God

This is What Love Does – Oklahoma.

/ Erin Kirk / 6 Comments

Before I started paying real attention to Jesus, I didn’t know Christians like Jeff Bethke existed. But this little video, performed by Bethke, a Jesus loving, scholar-poet, went up last year and now has nearly 25 million views.

Maybe there’s something to it.

I avoided Jesus for ages because I too have a problem with the Crusades and I don’t believe any US political party or denomination has a corner on Jesus. In fact, when I actually read the gospels, I snorted at the irony.

It was first-century religious and political leaders who killed Jesus, and he warned us to watch out for them. That is not my opinion, it’s in all four gospels.

I met Bethke at the Love Does Stuff conference. He’s 23. He’s never been to seminary but he’s a reader. After reading the gospel like he meant it, he read Bonhoffer, Tozier, Keller, Chan and Goff, authors who have rejected the idea of Jesus + __________.

It’s just Jesus period.

When asked by a lawyer what the greatest commands were, Jesus gave only two: Love God. Love others. And frankly, in tornado-wrecked Oklahoma today, we are actually doing a rather good job of that.

This nation, the one supposedly “gridlocked by political and religious division” is praying together in our messy melting pot ways. We are weeping for Oklahoma and pulling strangers from the rubble. That is what Jesus wants. That is what love does.

So if that’s who we are in crisis, why aren’t we that in calm? Why do we need disasters to eclipse our quotidian spitefulness?

Because we’ve bought into the same old religious/political lie that killed Jesus. We are separate, we are different, so we must be afraid.

But if Oklahoma proves anything it’s that we’re not separate. We are one, but we’ve got to pull each other out of the rubble – even people we don’t like. As Bob Goff said over the weekend,

“He (God) is going to send all sorts of people with different life orientations your way. Does that change one thing about what Jesus said?”

Love God. Love others. Period.

Your Opinion Please.

/ Erin Kirk / 19 Comments

IMG_2476If you’re much of a reader, you know back cover copy is often what prompts a book purchase.

Do you know who writes that copy? The author does, or at least takes a crack at it, and it’s torture….

In 300 words or less, explain your 60,000 word manuscript. Exhibit all your marketing savvy but don’t be cheesy – be compelling, clever and original.

So here’s the shot I took in the proposal I’m sending out this week for Going to the Sea: A Sassy Liberal Wades in with Jesus. Since you’re my tribe, I want your opinion.

Would you pick it up? Comments welcomed and appreciated.

When outspoken, West Coast, liberal feminist Erin Kirk quit corporate America and moved to Texas to farm organic vegetables and beef cattle, she thought she had it all figured out.

But Texas ripped away her Whole Foods-hip exterior like an old house dress, revealing decades of loneliness, anxiety and fear. Desperate, Kirk looked for a remedy in the one place Liberals in America supposedly never look: The Bible.

Thus began a fiery, yearlong experiment.

Rather than shouting, “WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE” every day into dust devils of bone-colored sand, Kirk read The Bible – the whole thing – and attempted to do as it says.

Irate at the church but weary of freewheeling theology, Kirk excused everyone from the discussion and gave The Bible one year to convince her the transformative power of God is available to anyone who will seek it. She asks:

  • Must I be a pious, well coiffed, sweetie pie to follow Jesus? Or can I just be myself?
  • Am I short-changing my life, just to avoid obeying God?
  • Why bother with Jesus in a culture that often doesn’t, or worse, pretends to?
  • Is there value in…gulp…submitting to my husband?
  • Can God tame my smart mouth and the angry voice in my head?

With rangy, open prose rooted in her wild and willful past, and a journalist’s eye for detail, Kirk drifts from Northern California, through the Colorado Rockies to conservative West Texas, landing firmly on both sides of America’s religious culture wars.

 Speaking gently to those outside the church gates, and boldly to those within them, Kirk explains with kindness and heart why Jesus still matters.

 

On Bono, Love and Freedom

/ Erin Kirk / 1 Comment

Bono (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s Friday and I’m reading the book of Galatians in The Message translation of The Bible.

I love that translation because it’s beautiful and easy to read. Bono likes it too. Here’s what he said about it:

“There’s a translation of Scriptures that this guy Eugene Peterson has undertaken. It has been a great strength to me. He’s a poet and a scholar, and he’s brought the text back to the tone in which the books were written.”

These days, Bono may be more famous for his debt relief work than he was with U2 – well maybe not – but something happened to Bono that made the world’s poor weigh heavy on his heart. I’ll bet The Message had something to do with that.

So here’s the Apostle Paul writing to the Galatians (5:13-15).  It’s so smart. So huge. I wanted to share it with you:

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.

Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out – in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit.

Word! Have a great weekend everybody!