Vince Brackett, Abby Dye, and Elizabeth Bertrand discuss the various ways we are prone to assume "God might be pleased with other people, but not me," and suggest some ways to leave this spiritual imposter syndrome behind.
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On the weekend of Valentine’s Day, Kyle and a panel of folks from our church help us relieve the pressure everyone feels about romance being what will complete us. (For single people, of course, but also for partnered people!) Unfortunately, churches have reinforced this pressuring message just as much as 90s Disney movies, pop music, Hollywood, etc, and just called it “Biblical”. But it’s not!
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Last Sunday we hosted a communal online experience meant to offer each of us some spiritual help in our individual journeys of leaving behind what constricts us and embracing promise for the future. Our sense is, as we turn the page on 2020, this past year has been full of chances for constricting lies, traumas, thoughts, beliefs, or vows to make their way into us and start to take up residence.
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It’s no surprise that white American Christianity has chosen Donald Trump as its leader when for decades its prevailing use for Jesus on the Cross has been “motivation by fear of punishment from a strongman, violent God”. What an unhealthy, worthless picture of God! BLC stakeholder Abby Dye helps us discover Jesus on the Cross as a totally different (and inspiring) picture of God that models a totally different kind of leadership: self-sacrificial love.
Art: Ethiopian painting of the Crucifixion, ca. 2000
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Constant movement instead of strict adherence, defending those without power instead of those with power -- Special guest (and BLC's old friend) Joey Rodil shows us how Jesus' descriptions and modeling of his own mission can help shift our narrative about faith (and our experience of it) away from typical white American Christian notions.
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It should break our brains that the biggest reason we might get four more years of Donald Trump as president is American Christians. What if our church could help shift the narrative in our country about who God is, and whose side God is on? One of BLC’s resident theologians Hayley Larson leads us through our first starting point for answering the question "who is Jesus?" — the God who became human.
Art by Edward Knippers
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Spiritual fulfillment is something human beings long for, but Jesus suggested it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich (or privileged) person to find it. Vince shares some of the more humbling experiences on his journey of finding spiritual fulfillment by learning to align himself with the oppressed, rather than with his privilege.
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BLC's Hayley Larson shares with us from both her personal story and professional studies how feminist language, images, and actions help us see the God Jesus reveals more fully, and how relying exclusively on male reference points is dangerous to faith.
Art by Kelly Latimore.
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With help from BLC’s Maria Santillan, we consider how, in the same way microaggressions reinforce systemic racism in America, spiritual microaggressions in church settings reinforce systemic marginalizing of people whose family or culture don’t pre-dispose them to understand or be able to navigate American churches. Our church considers this a fight for equity — for the important perspective of church outsiders, like Maria, to be valued in spiritual conversations.
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Touching on a theology of liberation, joy, and suffering that connects Jesus' cross to the lynching of Black Americans, BLC's Leicester Mitchell helps us see Jesus and the Gospel through the lived experience of a Black man in America today.
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