Archive for the ‘robin meyers’ Tag

God Does Not Explain   Leave a comment

Kushner_God Comforts

“The time has come and is long-since past” to abandon “the idea that God is ‘in control’.” It is an idea “so troublesome as to be utterly useless. But to think of the Divine as that power called love, the one who “suffers with” and comforts the afflicted regardless of the outcome, has spiritual integrity born of real life experience.”

In Rabbi Harold S Kushner’s “book, The Lord is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm, the rabbi notes that ‘in times of trouble, God does not explain, God comforts.’ Through grace, suffering makes compassion possible, and what is more central to the life of faith than striving to be more compassionate?”

Book Cover high res— from “Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity” by David M Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy

“Most people in church grew up listening to those who claimed to have all the answers. Who knew that the questions were more interesting, that ‘living’ them is true faithfulness. Felten and Procter-Murphy have given the class such superb resources that no one is in a hurry to graduate.”

— Dr. Robin R. Meyers, Senior Minister, Mayflower Congregational UCC Church; Professor of Rhetoric, Oklahoma City University

Robin Meyers on Taking the Bible Off the Altar   Leave a comment

Taking the Bible Off the Altar

Robin Meyers says, “We’ve projected upon the Bible something it was never intended to do: which is to give us answers to every conceivable human problem.” We keep going to scripture for answers to the Abortion dilemma, and it’s simply not there. “We don’t let the Bible speak on its own terms.” Instead, we engage in tortured exegesis to make it prove what we already believe to be the case.

As long as we place our ultimate authority in the Bible, we’ve got “the object of our worship in the wrong place.”
 
Robin Meyers is a United Church of Christ pastor, Professor of Rhetoric, and author of “Why the Christian Right is Wrong” & “Saving Jesus from the Church.” You’ll find Robin in LtQ’s “Saving Jesus Redux,” “LtQ2,” and Living the Questions’ upcoming series on the origin and use of the Bible.
 
“LtQ Clips” offer thought-provoking observations and comments on spirituality and religion from prominent authors, scholars, and thinkers. These excerpts from “Living the Questions” curriculum are designed to spark conversation in questioning the dominant pop theology of Christian orthodoxy.

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