Twitter: stauffermatt
- RT @ahc: “@justinmcroberts: A gospel that is not good news to the poor is not the Gospel. Neither is a gospel that is only good news to ... about 4 hours ago ReplyRetweetFavorite
- When I walked into O'Hare airport this morning, I was greeted with: "Hi hipster!" Ah, @UrbanaMissions music team love. 11:44:34 AM May 19, 2012 ReplyRetweetFavorite
- ...and, its 4:45. Yoy. I had very honestly, and probably intentionally, forgotten what this time in the morning feels like. 09:45:51 AM May 19, 2012 ReplyRetweetFavorite
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I venture to say that sometimes, perhaps because it was the last instruction Jesus gave us before returning to the Father, we give the Great Commission too prominent a place in our Christian thinking. Please do not misunderstand me. I firmly believe that the whole church is under obligation to obey its Lord’s commission to take the gospel to all nations. But I am also concerned that we should not regard this as the only instruction which Jesus left us. He also quoted Leviticus 19:18, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’, called it ‘the second and great commandment’ (second in importance only to the supreme command to love God with all our being), and elaborated it in the Sermon on the Mount. There he insisted that in God’s vocabulary our neighbour includes our enemy, and that to love means to ‘do good’, that is, to give ourselves actively and constructively to serve our neighbour’s welfare. Here then are two instructions of Jesus — a great commandment, ‘love your neighbour’ and a great commission, ‘go and make disciples’.
Wow. (John Stott)The mission of Jesus was a mission of compassion. The words *mission* and *compassion* should always be bracketed; indeed almost hyphenated, so closely do they belong to one another. Again and again we read in the gospels that Jesus ‘was moved with compassion’ — now by the leaderless or hungry crowds, now by the sick, now by a single leprosy sufferer, now by a widow who had lost her only child. What aroused his compassion was always human need, in whatever form he encountered it. And out of compassion for people in need he acted. He preached the gospel, he taught the people, he fed the hungry, he cleansed the leper, he healed the sick, he raised the dead. All this was part of his mission. He had not come to be served, he said, but to serve (Mk. 10:45). Of course the climax of his self-giving service was his atoning death, by which he secured our salvation. Nevertheless, his mission of compassion was not limited to this, because human need is not limited to this. He was sent to serve, and his service was adapted with compassionate sensitivity to human need.
John StottAs a communicator in the non-profit world, I am convinced that sensationalizing the suffering of those we help or invalidating the suffering of those who donate to our work breaks down the human connection between us. It robs us of the real value we have to give to one another.
Yes. Thank you, Marilyn.
Also good: “Needing courage to face our pain is not a ‘third world problem.’”
Also, “One of the easiest lies I could tell you is that because children affected by trafficking need help, you don’t. That’s a lie. We are all human: We hurt. We hope. We suffer. We Love. We need each other.”
Modeling Reconciliation at OSU - News - InterVarsity.org
Goosebumps from this story about reconciliation at OSU.
Decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions even when an individual does not want to discriminate. […] Implicit bias tests may still show that you hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about [specific people groups] even though you do not believe you do and do not want to.
From The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
This is a really important part of the conversation about racism vs. racialization (and can free us to talk about racial bias outside of the context of hateful racism).
Quoted here: Friday Roundup: Racism by another name
Author Archives: Matt
Lax on Lent: Changing My Thinking About Sweets
The longer I go without writing a post, the more epic I feel the next post needs to be–and the longer I go, again, without writing a post. Since I know this will continue forever keeping me from writing anything, … Continue reading
Posted in Christ, Deep, Yours Truly
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Beard for Freedom: Loving Dalit children by forsaking my razor
My good friend Jon Lash and the rest of the folks over at Jon Lash Music are throwing a No-Shave-November to raise money to sponsor Dalit children. Essentially, all of the participants (see them all here) shaved their entire faces on or around … Continue reading
Posted in Others, Yours Truly
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He Didn’t Just Save My Soul
In the past month I’ve found myself telling the same story over and over–the story of my last nine months of self-discovery. After describing it three times in as many days, I realized that I might do well to write … Continue reading
Posted in Christ, Deep, InterVarsity, Yours Truly
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The Personality Mute Button
I read an editorial in the Alligator the other day entitled “Game shouldn’t feature Tebow’s Bible eye-black,” in which the editor opined that EA (a game-maker who featured Tebow on the cover of a recent video age) and UF (who … Continue reading