The fundamentalists may have created a personalized Jesus we don't even recognize, but the liberals' Jesus, too, is an individualized Jesus who serves the empire - a Jesus painfully divorced from his ministry of justice.

Allan Boesak

Categorized in : Jesus May Justice

Ubuntu is not a biblical concept but an ancient African one. Nevertheless it falls back on one simple thing: that humans have been created for togetherness, and what drives us apart is greed, lust for power, and a sense of exclusion, but those are aberrations.

biblical philosophy fall

I've been a politician and so I'm sometimes cynical about what politicians won't do. When I hear a politician say something that makes no sense whatsoever, I think there's one of two things there: There's money or the promise of money.

money two thinking

The God of the Bible is the God of liberation rather than oppression; a God of justice rather than injustice; a God of freedom and humanity rather than enslavement and subservience; a God of love, righteousness and community rather than hatred, self-interest and exploitation.

self spiritual justice

If your starting point for understanding humanity is a racialist viewpoint, with superiority and inferiority projected onto people because of the color of their skin, then it's so easy to take the next step of justifying that point theologically and reading it into the Christian scripture. And that makes it harder to understand what scripture is actually saying!

color reading christian

Ordinary people - churches, too - have a role to force politicians to respond. Governments are not impressed with theories, but governments are impressed with people who change their minds about things.

government mind people

I believe scripture is not just resilient but rebellious against its abuse by people. Scripture says it refuses to be used in that way for long. That is why the gospel that has been used by the oppressors is the same gospel that liberated the oppressed: They were reading the same book. Something in the DNA of Christian faith and in the Bible agitates against that kind of misuse.

christian believe book

What always strikes me in the story of Cain and Abel is how often the word "brother" is used. Cain killed his "brother." God says it was "the blood of your brother." The killing was done to another human being, a child of God like you, breaking that sacred bond of common humanity.

brother children blood

I think "post-racial" is a dangerous trap. You can fall into complacency and give your complicity a much more dangerous character.

character fall thinking

And besides, it drives the dragon crazy when you sing about his downfall even though you are bleeding

bleeding dragons crazy