22 results for tag: Kenneth Tanner

Does God Do Anything He Wants Because He is God? Ken Tanner

I frequently run into the argument that God can do whatever he wants because he is God. Partnered with this assertion is often an accusation that human "sensibilities" about what is right and wrong are not the same as God's—that his ways are higher than our ways—as a defense for God behaving in ways that we would otherwise call sociopathic in humans. Christians believe we know what we know about evil because of what is revealed about God in Jesus Christ *and* by what is inherent in humanity, owing to our being fashioned in the image of God. This image is broken in us but not eradicated or absent, even in the "worst" of us. And above and far ...

A Season of Unfortunate Events? Superstition vs. the Gospel – Kenneth Tanner

Enduring a season of unfortunate events? Does God seem absent or aloof? Feel as though you have fallen out of favor with God? Many of us grew up with Christian pastors, teachers, friends, and spiritual guides who taught by osmosis that if things were going wrong in our lives or the lives of others—if life was not one moment of glory followed by another—there were two possible answers: either we were not doing all the right things or we were not believing all the right things. A lack of faith, a misstep here or there, results in hardships and divine disfavor. Most people call this superstition. What it is not is the gospel. It’s ironic ...

Lazarus’ Story is the World’s Story – Kenneth Tanner

Download or Read the Article: Lazarus' Story is the World's Story

The Inalienable Rights of the Incarnation – Kenneth Tanner

Art by Odolin Redon This idea that humans are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights is beautiful, and that humans alone in all of creation bear the image of God is a mystery beyond description, but that God *is* human—this is nothing less than a revolution in human existence. We often despise ourselves, our bodies, our limitations, our weaknesses. Humans are good at hating other humans, at loathing ourselves. In the face of every human and demonic rejection of the image of God in human flesh, God sides with humanity against all that hates us, even our own hatred of ourselves, and becomes one of us (Bonhoeffer). God becomes what he ...

God cannot become something evil – and God became human! Kenneth Tanner

"If she could carry You, it was because You, the great mountain, had lightened Your weight; If she feeds You, it is because You had taken on hunger, if she gives You to drink, it is because You, of Your own will, had thirsted." —Saint Ephrem the Syrian.God became human in Jesus Christ. God cannot become something evil. God does not become something God hates. May your outlook on humanity be informed by God's profound solidarity with humanity—with every single human person—in the Incarnation of the Son.The central Christian conviction is that the Creator of all things, the God who spoke the worlds into existence from nothing, the One who holds ...

Blessed Assurance of Divine Humility – Kenneth Tanner

There is a “blessed assurance” about the goodness of the One who knows every sparrow fall. Yet this trust is on the far side of contemplating—no, experiencing—the cruel pointlessness of the death of even small things, the dryness of the avian corpse, the shocking disintegration of its wingéd power, feathers stewing in the mud, skeleton uncloaked, magnificence gone. That God joins these tiny catastrophes, weds the indignity of tiny birds by his infinite empathy; beholds their sad undoing up close; impassibly suffers in the human flesh of Jesus for and with his creation. Christian trust is not in denial. Christian trust is awake ...

Is Death Eternal? Kenneth Tanner

One of my all-time favorite after-church conversations: A seven-year-old visitor to Holy Redeemer, a young black man: “When I die I am dead. I stay dead. It will be dark forever and I’ll be bored and alone.” Me: “Everyone dies. We agree on that.” <I pause, waiting for his eyes to meet mine again.> “But we don’t believe death lasts forever. Death is not eternal. We believe that death will someday die forever.” “But not you. Death will end but you will go on. You will never end. Death has an expiration date, but not you.” “And in the place where you never end, where death is no more, there will only be ...