Taxes and Tithes: A Fresh Look

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” This is one of those statements that is familiar even to people who don’t know the Bible. It’s commonly used to support the proper and separate roles of government and religion and that it is our Christian duty to...

Hunger and Thirst for Justice

There is little about the 4th Beatitude—“Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness”—that we get right. Let’s start with our concept of “righteousness.” We have made it a general term for “sinlessness.” “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). This is the verse I was told to...

What Makes a Person “Blessed”?

The Beatitudes are not prescriptions on how to be blessed. “I need to be poor in spirit (or just plain poor) so I can be blessed,” misses the point and leads to some interesting interpretations of how to live the spiritual life, and can sometimes lead us away from properly understanding what Jesus is...

Do I Want to Be Poor in Spirit?

Why in the world would anyone recommend that we should seek to be spiritually poor? I’m intrigued by the many interpretations of Jesus’ first Beatitude (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”—Matthew 5:3) that present spiritual poverty as necessary to salvation. This line of...

No Inn, But Plenty of Room for Jesus

In which gospel does the innkeeper tell Mary and Joseph that he has no rooms available for them? Trick question; Luke simply writes that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. No innkeeper is ever mentioned. But what if there wasn’t even an inn? Kenneth E. Bailey, in Jesus...