By Ross Engel –
It should be no surprise to you, our intrepid readers, that the authors here at Jagged Word do occasionally enjoy beverages that come out of bottles. Water, Wine, Whiskey, Beer. If it can be bottled, we tend to like it. And it is safe to say that we all have our favorites—our go to beverages of choice.
By Cindy Koch –
Opening my front door, I saw a man and woman smiling enthusiastically. “Hi, can I share a few Bible verses with you today?” she said flipping through a well-worn floppy book. I politely consented. “Who can get enough of God’s word?” I thought. After pointing out some nice words about our happy eternity, she said, “Now I sure you are familiar with praying to God as Father, but have you prayed to God the Mother?”
By Paul Koch –
Today the church calendar calls for us to focus our attention on the teaching of the Holy Trinity. Now of all the days that this ancient calendar brings into focus, this one is quite unique. After all, every other day has to do with an event. Christmas, Easter, The Baptism of our Lord, Pentecost, Palm Sunday, these are all events that we then examine and learn from. But today is not an event at all. Today is the one time that we focus specifically on a doctrine. Today we focus upon the church’s teaching that we have one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the name into which we are baptized, the name that begins our worship together, the name that marks us as Christians.
By Graham Glover –
Finally, it’s over. After a long and slow decay into political oblivion, social conservatives need to hang it up. Their movement is dead – completely devoid of life.
By Joel A. Hess –
We are witnessing a reality in the western world that I don’t believe anyone would have truly believed possible even ten years ago, even though all the signs of its eventuality were present all the way back to the naive metaphysical premise found in the declaration of independence. Today, most people in the West believe that the validity of something is entirely a subjective enterprise. The obvious manifestations of this new religion appear in the growing list of invented sexualities as well as the ability for some to look at the picture of a human being in a mother’s womb and call it a clump of cells.
By Scott Keith –
Right when I’m in the middle of a first class lecture concerning how I have been wronged, the subject of my derision exclaims “I am sorry. Please forgive me.” There is nothing more frustrating! Don’t they know that I was just getting warmed up? Don’t they realize that I have a gift for pointing out the error in others’ actions and reasoning? Don’t they realize how profoundly wrong they are if they are giving up so quickly? If they understood the depth of their error, they would allow me to finish my rant before pulling out the “please forgive me” trump card.
By Jaime Nava –
America has been considered a Christian nation for quite some time. It’s considered that because of the number of Christians who are here and the values they hold, not because everyone here is automatically converted. People have been saying for years that America is becoming or has become a post-Christian nation. What do they mean by that? Usually, it means that there are fewer people going to church in the US or that attendance is down. Those things are true. Attendance across all denominations is dropping.
By Caleb Keith –
Most of the people reading this probably haven’t heard of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty (LCRL). I hadn’t heard of the LCRL until this past summer, and it wasn’t until this last semester that I really understood what the LCRL is and what they do. As part of a research paper for my Christians and Ethics course this semester, I examined the LCRL and reviewed its functions in light of the classical view of Lutheran two-kingdom theory.
By Joel A. Hess –
On the 18th of June, 1940, Winston Churchill concluded his historic speech to the House of Commons, saying,
“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
By Paul Koch –
I have learned to hate Confirmation.
For those outside of the Lutheran tradition, Confirmation is a day when the youth, being instructed in the teachings of the church, are called upon to give a public confession of the faith. They often dress up in white robes and stand before the congregation, where they are asked to answer questions such as:
By Graham Glover –
It’s time to take a deep breath dear Christian friends. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Seriously, everything is going to be ok. And if it’s not, if the world in which we live is hell bent on moral destruction, oh well, it doesn’t really matter, because in the grand scheme of things, the Church’s purpose has never been primarily about changing behavior.
By Graham Glover –
Like many others, I am at a loss in trying to figure out Pope Francis. (For those of you Lutherans reading this that loathe the papacy, move along, there’s nothing to see here…)
Honestly, I can’t figure out if Francis is a theological genius or someone who just might turn the Vatican and its curia upside down – or perhaps even sow the seeds that will ultimately destroy it.
By Joel A. Hess –
This past week, I had the privilege once again to sit near the bedside of a woman breathing her last breath. Afterward, I noticed the hospice caretaker speak gently about her client to her daughter. When referring to her death, she never said “she died.” Instead, like so many within and without the community of the risen Jesus, the nurse said “she passed.”
People don’t like to say that their loved one “died.”
By Bob Hiller –
This past week, I came across an article from Christianity Today entitled “Why Jesus’ Skin Color Matters.” In it, author Christena Cleveland argues that the Western church has done a great disservice to the church by presenting Jesus as a white male. She argues that Jesus, as a first century Jew, would not have been a member of the powerful, white Roman class. Instead, he was a dark, olive-skinned member of a social minority.
By Joel A. Hess –
Hiroo Onoda was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines by his Japanese imperial commander during World War II. He was ordered to do all that he could to hamper enemy attacks on the island. There were three others with him.
One day, they came across a leaflet from the local islanders saying “The war ended August 15th. Come down from the mountains!” The few remaining cells discussed this leaflet extensively but eventually decided that it was Allied propaganda trying to get them to give themselves up.
By Paul Koch –
St. Stephen was a man of unshakable resolve and courage. And early in his ministry he stood and proclaimed the Word of God to a group of, well, let’s call them hostile listeners. In fact, we are told that the crowd grew so angry with what he preached that they ground their teeth and then tried stopping their ears. When they couldn’t stand it anymore they rushed at him, seized him, drug him out of the city, and began to stone him. As they cast their stones they took off their outer garments to better do their damage. They laid those garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
By Donavon Riley –
Imagine a church’s mission statement is: “You Don’t Have to Fake It ‘Till You Make It.” That is, you walk into church, and an usher hands you a bulletin. On the front, it reads: “We don’t expect you to believe everything we confess, pray, preach, and sing about this morning. You’re invited to join us for worship anyway. Listen to the sermon, pray, and sing with us. You’re a gift to us, and we trust the Holy Spirit will change your heart in his own time. Please come again and ask any questions that you may have.”
By Jaime Nava –
Reading a fellow writer’s recent post got me thinking. There’s a lot of Christian denominations to choose from. I say Christian because God’s Word is presented in a Trinitarian way with Jesus Christ as dying for sins. So whether Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Revival-oriented (i.e. most non-denoms), or what have you, there are Christians present in those places because God’s Word doesn’t return void. The Jesus they preach is the same that Christendom has always preached: the God-man (100% both), who is the second person of the Three-In-One, died for our sins. Cool. Preach Jesus. Even so, denominations differ. Emphases are placed on different things. What’s the big deal? Let’s consider our American history.
By Paul Koch –
Does location matter when it comes to theology? That is, when people are arguing passionately with regard to certain points of doctrine, does it matter where that argument takes place? Does the setting play a part in a discussion about confessional subscription or theories of ecclesiology or confirmation practices?
I think it does.
By Cindy Koch –
Shaking my head, slowly opening my heavy eyes, I saw them for the first time. A grey film smothered the features of their face. Glassy fixed eyes stared right through me. Rotting flesh appeared to drip down their cheeks around their gaping mouth. They limped and stumbled aimlessly around the room, unable to see. They terrified me; I thought I was lost in a nightmare. But it was only a Tuesday afternoon.
