-
SMALL KINDNESSES: AN ADVENT MEDITATION
In 1985, Robert Fulgham wrote an essay that later became the bestselling book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1990). It went viral. Fulgham’s premise was that the simple rules that children learn in kindergarten serve just as well in adult life, such things as: Share everything.Play fair.Don’t hit people.Put things…
-
THE TOWER OF BABEL: THE DIVINE PREFERENCE FOR DIVERSITY
The intriguing, funny, and cutting story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is the last in the collection of stories that makes up the preface to the book of Genesis and, therefore, to the Bible itself. We do well to attend to these stories, not as histories, which is to distort them and lose…
-
WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER FALL STORY IN GENESIS?
Fall stories are important (fall stories of the theological sort; not stories about the season). They account for what has gone wrong in our world. Perhaps, that’s not quite the right way to put it. “Gone wrong” implies that there was an earlier time when things had not gone wrong. But not all stories accounting…
-
DOES THE BIBLE HAVE A PLOT? A Second Take on a Theme
A bit of clarification is in order. In my previous series, “The Quest for “A Foundation-Laying Biblical Theology of Human Sexuality,” I took aim at a number of assumptions and methods that underlie the approach taken to questions of human sexuality by a synodical study committee in their looooong (175 pages) and controversial report, now…