There was an angry deity in need of appeasement at the Cross that day, and it was us. As it has always been us when it comes to sacrifice. ...

And this is gonna sound really stupid coming from a man who’s in prison... but for the first time in my life... I’m free. Denzel Washington in the movie, Flight   I found Jesus in an alcoholic airline pilot. I know. It's not your normal place for a Jesus sighting. Mostly we see Jesus as a superhero, the way Mel Gibson portrayed him in the The Passion of the Christ. Someone had to save Jesus from that simpli ...

God renews Creation from a cross where Jesus would take the worst we have to offer one another – the ridicule, the beatings, the shame and horror of public execution – and offer not vengeance but forgiveness. Luke’s good news is that the high Priest has returned to make the Great Atoning Sacrifice on our behalf and the impact of that sacrifice has been working its way through human history for 2000 years. ...

Adam discusses the theological and anthropological implications of Halloween. It is the day when it is socially acceptable to dress up and identify with what is socially unacceptable. One example is monsters. On Halloween we identify with our monsters. This is interesting because it is easy to identify others as monsters, but difficult to identify our own monstrous behavior and tendencies. The anthropologis ...

Last night someone asked me if I’d heard about the Kristen Stewart sex scandal. Unfortunately, I had. Because I check my email. I go through yahoo.com to get to my email, in part because yahoo.com is a quick way to catch up on news. Apparently, the folks at yahoo.com thought the story, with the headline “Stewart Cheats with Director,” was news. Stewart, as you may know, plays the lead character in the Twili ...

Theologian James Alison joined the Voices of Peace Talk Radio (formerly called Playing for Keeps) on May 4, 2012 to explore how The Hunger Games and chapter 7 of the Old Testament book of Joshua have something very important in common: a lottery in which the winners get to die for the sake of the community. Many people joined Adam and Bob in the discussion with James to explore how lotteries are used as vio ...

  My hatred of the Capitol has not lessened my hatred of my competitors in the least. - Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games, 238 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. - Jesus, Matthew 5:44 I value the loving self-sacrifice that we find in the first book of The Hunger Games series. There are two beautiful moments in the book that I think are worth exploring. The first ...

“World Peace” at a football game.  Did you find that ironic?  I mean, we just watched 30 minutes of hard hitting Super Bowl action.  It’s not peaceful.  It’s violent.  And we loved it!  Seriously.  Why did Madonna (or whomever it was) have to go and spoil my football fun by making me think about world peace. It’s pretty easy to argue that football is not a peaceful sport.  Of course, few sports can be deeme ...

One of the ugly truths of human existence is that violence works. As a proponent of nonviolence, it is hard for me to make that statement, but please hear me out.  The anthropologist René Girard claims that we gain temporary peace through sacrifice, expulsion, and other acts of violence.  In this sense, violence works to bring a sense of peace and calm, but that sense of peace and calm is simply that – an i ...

Adam discusses the child sacrifice in Uganda. He claims that it is the result of the myth of redemptive violence. That myth claims violence is an efficient way of solving our problems and bringing prosperity to our lives. The BBC reports that in Uganda, which is modernizing very quickly, wealthy business people are having children sacrificed by witch doctors, believing that it will bring them economic prosp ...