"At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, 'Ask what I should give you.' And Solomon said, 'You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?' It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, 'Because you have asked this, and have not as

Original Author: Frank Friedl, on Facebook, June 24, 2020. Reposted here with permission. This post is part four of a series of topical thoughts inspired by the book Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism by Drew G. I. Hart. Trouble I've Seen, Part 1: Horizontal and Vertical Racism Trouble I've Seen, Part 2: The Race Card Trouble I've Seen, Part 3: Critical Race Theory (CRT) When dealing with matters of race, an easy default Christian response can be "we need Jesus" or "only Jesus can fix it." But what if our conception of Jesus is skewed? (And I don't mean the photogenic white Jesus of many portraits.) As Hart writes, "Jesus may be our answer, but our projections of Jesus may also be our problem." Jesus was born from the context of a teenage pregnancy and an unwed mother (at first). His birth was announced to lower (lowest?) class field workers, where angels proclaimed: "good news (literally gospel) tha

Written by Jon Laughrey I’ve heard a lot of sermons and read many commentaries of Jesus’ parable about the good seed and bad seed but without much said about the seeds. Here are my “seed” thoughts. Seeds are words, ideas, and actions that set examples. We can validate this from other Scripture passages, such as the parable of the sower found in Matthew chapter 13. Jesus explained this parable to his disciples in clear language, but before explaining it to them, he answered their question of why he spoke in parables. “This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. “In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, und

I'm half White; my father is White, German and Irish descent, I think, and my mother is Filipina. When I'm around my mom, especially when it's just the two of us, and even more so if I have a bit of a tan, it’s more obvious that I'm her son and that I have Filipino ancestry, but I’m relatively sure that for most of my life I've been treated with most of the perks of a White, male American. It might have helped that I grew up on air Force bases and that I spent a lot of time around White friends. It probably helped that I grew up in mostly smaller, conservative, non-denominational churches of Christ, which were made up of predominantly White families. I grew up moving every three years or so, and I experienced a fair diversity of cultures, but my primary habitats were predominantly White. It's been difficult to really understand White privilege, because I'm pretty sure I've been steeped in it. If there's anything I've learned about human beings

Abraham, one of Israel’s forefathers in the Old Testament, was a slave owner, as were (probably) many, if not all, of the patriarchs in Israelite history. I’m not a historian, but I’d guess that most cultures in the ancient Middle East, Europe, and Africa practiced slavery. That certainly seems to be true of every nation/tribe mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments. So, let’s talk about it. Why does it matter that Abraham owned slaves? The legal "end" of slavery is a relatively recent event in history, and the civil rights movement in America was, obviously, even more recent. Probably everyone who’s present on social media or glances through the news has noticed we’re nowhere near the end of systemic racism, and slavery is a prominent part of that conversation. In many ways, we’re at another crossroads in American history; how we, as a nation, respond to discussions about slavery and racism is being globally televised. It will impact the entire world. This is alread

Original Author: Frank Friedl, on Facebook, June 9, 2020. Reposted here with permission. This post is part three of a series of topical thoughts inspired by the book Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism by Drew G. I. Hart. Trouble I've Seen, Part 1: Horizontal and Vertical Racism Trouble I've Seen, Part 2: The Race Card I got back on Twitter when quarantine started thinking I'd have more time on my hands (yeah, right). Most of the people I follow are Christian authors/ministers/academics and one of the hot topics across social media was debate over what is called Critical Race Theory (CRT). Last year the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution stating CRT can be used as a "tool" but that the Bible holds ultimate authority, which I guess duh? But it was the only resolution passed with significant dissension. The argument goes: the going-in doctrinal position is that "racism" is a term used by the world (i.e. those out

Original Author: Frank Friedl, on Facebook, June 6, 2020. Posted here with permission. This post is part two of a series of topical thoughts inspired by the book Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism by Drew G. I. Hart. Trouble I've Seen, Part 1: Horizontal and Vertical Racism The race card. Sometimes you'll hear the argument, "You're always playing the race card!" as a means to dismiss another's point of view. You might even use that as a political argument, "There they go again, playing the race card," while complaining about 'identity politics'. The problem with the "race card" is that it's just one card and ignores the deck. Let's call it instead the 'ace card'. If you're playing a game and holding an ace card, that doesn't mean anything without the context of the game and knowledge of the deck. An ace card might be high or low value. Its importance might depend on other ace ca