Sharp IronSharp IronMy hope is that Sharp Iron can be a friendly enough place that you would feel comfortable sharing your thoughts and opinions on a variety of topics. I am very interested in spirituality and how that affects every aspect of our lives. Articles
Star Struck
2007-09-29 00:04:00 Driving home from work today I heard a radio commercial for the International Star Registry. For a mere $54 and change you can have an actual star named after someone you love. Wow. http://www.starregistry.com/ Personally, it’s not my cup of tranya, but I guess for those who crave immortality it could be pretty cool. I assume the ... More About: Religion , Culture , Star Trek
Opening Church Windows
2007-09-27 15:11:00 Here is an excerpt from a letter by a minister of the Roman Catholic faith, Dennis Teall-Fleming. It was sent to Tony Jones, the National Coordinator for Emergent Village and he included it in today’s newsletter. It’s a pretty obvious analogy and helps someone like me, having been raised Roman Catholic, to put the Emerging ... More About: Windows , Church , Opening
Bridges: The Old Man?s Yard, Part 2
2007-09-25 23:35:00 The first part of this story may be found at: http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/2007/09/20 /the-old-mans-yard/ Things had been going very well in the old man’s yard. There were plenty of fruits and vegetables, a large grassy lawn for games and big shade trees for when the sun got too hot. The O ld Man?s house still sat high up on the ... More About: Bridges , Part , Yard
Hangin? with a Harlot: Jesus on Inclusion
2007-09-24 23:29:00 In the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel, an exhausted Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Under the relentless Palestinian sun he and this woman have a conversation. Not only is she a Samaritan, generally reviled by the Jews, but also a lowly woman and one of of ill repute at that. Nevertheless he ... More About: Inclusion
The Biblical Squint Test
2007-09-22 19:07:00 (Sorry for being out of season, but…..) We were talking on one of the earlier threads and there was some disagreement over the true meaning of certain scriptural passages. (I must be kidding, right? Here?) It seems like we kept going around and around and around. I was suddenly reminded of another familiar situation where I ... More About: Test , Biblical
The Old Man?s Yard
2007-09-20 22:18:00 There once was a kindly old man who lived in a big house, on a big yard in a town named after him. His yard faced a very busy road, a road that he had laid out himself a long time ago. Back then it was a quiet country lane that meandered through green farmland. Now ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Jesus , Theology
God?s Pick in the Election
2007-09-18 23:16:00 Is it Hillary? Rudy? Barack? Mitt? More importantly, has he chosen your friend or your neighbor, your wife, your parents or your children? Has he even chosen you? Because, some Christians say, long before the universe was but a twinkle in God’s eye he decided on who he was going to be with in heaven ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Theology , Fundamentalism
Why Can?t Christians Sing Some Other Songs?
2007-09-17 18:05:00 On an earlier thread BuddyO suggested that I set up a page like ?Some Good Books? but this time we could list our favorite songs. Soon after making an attempt, I gave up. The task seemed impossible. I initially tried to limit the list to my top ten favorite songs. Then my top 20. ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Music , Culture
Torn Raccoon
2007-09-15 01:41:00 I was driving in my car and listening to the local evangelical radio station. Someone was interviewing a Muslim, a foreign born Arab, who had converted to Christianity. This fellow had been responsible for running a prison mosque and apparently had quite a dramatic conversion experience. He talked of a vision in which he saw all ... More About: Religion , Faith , Justice , Spirituality , War
Lawless Christians
2007-09-13 02:19:00 There is this never ending dance that revolves around the matter of the Law. (A dance in the way that Capoeira, the Brazilian martial art, is a dance). The first thrust is the suggestion that we no longer need the Law, that Jesus’ sacrifice has taken care of that. This is quickly parried by ... More About: Religion , Christianity , God , Faith , Spirituality
To Church or Not To Church - That Is the Question
2007-09-12 12:52:00 Some of the comments on the last couple of posts (”Osteen in the Lobby” and “Sounds Like the Devil”) have touched on something that I have been struggling with for some time: Is today’s typical church paradigm even close to what Jesus envisioned two thousand years ago? And if it’s not, how important is this? ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Theology , God
Osteen In The Lobby
2007-09-11 04:33:00 We’ve been checking out some different churches recently. Visited one this past Sunday and thought, “not bad, nice sermon, good music, people seem friendly.” On the way out, in the lobby, they had some books for sale and I can never resist browsing books. I was a little disappointed in the offering - they were the ... More About: Religion , Church , Theology , Faith
Sounds Like the Devil
2007-09-09 21:44:00 In the “Screwtape Letters” by CS Lewis, the senior demon advises his apprentice, Wormwood, not to be alarmed when his ‘patient’ begins attending church services. Screwtape assures him that the patient will be so distracted by the flawed members of the congregation that he will soon be missing the ‘enemy’s’ (God’s) point ... More About: Religion , Church , Humor , Culture , Sounds
?God is Not PT Barnum?
2007-09-09 16:10:00 “If God is real, then why doesn’t he just prove that he exists?” I get this question a lot from folks, particularly atheists, and nothing could be better designed to produce a migraine. Thankfully, John Shore over on Suddenly Christian has figured this question out: If you think about that question, though, you?ll see pretty soon that ... More About: Atheism , Christianity , Theology , Spirituality , Purpose
A Biblical Travesty: the Slandering of the Pig
2007-09-08 04:36:00 (Does this guy look familar? Then keep it to yourselves, please.) The world’s most famous cookbook, the Old Testament, is pretty darn specific about what animals the chosen people could and could not eat. This was quite a list, as can be seen in the book of Deuteronomy: 3 Do not eat any detestable thing. 4 ... More About: Religion , Cooking , Food , Bible , Cuisine
The Wine Minister
2007-09-07 03:51:00 Oh, boy. Have I found a treasure while hunting on the web. Here is a fellow who has envisioned a ministry that uses the best that God has given us; good wine. He calls his site: WineMinistry Wine, Friends, Food and Theological Musings http://wineministry.wordpress.com/ There is a pretty good article he just wrote about how just as a ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Theology , Cooking
Birds of a Feather; Environmentalists and Fundamentalists
2007-09-05 22:59:00 Many of today’s environmentalists are concerned about the fate of our planet and if it is too late to fix things. Apparently the problem is that the greatest threat to our planet is mankind, and with our depraved nature there is little hope for the future. The general consensus among this group is that early in the Earth’s history ... More About: Science , Global Warming , Religion , Fundamentalism , Environment
Update on Sherri the Evangelizing Cyclist
2007-09-04 17:36:00 I received this e-mail today. What an amazing ‘coincidence’, eh? Since July 14th Sherri has traveled from Frederick, Maryland to Seneca, South Carolina, over 547 miles. Gott ist Gutt! (For those of you unfamiliar with the story of Sherri you may read the original story here; http://sharpiron.wordpress.com/2007/07/14 /the-apostle-sherri/ ) I wanted to share an experience Ceph and ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Life , Travel
The Open Road
2007-08-30 15:07:00 Dateline: Somewhere in the Deep South. I am writing this dispatch from a dark room within a seedy hotel just off of Shrimp Boat Lane in the low country town of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. Through the grimy windows I can see the booms of the shrimp boats swaying above the saw grass and palmettos as they wind their way down ... More About: Travel , Culture , Open , Road , The O
Evangelize Through Intimacy, not Intimidation
2007-08-28 22:31:00 There was a training course offered today at work called ”Nonviolent Crisis Intervention“. It was designed to assist the school’s staff on ways to avert a crisis and then de-escalate the situation. It was an excellent class presented by an excellent teacher. He taught that in order to successfully modify someone’s aggressive behavior it is important to remember that our first ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Theology , Fundamentalism
The Architects of Fear (Our Drug Prohibitionists)
2007-08-25 17:40:00 There is an old ?Outer Limits? episode called ?The Architects of Fear? in which some scientists decide on taking drastic measures in an attempt to prevent the Cold War from erupting into nuclear holocaust. They choose one of their own, played by Robert Culp, to undergo an experimental genetic mutation that results in his transformation into ... More About: Life , Culture , Justice , Civil Rights , Morality
I Have a New Article on TheOoze
2007-08-24 12:18:00 Some of you may remember the story about Sherri, one of God ’s itinerant workers and how we met one day in Western Maryland. She’s the lady that has devoted her life to spreading the Gospel across this country on the back of a bike. TheOoze has decided to publish this story and it comes out today; ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Church , Life
Angry People (The Lost Art of Reasoned Debate)
2007-08-21 16:41:00 I’ve got to admit that I have been pretty pleased with the conversations we’ve been having here on Sharp Iron. The comments have been generally thoughtful, sometimes amusing and occasionally absurd but for the most part they have been good natured and polite. I find that this is usually not the case when people disagree over ... More About: Lost , People , Debate , Angry
Just One Day in Jesus? Life?
2007-08-20 17:52:00 I was listening to Woodrow Kroll on the radio today and something he said made me think. He was giving a little sermon on how we need to step out of our comfort zones when we evangelize. He talked of a day in the life of Jesus , in this case a day as related to us ... More About: Religion , Christianity , Theology , Life
Brian McLaren on the Iraq Problem
2007-08-16 12:36:00 Over on Sojourner’s Blog, Brian McLaren has made a good suggestion: In his July 20 commentary, James W. Skillen of the Center for Public Justice struck a non-partisan note of honesty and balance that I wish I heard more often. He summarized the basic narrative of the Iraq War that both our president and his party and ... More About: Christianity , Islam , Culture , Pacifism
Lot Lowers the Holiness Bar for Us All
More articles from this author:2007-08-15 23:05:00 No one can seem to agree about Sodom and Gomorrah. They were only two of the 5 cities making up the Pentapolis (along with Zoar, Adama and Seboim) and all were destroyed in the accounting given in Genesis 19. Whether or not this destruction actually occurred (which is really irrelevant to the story) there is ... More About: Religion , Theology , Bible , Homosexuality , Holiness 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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