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“When we become overly concerned about our appearance, our spiritual reputation, our coolness, and our acceptance, we are living as citizens of this world rather than as ambassadors.”
― Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit
― Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit
“When I decided to follow Jesus that night in Atlanta, I assumed that becoming a Christian would make life easier. I thought the rest of my life would be smiling and smooth sailing. I assumed I wouldn’t be tempted by women and partying and acceptance and all the things that I’d been a slave to for so many years. I thought I would walk around with a continual inner peace and serenity like Gandhi or something. This turns out to be a lie that too many people believe. You’ll actually experience more temptation, not less, after you become a Christian. Following Jesus doesn’t mean you’ll start living perfectly overnight. It certainly doesn’t mean that your problems will disappear. Rather than ridding you of problems or temptations, following Jesus just means that you have a place—no, a person—to run to when they come. And the power to overcome them.”
― Unashamed
― Unashamed
“The gap between white and black education, income, and mortality rates is as wide today as it was forty years ago.6 If you look into a hospital nursery and see a black infant and a white infant, you can predict which baby will die first, which one will make a higher income and have better education, just by the color of the baby’s skin. There is no area in American society (education, incarceration, income, preaching, and so on) where racial disparity isn’t operating.7 Martin Luther King Jr. could not have known how we would abuse his hope that we will not be judged by skin color but by character.8 King said nothing about blindness being a virtue. Jesus never praised blindness; on a notable occasions he healed it. When whites claim, “I am color-blind in my dealings with others,” it’s usually an indication of our ignorance of how we have been thoroughly indoctrinated into race. It’s like saying, “I am sinless,” meaning, “My sin is so dominant in this society that it just seems normal.” A first step is to name our whiteness. As James Baldwin said in The Fire Next Time, “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”9”
― Who Lynched Willie Earle?: Preaching to Confront Racism
― Who Lynched Willie Earle?: Preaching to Confront Racism
“The influence of the Sermon on the Mount is truly past reckoning. Any rational human being with a conscientious mind is bound to be influenced by its exuberant content regardless of religious background.”
― Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
― Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
“Preaching that confronts racism: • Speaks up and speaks out. • Sees American racism as an opportunity for Christians honestly to name our sin and to engage in acts of detoxification, renovation, and reparation. • Is convinced that the deepest, most revolutionary response to the evil of racism is Jesus Christ, the one who demonstrates God for us and enables us to be for God. • Reclaims the church as a place of truth-telling, truth-embodiment, and truth enactment. • Allows the preacher to confess personal complicity in and to model continuing repentance for racism. • Brings the good news that Jesus Christ loves sinners, only sinners. • Enjoys the transformative power of God’s grace. • Listens to and learns from the best sociological, psychological, economic, artistic, and political insights on race in America, especially those generated by African Americans. • Celebrates the work in us and in our culture of a relentlessly salvific, redemptive Savior. • Uses the peculiar speech of scripture in judging and defeating the idea of white supremacy. • Is careful in its usage of color-oriented language and metaphors that may disparage blackness (like “washed my sins white as snow,” or “in him there is no darkness at all”). • Narrates contemporary Christians into the drama of salvation in Jesus Christ and thereby rescues them from the sinful narratives of American white supremacy. • Is not silenced because talk about race makes white Christians uncomfortable. • Refuses despair because of an abiding faith that God is able and that God will get the people and the world that God wants.”
― Who Lynched Willie Earle?: Preaching to Confront Racism
― Who Lynched Willie Earle?: Preaching to Confront Racism
Eric’s 2023 Year in Books
Take a look at Eric’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
649 books
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51 friends
171 books
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57 friends
1 book
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127 friends
13 books
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11 friends
1 book
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28 friends
1 book
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36 friends
1 book
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26 friends
0 books
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22 friends
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