It’s tricky living as exiles in Babylon. youtu.be/jGleS-QhnzM?...

“The only punishment capable of punishing Hitler, and deterring little boys thirsting for greatness in coming centuries from following his example is such a total transformation of the meaning attached to greatness that he should thereby be excluded from it.” -Simone Weil, 1943

A wheel of Stilton cheese from England. This is the good stuff, people.

Next.

The gospel is not a fiction, but it is a story. brianzahnd.substack.com/p/lord-of-th...

Once Christians tie their faith to partisan politics they eventually have to defend the indefensible. Pledge all your allegiance to Jesus Christ and let the politicians fend for themselves.

Imagine what the Hebrew prophets would say about trillionaires.

A Brief Q/A

“…among whom licentiousness was taken for gaiety and cheap cynicism for intelligence.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons At the beginning of the year I’ll teach a ten-week online class on Dostoevsky’s “Demons.” It’s not for the faint of heart. Try wolc.com/demons and you might find more info.

When the church seeks to change the world through political power, it does not change the world, it becomes the world. As Stanley Hauerwas famously says, “The first task of the church is to make the world the world.”

Word of Life Church was born on All Saints Day 1981. This Sunday we’ll celebrate our 44th anniversary and I’ll preach a sermon called “The Word of Life” (1 John 1:1).

The third and final sermon in my series on Job—Dark As Midnight. youtu.be/4mKu_wIh81U?...

Random: My photo of the inkwells, pipes, and tobacco of C.S. Lewis.

Wherein I talk about the enigmatic Tom Bombadil. youtu.be/UGXUGMK16So?...

Resist the tyranny of tiny screens. Read big books. 📚

In “Demons,” Fyodor Dostoevsky portrays the adherents of Marxist atheism and the adherents of (Russian) Christian nationalism as both under the sway of demonic isms.

Any attempt to use Jesus Christ to serve some nation, politics, ideology, ism, or cause, other than the divine mission to reconcile all things so that in the end God is all in all, is to reduce Jesus Christ to a false idol.

DEMONS A 10-week online course through Dostoevsky’s darkest and most prophetic novel. The course begins in January. Registration is now open. Cost: donation of any amount. The registration link has all the pertinent information. Join me in January for…DEMONS! www.eventbrite.com/e/demons-onl...

DARK AS MIDNIGHT The Story of Job Part 2 youtu.be/Yc2Y3G_Tutg?...

Free Substack open.substack.com/pub/brianzah...

Peri’s photo from the car as we drove to the mountains last month.

DEMONS: Dostoevsky's darkest and most prophetic novel. brianzahnd.substack.com/p/demons

Today I began a three-part series through the book of Job called “Dark As Midnight.” Here is part 1. youtu.be/bj5baA4TCPA?...

True Christianity advances without coercion. We persuade by love, witness, reason, rhetoric, Spirit, and, if need be, by martyrdom; but never by force, never by the sword, never by the coercive apparatus of this state.

The ten who have most influenced my theology.* (In alphabetical order.) Walter Brueggemann Sergius Bulgakov Fyodor Dostoevsky Bob Dylan René Girard David Bentley Hart Stanley Hauerwas C.S. Lewis N.T. Wright L. Glen Zahnd

This Sunday I begin a new three-part series on the story of Job: DARK AS MIDNIGHT

A Christianity that promotes the interests of empire* is a Christianity that rides the back of the beast as the whore of Babylon.

The prophets and psalmists of lament show us how to find faith and hold on to hope in the time of tears. I'll preach on this tomorrow.

Confessing Jesus Christ is Lord And pledging allegiance to America Are incompatible commitments Choose one Choose this day Choose whom you will serve

This Sunday I'm preaching in Denver. Amazing Grace Church, 10AM. My sermon is called, "The Lord Said to Satan..." You're invited. www.agcdenver.net

This photo is upside down. It is also an illustration about the nature of reality and illusion, heaven and earth, the eternal and the temporal. I'll talk about this next week at our Mountain Retreat where the theme is "In Search of Narnia."

Beware of isms. There be devils.

The rapture happened. I’m in heaven. 😎

A sermon in which I attempt an interpretation of what may be Jesus’ most difficult parable—the parable of the Unjust Steward. youtu.be/bYOLy7OeAjo?...

It grieves me to see people I’ve known for years (some as far back as the Jesus Movement of the 1970s) seduced by a mean-spirited culture-war Christianity that is but a perverse caricature of the authentic faith formed around Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, it grieves me terribly.

Reading.

The task of preaching is not to bring commentary on current events but to bring a word from elsewhere.

Some of us turn off the lights and we lay Up in the moonlight shooting by Some of us scare ourselves to death in the dark To be where the angels fly ~Dylan

“If any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name of Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.” ~The Last Battle

Holy Cross youtu.be/-8XpbyY3i0M?...

When theology is forced to bow to a particular political ideology, you are going to get bad theology. The Subject of theology cannot be accurately described or curtailed by the politics of this age.

Just arrived in Chicago to participate in the Church at the Crossroads Conference. To be Christian does not entail the embrace of an aberrant eschatology used to justify war crimes; to be Christian is to walk this world in a deliberate attempt to imitate the Prince of Peace.

Seeing Swell Season (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) tonight at the Midland Theatre was just what I needed. The song is “Her Mercy”—a song I used a few years ago in Finding God In The Music.

A Christianity that revels in cruelty stinks of the devil.

A Summer Conversation in Copenhagen www.podbean.com/pw/pbblog-9g...

Finding God In The Music Sweet Sounds Of Heaven youtu.be/Vttdq5YM1G4?...

A playlists of the 99 songs I’ve used in 17 seasons of Finding God In The Music. open.spotify.com/playlist/7z7...

“I will draw all things to myself” Detail of a stained glass window in St. Etheldreda's church, London. (We had a nice chat with the priest.)

Why only are active duty military personnel invited to pre-board the plane (“thank you for your service”) and not active duty public school teachers?