As the dust settles following last Monday’s initial United States Presidential debate, I took the opportunity yesterday to preach on the question of “What does it mean to tell the truth?” I suggested that for Christians telling the truth is inseparable from becoming truthful people, as we find ourselves caught up by the Spirit in the life of Jesus, who is the Truth. For this reason, the Christian tradition has held a special place for the martyrs. The martyrs are those who have borne witness to the truth at the cost of their lives. Although I didn’t explicitly make the connection, a member of the congregation observed that the sermon implicitly contrasted the richness of the faithful witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe with the poverty of the two presidential candidates. Continue reading The Truth Will Set You Free
Tag Archives: Trump
“What Would Bonhoeffer Do?”: Metaxas’s Misappropriation
When people discover that I have written a book on the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they often ask me what I think of the popular biography written by Eric Metaxas. My standard answer runs something like this: “Well, Metaxas is certainly an engaging writer. However, he does seem to be in over his head when it comes to understanding the politics of the Church Struggle in Germany and the finer points of Bonhoeffer’s theology. That being said, he has done a great service for the church in helping to make Dietrich Bonhoeffer more widely known.” Usually, this is all the person is looking for. However, if I were to go into more depth I would comment, among other things, upon Metaxas’s failure to understand the centrality of Bonhoeffer’s peace ethic to his theology, his lack of engagement with Bonhoeffer’s prison letters, and his tendency to portray Bonhoeffer in the terms of right-wing American evangelicalism. Some recent public comments by Eric Metaxas have led me to believe that I have perhaps been far too generous in my assessment of Metaxas’s reading of Bonhoeffer up to this point. Continue reading “What Would Bonhoeffer Do?”: Metaxas’s Misappropriation
A Matter of Life and Death: A Samson Sermon
The following is the text of a sermon I preached this past Sunday as a guest speaker at Toronto Chinese Alliance Church. The congregation has been working its way through a sermon series on the book of Judges. I was assigned the daunting task of preaching on the Samson story (Judges 13-16).
For the past week, my thoughts have been preoccupied by a single figure. A blustery and boisterous man, noted for his both his crudity and his cruelty. A man whose track record of troubled relationships with women is well-known. A man who is thought to stand as a paragon of strength and power, despite the strange coif of hair on his head. A bully, who always seems to be the last man standing. A man seemingly tasked with the responsibility of making his nation great again. Continue reading A Matter of Life and Death: A Samson Sermon