. (cf. Matthew 11:27) 2/4

The whole point of confessing the deity of Christ is to know what God is like. We must not make the mistake of saying, “I already know what God is like and now I know that Jesus is God.” No! That’s all backwards. It is Jesus alone who knows the Father and reveals the Father. 3/4

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