Well, I rarely plug other blogs. Not because I don't read several other blogs but because I have a few rules that I made for myself when I started to write online.
That said, I want to recommend a post on my little brother's blog. His name is Abe, he's a pretty smart cookie (he's 24 and he is doing a PhD in nursing, presenting at conferences, writing articles, and working at a health centre for homeless people) and I enjoy reading what he writes. His latest post is a bit of web research entitled “Bruce Wilkinson and Colonialism” (yes, that is the Bruce Wilkinson who wrote The Prayer of Jabez). I highly recommend you take a look at it and follow through on the links he provides.
His blog can be found here: http://www.nurseabe.blogspot.com.
Love you, Abe!

In its most extreme and universal form, our constitutional rights are reducible to the right not to have to love our neighbour.
~ Curtis White, “The Spirit of Disobedience”
And this is why it is high time that the Western Church moved beyond talking about “human rights” and began talking about forgiveness followed by repentance, and reconciliation paired with cruciformity.

Immanuel Kant once wrote that the Enlightenment could perhaps be summarised by a single imperative: Sapere aude! Think for yourself!
A few hundred years later, we would do well to consider whether or not thinking for ourselves is all it is cracked up to be. We all think for ourselves, and, consequently, we refuse to recognise the thoughts of others as more truthful, valid, or persuasive, than our own.
Enlightened Western culture set out to liberate itself from religion and Nietzsche proclaimed this liberation to be so complete that we even managed to kill God. Yet, I don't think that this is the case. Our liberation, our commitment to thinking for ourselves, has not turned us into atheists. It has turned us into pantheists. We are all gods in our own minds. I am the sole authority in my life. God is not dead — I have replaced him.
Of course, a return to pre-Enlightenment forms of domination is hardly appealing (although post-Enlightenment forms of domination are just as lacking in appeal). Thinking for ourselves is not a completely worthless exercise. Therefore, I simply want to suggest that we continue to think for ourselves but that we don't take our own thoughts too seriously. This corrective is especially important for those of us who are pursuing Christianity within the academy. We need to heed Paul's injunction in Romans 12: “do not be wise in your own estimation.”
So, I'll think for myself, but, when push comes to shove, I'll submit my thoughts to other authorities and allow them to correct me.

Can somebody explain to me how putting a “Make Poverty History” banner on your blog helps to make poverty history?

Only those who follow the church have a sure guarantee for the fact that, in their obedience to Christ, they have not really followed just their own know-it-all wisdom.
~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, The von Balthasar Reader
Or, to put it in a more Protestant manner:
It is better to submit to an authority that is sometimes wrong, than it is to submit to no authority whatsoever.

The Spirit is given so that we ordinary mortals can become, in a measure, what Jesus himself was: part of God's future arriving in the present; a place where heaven and earth meet; the means of God's kingdom going ahead. The Spirit is given, in fact, so that the church can share in the life and continuing work of Jesus himself.
~ N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
When this is the nature of our faith and of our being in Christ how can we not be overwhelmed by both wonder and longing?

“It isn't so much that Jesus laughed at the world, or wept at the world. He was celebrating with the new world that was beginning to be born, the world in which all that was good and lovely would triumph over evil and misery. He was sorrowing with the world the way it was, the world of violence and injustice and tragedy which he and the people he met knew well.
From the very beginning, two thousand years ago, the followers of Jesus have always maintained that he took the tears of the world and made them his own, carrying them all the way to his cruel and unjust death to carry out God's rescue operation; and that he took the joy of the world and brought it to new birth as he rose from the dead and thereby launched God's new creation.”
~ N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
Jesus was, and is, “God with us”. This is not a God who comes down while still maintaining a form of detachment. This is not a God so removed from us that he is incapable of sharing our joys and sorrows. No, this is God with us. This is God weeping. This is God laughing. This is God bleeding. This is God dying. And this is God overcoming death and dying, in order to bring about new life and provide us with the assurance that one day all wounds will be healed and all tears will be dried.
And we too, the people of God, should be “God with others”. We have been baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ and, in Christ and with the Spirit of the new age within us, we are elevated beyond our own joys and sorrows and now carry the joys and sorrows of those around us in a new way. We have not been saved from the world, we have been saved for the world. We share the joy of the kingdom, but we also carry the sorrows of those who suffer violence, injustice, and tragedy.
In this regard it is worth noting how our baptism is similar to the baptism of Christ. Theologians and biblical scholars have often gone to great lengths to distinguish between these baptisms. Certainly there are differences. Christ's baptism was part of his salvific incarnation by which he identified with sinners in order to save them. Our baptism is an act of identification with Christ, by which we proclaim that sin no longer has a hold on us. Christ was baptised to take on sin, we are baptised to be saved from sin. Yet this must be made clear: we are not saved from sin so that we can then be elevated beyond sin. We are saved from sin so that we can, like Christ, begin to enter into the sins of others and carry the burdens of others' sins in a redemptive manner. Thus, we are baptised in order to be in Christ, but, once in Christ, we also go on to be with the world as Christ was with the world. Knowing the joys and sorrows of Christ, we also laugh and cry with those around us. We suffer and die with them while simultaneously proclaiming that the kingdom of God is among us and revealing the new creation as it bursts forth in the present.

On of the basic principles of Protestantism (over against Roman Catholicism) is the affirmation of the priesthood of all believers. The Reformers stressed this point especially in light of the sacrament of penance and absolution. They declared that all believers have the authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins. One did not need to go to a priest to be absolved. One could go to a brother or sister in the body of Christ, confess that one had sinned, and receive forgiveness.
There are two reasons why I find it especially interesting that this doctrine was so emphatically upheld in relation to forgiveness. These reasons are rooted within an odd paradox that is present in contemporary North American Protestantism.
One the one hand, the proclamation of forgiveness is noticeably absent. Who among us has felt that they could go to anybody and say,”Your sins are forgiven”? Such a declaration seems either exceedingly presumptuous, or exceedingly ignorant, to our ears — after all, only God is the judge of human hearts, and who am I say proclaim forgiveness for sins not committed against me?
On the other hand, there is an overabundance of assumed forgiveness. That is to say, each individual believer has become an expert in forgiving himself or herself. I do not need to confess my sins to a priest, nor do I need to confess my sins to any other person. I can confess my sins to God in the privacy of my own heart, and claim his forgiveness as my own. So, although I cannot say to anybody else, “Your sins are forgiven,” I can, without hesitation, think to myself, “My sins are forgiven”.
Returning to the Reformers understanding of the priesthood of all believers helps us to find our way out of this problematic situation. On the one hand we gain the boldness and the folly to proclaim forgiveness to others. On the other hand, we learn the humility that requires us to go to others and confess our sins to them. These things (confession, and proclaiming forgiveness) are at the heart of Christian living, and what it means to exist as the Church in, and for, the world. We must, once again, recover their significance.

“Paul's 'we do not know how to pray as we ought' has probably never been as relevant as it is today… The images of the world which in former times spoke of God have become obscure ciphers and riddles, the words of scripture have been whittled away by rationalistic skeptics, human hearts have been so crushed and trampled on in this age of the robot that they are no longer sure that contemplation is possible. Prayer finds them basically full of doubt, insecurity and despair; they creep along close to the ground and dare not stand upright. They feel drawn to every negative act; ready not only to doubt God but also to resist him, perhaps even to hate him for letting the world carry on as it does, for being so high and aloof, above the need to intervene. For he is so sure of himself that he can expose his children to fear and darkness in this vast, unbounded universe, giving them no hope but nothingness, no consolation but the certainty of death… Nowadays the temptation to say No, to yield to weariness, is very strong.”
~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer
“Thus, while for the short time we wander away from God, Christ stands in our midst to lead us little by little to a firm union with God.”
~ John Calvin, Institutes
Yes, the temptation to grow weary and say No is very strong. I suppose I have been drawn to 'every negative act', but, in my own defense, I was drawn there because of my love for the people surrounded by those actions. When one journeys with those on the margins of society such acts are inescapable. And, being surrounded by such things day after day — such things as rape, torture, murder, suicide, oppression, and sickness — I have doubted God, I have resisted God, and, although I have never hated God, I have often raged against him. I have crept along close to the ground, not daring to stand upright, for I have tried that once before, and was only beaten back down again. Sometimes it has been all I could do to just creep forward; it was all I could do to not stand still, to not turn around, to not collapse under it all.
And yet…
And yet Balthasar tells us that, somehow, God is so sure of himself that he can expose his beloved ones to fear and darkness, nothingness and death. I cannot help but pause at the thought of something so terrible and yet so comforting. Perhaps we need to learn to stand knowing that our beloved will not escape the darkness. Perhaps we need to learn to surrender our beloved ones to nothingness and death. Instead of constantly trying to draw others back from suffering, from sorrow, and from sickness, maybe we need to learn to confidently walk with them into suffering, into sorrow, and into sickness. We must learn to be sure of God in the same way that God is sure of himself. I wonder how that would change things. Perhaps then we would not bring a message that proclaims, “Hold on, God will come to save you” but rather will proclaim, “God is already here with you. In this hell Christ is beside you and he has already saved you.” I don't know. What I do know is that, when we are sure of God as he is sure of himself, we will then know how to intercede for those who are scattered, and slaughtered, like sheep without a shepherd.