The Compassion of the Christ April 24, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
Like so many others, I was forever changed by The Passion of the Christ when it was released in 2004. The graphic depiction of Jesus’ suffering was – for the most part – accurate, and coupled with my faith, it made for a very poignant experience.
I bought the DVD, but it has sat safely in my entertainment center – unwatched. I just could not bring myself to watch it again.
But recently, I read an article by Brian McLaren in Leadership and it really called into question my own view of Jesus and what it means to be his church in our world. McLaren was extremely disappointed by the media hype that surrounded Passion, and he really struggled with some indescribable frustration with it. Then he had the opportunity to watch another film, Hotel Rwanda. This film has already appeared in my blogs, and it is still on my top 5 most influential films. Here is what McLaren said:
Consider this for a minute. The Passion was a poignant portrayal of Jesus’ suffering – what he gave for us. Hotel Rwanda presented a situation in which one, who did not have to do so, protected many. He extended compassion where he had no reason to do so.
Which film called for a more radical transformation?
As I see it, Hotel Rwanda stirs our passions not just to remember what Jesus did, but to do what Jesus would do. And this is not about following some moral code but rather about actively living compassion out.
This is something very foundational to our faith, the very essence of koinonia – the sharing community so unique to Christianity. It is what is missing in so much of what is called Christianity.
We seek to be reminded of who Jesus is, but we do not often want to be reminded that we are to be as he is.
When was the last time you shared in the suffering of those who are persecuted – no matter what the reason for their persecution? Do we only have compassion for those who suffer for our faith? For our pet compassion projects?
I cannot help but believe that God left us here to be active agents of compassion and cultural/civil change. Our faith is defined by Jesus dying on the cross and being raised from the dead; but it is seen in our acts of selfless compassion and love – our crosses.
You see, when Jesus said “Take up your cross and follow me,” I am not so sure that he was talking about us “crucifying the flesh.” I think that he had something else in focus – that a Christ follower commits his life to selflessly redeeming others. That we are crucified not by some kind of mystical self-cleansing. The obsession with our own individual status has completely ignored the fact that it was Jesus’ act that demonstrated his love, not just his cleansing or preparation. He died for others; he gave; he demonstrated ultimate compassion.
This is our cross – to love others, to sacrifice ourselves for them. It is precisely NOT about me being spiritual; it is about me being sacrificed.
Human Sexuality April 23, 2007
Posted by Erik in Connections.add a comment
Over the years, I have discovered a tremendous spectrum of misunderstanding on the subject of sexuality in general and sex in specific. I confess to have been involved in sexual sin in my own past – a confession that I make quite openly actually. I am not proud of these failures, but they are part of the person I am and I have learned to accept them.
It was my own failures in this area that led me to question the morality which I had been taught from a young age. Essentially, the impression I got was that sex was something done behind closed doors and that any kind of exploration of the subject was strictly off limits. Your genitalia were referred to as “private parts” and there was simply no discussion of these things.
After failing to remain pure and facing the consequences that that relationship had on the proper relationship I later had with my then girlfriend and now wife, I decided it was time to rethink this complex subject. Over the years, I have rethought and repainted this part of my belief structure about a dozen times; and I am sure that God is not done yet.
Here are my essential conclusions.
First, God invented sex. For some reason our culture – especially our prudish Christian world – seems to forget that God did it. He made mankind as male (Heb. zqr, “the plow”) and female (Heb. nqbh, “the furrow”) [Gen 1:27], and formed their bodies with very intentional functions. It was God who made the nerves that come so close to the surface in the genitals, and it was God who invented the orgasm. It was God’s doing.
Second, God intended the genders to be attracted to each other. God did not say to Adam and Eve, “Hey, I covered you in all kinds of stuff so you wouldn’t look at each other except in your bedroom when you feel led to procreate.” He made them naked, and he gave them free reign of their territory. Read the Canticles (Song of Songs) and discover for yourself that man was made to treasure the form of a woman, and women were made to love the strength and shape of their men.
So, God invented sex; and then he intended us to be attracted to one another. Is there anything more to say? Yes, actually there is.
Sex is about connecting with someone. Make no mistake about it, the sexual act is a spiritual thing. Human beings are the only creations that God made who were both physical and spiritual. We were made for this connection; it is the very essence of being human.
This connection is bigger than and more important than the physical act that usually accompanies it. Our world worships the physical act, and twists and perverts it because they believe the physical act is all there is to sex; but they are wrong.
Because of the sexual sin I fell into, I have the ability to see sex in both lights. I thought I had something with the girl I lost my virginity to. But in reality, it was just sex.
In comparison to the relationship I have with my wife, what I did before does not even show up on the charts. It was dangerous; it was exciting; and make no mistake about it, it felt good. But in the end, it was purely physical – slot a and tab b.
Today, my wife and I have something else. It is something growing and changing and it is never the same because our connection is never the same. We are interacting with one another all the time, learning about each other and seeing God do stuff in our lives. Sometimes we are distant and sex becomes just another physical thing; but other times, we are spiritually together and then sex – becomes a form of worship.
We connect with one another spiritually, and that connection is from God; and when it is coupled with the physical connection – which is also from God – well, there is nothing on earth to compare to it. It connects us with God because it is how God made us. He invented sex; he intended the attractions; and he formed the avenue of spiritual/physical connection we experience.
Ultimately, sex is about God. He is not embarrassed by it – he created it. I think that when a husband and wife come together, it is a joy to God. He celebrates it.
Weird, isn’t it? Thinking of God celebrating a couple having sex? But he told Adam and Eve to do it and then called it “good.” If God did not approve of it, why are there all those “begots” in the Bible?
We, sadly, have taken something beautiful and twisted it. Sex has become an end in itself, and we no longer see the beauty of it outside of the physical sensations, etc. It has become a psychological crutch for those longing for love but incapable of experiencing anything more than their physical satisfaction.
This is the problem with human sexuality today, and it is the reason why I advocate celibacy until marriage. IT has nothing to do with sex being bad or embarrassing. I am quite open about it (sometimes too open for my wife), but sex is a God-thing. I love it; I love to celebrate it.
Here’s an example of how our world has changed. In the ancient world, when a marriage took place, the bride and groom would go inside his father’s house and consummate the marriage while the guests partied outside. In fact, their equivalent of the best man would stand guard outside the door, and the groom would hand him a sheet stained with the blood from the woman’s first sexual act. (Keep in mind that girls married VERY young – 13 or younger sometimes). When the sheet was publicly displayed, the guests would erupt in cheers and joy.
Can you imagine that happening today? What usually happens today when a girl loses her virginity? The guy goes off and brags to his buddies about deflowering her and usually after a short relationship, he discards her. And that’s just the girls who aren’t sexually assaulted before they get to that point.
Our sexuality is so messed up in our world. Because we pretend it is a dirty little secret, people flaunt it and abuse it. Because we have skewed our understanding of God’s role in it, it has become totally physical.
It is sad. What God intended for beauty and good has become something perverse and twisted. What he intended as the ultimate connection, the ultimate sharing, the consummate bonding has become something casual to be shared by strangers for the sensation of it.
The Challenges of History April 21, 2007
Posted by Erik in History and the Bible.add a comment
We are in the middle of preparing a pretty massive undertaking – a historical and grammatical study of the book of Ezekiel (more properly pronounced as Yehezqe’l). This is a big deal because in all my years in Christian circles, I have never heard someone actually teach this enormous portion of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Okay, that is not a completely truthful statement. I have heard people teach from Ezekiel, but I have never heard anyone teach this prophetic book in its context. Usually it is cited in studies of Daniel or Revelation or the end times in general. There is little regard for the context of the book itself, of the history that surrounds it and the massive political and religious upheavals that surrounded its origin.
Here is a perfect example. I grew up thinking that people from the biblical time periods all dressed essentially the same way – you know the costume. They are wearing a long flowing robe and a kinda cloak over it, and of course a sheet on their heads.
But when I started to study reliefs from the various time periods of the Bible (the Hebrew Scriptures alone span nearly 4,000 years of civilization!) I discovered that probably none of the Biblical time periods featured this style of dress, except maybe the New Testament…and even that is a stretch.
To the right is an example of the Egyptian’s view of the known races – from right to left, Libyan, Kushite, Syrian (Aramean) and Egyptian. This particular picture dates from a little after Abraham, but since the Arameans were in fact relatives of Abraham, this is probably how he would have dressed. Shockingly different from the pictures in the children’s Bible most of us had as a kid, isn’t it?
Likewise, I want you to see an Assyrian representation of typical Israelite dress about the time of Ezekiel. The three individuals to the right are Israelite artisans being led captive by the Assyrian. Notice the way they are dressed – more specifically, the way they wore their curly beards? This is nothing like the almost jolly, cartoony characters of the beloved flannel graphs.
So teaching Ezekiel in his historical context is difficult. How do you smash everyone’s illusions and show them the reality of the Biblical world? How do you explain that far from the idealized world of Sunday School lessons, Ezekiel’s world was a political whirlwind? That he had seen four different kings rule his homeland and had been taken captive by the brash general/prince/king Nebuchadrezzar (whose name is actually spelled wrong in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures)? That Ezekiel lived in the ancient equivalent of a concentration camp?
How do you lay out the facts in such a way that we realize this is a living document? That Ezekiel did not write in a vacuum about future events but in reality wrote about contemporary, imminent events?
How do you explore the odd vision in Ezekiel’s introduction (chapter 1) and see it for what it is instead of trying to interpret every little bit and piece of it with some kind of symbolism?
How do you see Ezekiel in light of the early exile instead of just some nebulous time frame we refer to as “biblical times”? How do you learn what it was like to be part of a captive people in Babylon – not just from Biblical sources but also from contemporary histories?
These are the challenges of history, of teaching Scripture in context. It is extremely difficult and requires research and work – which is why most preachers don’t do it. But in the end, it yields a much truer vision of the Word of God. It yields an experience instead of a text. And that makes everything worth it.
If Christianity Were A Person… April 20, 2007
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I just recently got my copy of Blue Like Jazz back from someone who had borrowed it. This is one of the books that I consider catalytic in my spiritual walk, and if you haven’t read it, you should.
Anyway, there is a passage in the book where the author’s friend Peggie expresses that she felt that if Christianity were a person, it would not like her very much. This was an odd statement for me the first time I read it, and I had to really think about this personification that Peggie was making.
If Christianity – and I mean the mainstream perception of Christianity – were a person, what would he/she look like? To be honest, the image that I came up with was not pleasant. This is more or less what he would be like.
Chris T. Anity is a very opinionated person. In fact, he does not even listen to what other people have to say before shouting them down or ignoring them. He is very focused on taking care of himself and only forms real relationships with people who agree with him
He is too busy with pen pals in foreign lands to invest in the well-being of the hungry and poor in his own city. He worries more about appearances than about needs. In fact, his entire life revolves around being right and correct and making sure other people know it.
He votes Republican, but largely is ignorant of the world situation at large. He does not read anything except stuff printed by other like-minded people, and in general is out of step with his times.
Whenever he faces a struggle, he pretends like it is not a big deal. He does not cry and believes there is no place for weakness in his moral conduct. He thinks everyone needs to perform to a certain standard and anyone who doesn’t is obviously just not good enough.
Anytime someone answers him, he seems to be able to give chapter and verse for his opinion. The scope of his vision seems to be narrow – too narrow to embrace anything other than his own thoughts. He talks his own language – has his own vocabulary for things and often cannot explain himself to people who do not share his vocabulary.
Oh yeah, he condemns anything that might be fun.
That’s the way evangelical Christianity looks to the world. You may not like it, but its true. This is how the world at large views us.
Now imagine if we could live our faith in such a way that people might begin to think that maybe Christianity might like them. Imagine if that could happen?
Because if Christianity could like them, then guess who else could? Maybe God would like them to? In fact, if Christianity could show love to them, then maybe God would to?
What open doors that would give us.
Some Christians believe that evangelism is getting harder and harder – I think that’s only because the Christianity they represent is further and further removed from the people it is trying to reach.
The way I see it, evangelism is about letting people see that Christianity likes them; and that more importantly, the God of Christianity likes them.
If Christianity Were A Person… April 20, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
I just recently got my copy of Blue Like Jazz back from someone who had borrowed it. This is one of the books that I consider catalytic in my spiritual walk, and if you haven’t read it, you should.
Anyway, there is a passage in the book where the author’s friend Peggie expresses that she felt that if Christianity were a person, it would not like her very much. This was an odd statement for me the first time I read it, and I had to really think about this personification that Peggie was making.
If Christianity – and I mean the mainstream perception of Christianity – were a person, what would he/she look like? To be honest, the image that I came up with was not pleasant. This is more or less what he would be like.
Chris T. Anity is a very opinionated person. In fact, he does not even listen to what other people have to say before shouting them down or ignoring them. He is very focused on taking care of himself and only forms real relationships with people who agree with him
He is too busy with pen pals in foreign lands to invest in the well-being of the hungry and poor in his own city. He worries more about appearances than about needs. In fact, his entire life revolves around being right and correct and making sure other people know it.
He votes Republican, but largely is ignorant of the world situation at large. He does not read anything except stuff printed by other like-minded people, and in general is out of step with his times.
Whenever he faces a struggle, he pretends like it is not a big deal. He does not cry and believes there is no place for weakness in his moral conduct. He thinks everyone needs to perform to a certain standard and anyone who doesn’t is obviously just not good enough.
Anytime someone answers him, he seems to be able to give chapter and verse for his opinion. The scope of his vision seems to be narrow – too narrow to embrace anything other than his own thoughts. He talks his own language – has his own vocabulary for things and often cannot explain himself to people who do not share his vocabulary.
Oh yeah, he condemns anything that might be fun.
That’s the way evangelical Christianity looks to the world. You may not like it, but its true. This is how the world at large views us.
Now imagine if we could live our faith in such a way that people might begin to think that maybe Christianity might like them. Imagine if that could happen?
Because if Christianity could like them, then guess who else could? Maybe God would like them to? In fact, if Christianity could show love to them, then maybe God would to?
What open doors that would give us.
Some Christians believe that evangelism is getting harder and harder – I think that’s only because the Christianity they represent is further and further removed from the people it is trying to reach.
The way I see it, evangelism is about letting people see that Christianity likes them; and that more importantly, the God of Christianity likes them.
A Person of Paradox April 16, 2007
Posted by Erik in Jesus Stuff.add a comment
How does someone talk about loving your neighbor and then make a scourge to drive moneychangers from the temple? Can the same man who tells you to take up your swords also tell you to lay them down?
Jesus was – as Brian McLaren put it – “young and vigorous, bursting on the scene with a parable on [his] lips, a whip in [his] hands, a sparkle in [his] eyes, and joy in [his] voice.” (Church on the Other Side) He intentionally challenged everything people were. To a peasant, he was a physician; to an aged teacher, he was a young challenger of the status quo. To a rich young ruler, he advocated poverty; for a Samaritan madame, he called for truth and spiritual honesty. To a Roman procurator, he was a philosopher; to the Sanhedrin, he was a boldly silent witness.
Jesus – in hindsight, he probably brought more trouble during his own life than he brought unity or purpose. He instigated things; he created arguments. To some people, he must have just been a larger-than-life walking controversy. And, unless I read the gospels wrong, he relished it.
Jesus loved to create situations where people had to think for themselves. He loved new ideas and new perspectives on old ideas. When he had an opportunity to mess with you, he always took it. He applauded a good turn of a phrase and
crushed thinking that stifled the Spirit’s work.
Young, educated, brash – that was Jesus. And yet, he spent most of his time with people who could not even approach his own intellectual level or social strata. He was head and shoulders above the priests and rabbis of his day, but he surrounded himself with fishermen and country bumpkins.
And then he has the audacity to tell us to be like him. He has the unmitigated gall to tell his followers that they have to pursue his lifestyle with abandon, to treat everyone – Jew and Gentile – as an equal. Everything about him is markedly not modern, remarkably not religious – maybe not even Christian, at least how we define it.
What’s worse is that his first followers did it. To our own shame, the ignorant fishermen and the zealous pharisees who were his first “sons” in the faith pulled it off. Simon Peter, Andrew, Paul of Tarsus, John the Beloved – they pulled it off. They surrendered themselves to the paradox of living like Jesus. They believed his Spirit would direct their thinking and heart and passions. They dove head first into the lives of other people and changed their worlds.
It worked. Living the paradox of Jesus’ life worked. Thousands upon thousands of people became his followers through the lives of these radically devoted disciples. An entire empire was brought to its knees by the silent army of people who dove into each other lives with abandon and believed that the life Jesus called for was the best life you could live.
It is too easy to live a Christian faith that makes sense and fits into a little booklet or a Power Point presentation. I happen to think Jesus would have looked at bullet pointed lists and shivered. Life does not fit inside the lines.
Maybe that’s why he is such a paradox. He drew outside the lines.
Being Abnormal April 16, 2007
Posted by Erik in Connections, Jesus Stuff.Tags: diversity, jesus, prophet
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Reluctant ride in the middle of the belly of a whale
A wheel on fire in the middle of the sky
Abandoned baby kicking on the side of the road
And a wife has died but you’re denied the right to cry.
["The Prophet", The Word, Michael Card]
There is something attractive about the concept of being “normal.” There is a certain security that comes from fitting in and being a part of the accepted. When we find ourselves as “normal,” there is a certain reassurance that it is okay to be who you are, to do what you do.
And then we encounter the prophets. Here were a group of people who operated according to an entirely different set of rules. They lived their lives to the beat of different drummers. At every turn of their lives, people told them that they had no right to say what they said. They were criticized and often tortured for being unusual, being abnormal.
Once I heard someone preach in a chapel service about “the normal Christian life” and one of my students came up to me and asked, “What is normal?” That moment stuck in my head. Is normal really normal? And who decides what normal is anyway?
The Bible is filled with abnormal people. In fact there seems to be a disproportionate number of weirdos in there. Whether it is Elijah wandering around the desert being fed by ravens or Simon Peter seeing visions of sails with animals on it and hearing God talk to him or John the Beloved seeing angels with candlesticks and women clothed in the sun, there are some freaks who contributed to the inspired Word of God.
They were not normal. In fact, they would not be welcomed in most churches – even the wacko, progressive, emerging ones. These guys were cracked.
All of this is for a reason – and not just to prove that acting insane is Biblical. The reality is that God uses diverse people and methods. There is no such thing as a normal Christian or a normal church because God makes us all unique. Our wonderful mishmash of gifts and abilities was God’s idea.
Embracing diversity is a way of embracing a God who is big – REALLY BIG. He is SO big that he transcends our stereotypes, and I mean our stereotypes of each other and of him. We’re really all abnormal, because God is the biggest weirdo of us all. We are diverse because God himself created diversity so we could experience the full spectrum of everything he created for us.
R-A-C-E is a four letter word April 13, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
Pardon me, your epidermis is showing, sir
I couldn’t help but note your shade of melanin
I tip my hat to the colorful arrangement
Cause I see the beauty in the tones of our skin.
["Colored People", D.C. Talk]
This entry all started because of two news items I encountered recently. The first was the incessant coverage of Don Imus’ racist and sexist remarks about a women’s basketball team – certainly not the first or last crude remarks he has made or will make. The second was an article on MSNBC.com about how interracial marriages are on the rise.
Honestly, let’s think about this for a second. Why do we still talk about interracial marriage as if it is different from – say, “normal” marriage? You see my frustration here? There’s only a difference because we MAKE a difference.
My Frustration
There is this underlying racial tension that exists everywhere in our culture. Everything gets divided between “black” and “white” and “Asian” and “Hispanic.” We act like these divisions actually exist, like God really sat down and divided people up into groups based on skin color.
[Notice that all of those labels are in quotation marks?]
There is absolutely no foundation for a belief in race. It is a bunch of evolutionist garbage that has been heaped onto our culture, and we just cannot seem to get rid of it.
In recent genetic studies, especially with the completion of the human genome project, we have discovered that racial characteristics such as skin color or hair texture are not even good standards to divide human beings by. It is much more efficient and more accurate to divide them based on genome variations called alus which have more to do with immunities and susceptibility to disease than they do about appearance. In reality, a “black” person from sub-Saharan Africa and a “white” Scandinavian can be as genetically identical as two “black” people or two “Asian” people born in the same village.
Writing in Nature, Francis S. Collins said this:
“It is essential to point out that ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ are terms without generally agreed-upon definitions. Both terms carry complex connotations that reflect culture, history, socioeconomics and political status, as well as a variably important connection to ancestral geographic origins.”
Truer words have not been spoken about race. The entire concept is a fanciful, cultural fiction. It has no scientific basis (no matter what the Nazi’s said), nor does it have any real value other than to allow people an excuse to degrade or exterminate one another. Race simply does not exist.
Where Did this idea come from?
When did we start dividing up humanity based on characteristics we liked or did not like? Probably shortly after we realized there were characteristics we liked and did not like about other people. When did humans start asserting the superiority of one color of skin over the other? Probably as soon as we realized there were variant skin colors.
When colonists from the various “civilized” nations of Europe encountered “uncivilized” peoples in Africa and the Americas, they assumed that they were inferior. They even labeled them primitive, which derives from the word primate – or MONKEY! These primitive peoples could not do what the colonists could and so must not be as smart or as useful and were enslaved for menial labor. (This is an oversimplification of a complex socio-economical movement, but you get the idea.)
Primitive people (in the minds of our predecessors) were definitely inferior to the more advanced and dominant races. Therefore, it was necessary to keep the races separate for the purity of the “advanced” race – hence racial bigotry was born.
That’s just our particular type of bigotry, but it is not the only type that humans have come up with. The Japanese do it; the Greeks did it; probably EVERY people group views themselves as superior to every other people group in some way or another.
The principles of bigotry are simple – everyone except my group are inferior. Therefore, we do not intermarry; we do not associate. We might even pretend to be equal to them, but in reality, we all KNOW who is truly superior.
The worst manifestation of bigotry is “tolerance.” This is when we patronize people of other groups because they are inferior and need our help. Nothing irritates me more than this attitude.
Where am I going with all of this? Oh yeah, race is fiction. There is no such thing as interracial marriage because there is no such thing as race. If you simply refuse to accept the lies that our “racial leaders” tell us, we can accept the truth that we are human – not races.
What Would Happen…
If we would abandon this racial rhetoric, we would not have “racial integration” – we could simply be human. I know; I know. It’s too simple; it’s too easy; but it’s true. If we consciously reject the concept of race in all its incarnations and live as humans together, things would change.
I know an “interracial” couple who have 3 children. The kids don’t even know what racism is because they have lived their lives with parents who love each other. It never even occurrs to them that mom and dad are different colors. They’re MOM and DAD.
(Unfortunately, one day they will run into the stupid bigotry that fills this world and people will try to make them “choose a side.” I hate that.)
Remember the MSNBC article I mentioned at the opening of this diatribe? It quoted one man as saying, “The racial divide is foundational in our nation.”
NO IT ISN’T! It is an artificial line that has no reason for existing except hatred and fear. Just STOP doing it.
Sand April 7, 2007
Posted by Erik in Articles.add a comment
We are infamously good at drawing lines in the sand. We draw them everywhere, about EVERYTHING.
Clothes – “That skirt is too short. People will be tempted to lust.”
Music – “Why would a Christian listen to that style of music – its evil.”
Movies – “R-rated movies will only destroy your testimony and morality.”
Bibles – “If you don’t read this version of the Bible, you don’t have God’s Word.”
Worship – “Contemporary worship? Don’t you love the songs that have stood the test of time?”
Appearance – “Clean shaven, pressed clothes – it honors God to be your best.
Relationships – “Don’t give opportunity for the flesh. You’re not strong enough to resist temptation.”
Preaching – “This style of preaching is the ONLY biblical style.”
The lists go on and on – lines drawn in the sand. We draw the lines because we think we are protecting the purity of our faith. We draw the lines because for some reason we think we have some kind of sacred responsibility to some ancient standard for faith and practice.
I know someone else who once drew lines in the sand:
As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.
They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.
Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” (John 8:3-11, NLT)
Lines in the sand – we draw them to separate ourselves from sinners. Jesus drew in the sand so he would be left alone with the sinner. Jesus was on the wrong side of the lines the religious drew.
