June Digital Smorgasbord

This week, I've got a selection of interesting articles from across the interwebs.  

∘ Actually, Generosity Isn’t About Money at All

Whenever we bring up generosity, people instinctively resist. They think we’re just trying to raise money for our newest capital campaign. (And often, that resistance is warranted, coming from a history of religious leaders doing precisely that!) But I say this every time I teach on money, and I mean it: We don’t talk about generosity because we’re trying to meet financial needs. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). He isn’t short on resources. I fully trust that God will accomplish his work on earth, and he’s not wringing his hands in heaven, wishing he had just a little more capital to get it done.

But that raises the question: If talking about generosity is not primarily about collecting money to meet needs … what is it about?

∘ 1 Jesus, 4 Portraits: Why You Need Each Gospel’s Narrative Theology
This is a good topic for Bible 101. Now I don't need to write it.

Theologically, the Holy Spirit inspired four Gospels, not one. So the four individual accounts—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are God’s Word to us. A single “cut-and-paste” harmony of the four is not. Literarily, each Gospel is a narrative masterpiece that provides a unique perspective on Jesus and develops particular theological themes through the use of narrative features like characters, settings, and plot. If we harmonize their accounts by bringing details from one into another, we risk obscuring each author’s Spirit-inspired message.

Let me illustrate this by pointing to some distinct theological contributions by each of the four Gospels.

∘ What Is Modalism? The Most Common Mistake About the Trinity
This article explains what modalism is and how easy it is to fall into it. Then there's a short, funny video that goes through many of the common attempts to explain the Trinity and how they turn out to be one heresy or another.

∘ The Mental Health Benefits of the Local Church
Rebecca McLaughlin writes about an effective mental health treatment the psychology community is slow to talk about:

Many in the West today attempt to fill in their spiritual gap with New Age practices, a range of sexual relationships, and substance use. More people are in therapy and on antidepressants than at any other time. And yet our mental health across the West has nose-dived … all our freedom to experiment and self-define without constraints has bred more misery than happiness. And one of the best thing we can do to boost our mental health is what my friend eventually did: commit to church.

∘ Why the LGBTQ Community May Not Be Listening (video)
Christopher Yuan wants to talk to us about the way we talk about sexual sin and the people who engage in it.


Image via Pixabay