We live in violent times. Nations openly battle each other in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, with the United States providing military aid to the countries we favor. And while most US citizens do not fear a direct military attack by another nation, we do fear surprise attacks from international terrorists as well as homegrown violent extremists.

But just what does Christianity teach about violence and war? And more specifically, when, if ever, is war and violence just?

These are the questions we all ask and the answers we all seek. I hope that this theological and historical analysis of our existential experience will enable us to reassess and reclaim what we value, what we believe, and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

The predominant message of Christianity today is that through Jesus Christ we can be saved from sin and death, and that God’s judgment of every person will precipitate eternal salvation in heaven for the worthy and eternal punishment in hell for the unworthy.

However, Christianity also supports a dissenting and contrary vision of Christian salvation. This vision of Christianity emphasizes God’s call to meet the physical and spiritual needs of others in this earthly life, thereby seeking to provide God’s salvation to this world in this life through acts of justice, grace, and compassion. This call to Christian discipleship dismisses any focus on a future salvation or eternal life that follows death.

This theological divide within Christianity raises fundamental questions.

• Is salvation a present state or just a future reality?
• Is salvation earthly and even political, or is it just spiritual?
• Is it even Christian to focus on securing my personal, spiritual salvation when many people need salvation from lack food and medical care, while enduring crippling injustices?
• Does God save us for this world or from this world?

These are the questions I ask and the answers I seek—maybe you as well. Today’s topic will challenge many popular Christian assumptions and beliefs. My intent with this topic is not to convince anyone that what they believe is wrong but to enable us to reassess and reclaim what we value, what we believe, and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

It does not take more than a glance at the headlines to remind us that we live outside of the Garden of Eden, outside of that biblical, mythical, mystical garden where at one time life knew no strife, all human needs were met, and sorrow and death did not exist. I suspect many want to return to Eden where life was once bliss. However, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist, if we accept the insight of that ancient story, we all live outside of Eden. So how do we address the brokenness of our world?

• Do we strive to reclaim Eden by transforming our broken world into the Eden of old and bringing the promise of the kingdom of God to the here and now?
• Or do we resolve to live where we are, as we are, outside of Eden, finding hope and courage in solidarity with one another amid our despair without necessarily leaving that despair or returning to Eden?
• Or is our hope found in a new Eden in the promise of life after death?
• Or is the mythical, blissful Eden a harmful delusion?

These are the questions I ask and the answers I seek—maybe you as well. Today’s topic will review what it means to live outside of Eden. I hope that this analysis of our existential experience will enable us to reassess and reclaim what we value, what we believe, and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

How can we know what is true?

• We watch one news network that claims President Trump is destroying America, and we watch another news network that claims Trump is the savior of America. How do we know which political claim is true?
• We read of a scientist claiming climate change is a natural cycle with an ebb and flow and humans are not its cause. Then we read of another scientist claiming humans are the primary cause of climate change, with a disruption of nature that threatens our very existence. How do we know which scientific claim is fact and which is false?
• We also hear one pastor preaching that wealth and prosperity are signs of God’s blessing and poverty a lack of faith and another preaching that wealth inequality is the result of human greed and sin. How do we know which religious teaching should guide our faith?

How do we discern truth from untruth when “alternative” facts conflate with “established” facts? How do we know what is true and what is not?

These are the questions I ask and the answers I seek. Maybe you do as well. Today’s topic will review the very nature of knowledge. I hope that with this analysis we can re-assess and reclaim what we value, what we believe, and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

There is a pervasive belief today that Christians are under attack in the United States of America. Christian bakers and florists are prosecuted for declining to provide services celebrating homosexual weddings. Christian hospitals have been forced to provide minors medical services they find immoral and contrary to the Christian faith. Christians witnessing to their faith outside of abortion clinics have been arrested and sentenced to prison. Even prayer has been outlawed. Our government has been weaponized against Christianity. These are today’s headlines. But are these headlines true?

• Are Christians being persecuted today just as they once were under Roman rule in the earliest days of Christianity?
• Are Christians being denied the right to exercise their beliefs in a manner consistent with their beliefs?

Or is Christian oppression and persecution a myth, a fanciful fabrication? Are Christians’ claims to be victims essentially rhetorical political tools to marginalize others and to impose a specific Christian ideology on all others, including other Christians?

These are the questions I ask and the answers I seek - maybe you as well. Today’s topic will challenge many popular assumptions and beliefs. I hope that with this analysis of our history, national culture, and Christian faith, we can reassess what we believe, reclaim what we value, and reconsider how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

We live in a polarized society.

Some perceive the current national direction as offering hope and restoration. Others anticipate only pain, despair, and loss. Yet although we openly battle over politics and social issues, the real battle is over our national self-identity. We are polarized and divided by conflicting visions of who we are and who we should be as a nation. Moreover, this struggle over our national self-identity has divided communities, split families, and destroyed friendships. Because of opposing political and social beliefs, we either avoid select topics in our conversations or skip family and social gatherings that include people whose politics offend us.

Should we try to bridge the political, social, and religious gaps that divide us? Should we seek to express what we think and believe, perhaps with the intent to change or convert the other to what we think and believe, Should we seek to listen and learn what another person thinks and believes so that we, accepting them as they are, can find some common ground between us? Or should we instead give up on people whose thoughts and beliefs we fervently and diametrically oppose?

These are the questions I ask and the answers I seek - maybe you as well.

It seems that everyone has a different understanding of the Bible. For some, the Bible clearly mandates that women should not have leadership over men, premarital and homosexual sex is a sin, wealth and status are God’s reward for deep faith, and capital punishment is justified and approved by God. For others, the Bible clearly encourages women leadership without restrictions, sex between consenting adults is a gift from God, God wants the best for people no matter the degree of their faith, and capital punishment is a societal sin for which we should repent. These contradictory interpretations of what the Bible says confuses Christians and non-Christians alike.

• How can I know what the Bible really means?
• Do I have to agree with all what the Bible says?

These are the questions I ask. Maybe you as well. Today’s topic will review social, historical, and biblical research conducted by academic scholars that challenges many popular assumptions and beliefs. I hope that with this analysis of our history and Christian faith we are able to re-assess and reclaim what we value, what we believe, and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

Wealth inequality seems contrary to Christianity's basic teachings. Jesus preached a way of life free of possessions, and the original disciples warned against power and prestige. The first church in Jerusalem abolished private property by holding personal wealth in common and distributing resources to everyone as needed. As the Jesus movement grew in numbers and geographically spread, collectively the churches maintained that their primary purpose was to serve the needs of the sick and the poor and that the practice of surrendering everything in love was the hallmark of the Christian ethic.

• So in the United States with a predominant Christian ethic (at least according to popular belief), why are there so many poor when there is so much wealth?

But even yet more puzzling, today popular Christianity promotes the message that God promises wealth and abundance to those who have faith. This prosperity theology and its proponents claim that the Bible teaches that financial blessing is the will of God and personal wealth is the reward for having faith in Jesus.

• However, why such a dramatic, historical change of beliefs within Christianity from, in its early history, church leaders warning against wealth to today many church leaders and their followers seeking and celebrating it?
• Does popular Christianity believe that the poor are simply poor because they lack sufficient faith? Or is popular Christianity’s fixation on achieving wealth a betrayal of the historic Christian faith?
• As Christians, have we lost the vision of Jesus and the early church where the care of the sick and the poor is the Church’s primary focus of Christian discipleship?

These are the questions I ask. Maybe you as well. Today’s topic will review social, historical, and biblical research conducted by academic scholars that challenges many popular assumptions and beliefs. I hope that with this analysis of our history, national culture, and Christian faith we are able to re-assess and reclaim what we value, what we believe, and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

Perhaps the most well-known biblical quotation is from the Gospel According to John, chapter 3, verse 16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” With these words, the New Testament clearly states that Jesus is the source of salvation, a proposition that is core to the Christian faith regardless of denomination or sect.

However, while the Church universally has affirmed Jesus as the means of salvation, historically Christianity has proposed various and contradictory understandings of the process of salvation.

Therefore these are the questions I and probably you ask regarding our salvation.

• How does Jesus save us?
• From what are we saved?
• And most perplexing, why did Jesus have to suffer and die?

Today’s topic will review historical and biblical research conducted by academic scholars that will challenge many popular assumptions and beliefs regarding salvation. My intent is not to convince anyone that what they believe is wrong, but to critically explore the diversity of beliefs within the global Church, and for each of us to determine for ourselves what we value and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.

Diverse people and cultures challenge our understanding of history. Statues of historical leaders of the United States that have been deemed offensive are being removed, buildings long named after public figures are being renamed after more “appropriate” dignitaries, local and national holiday celebrations are being recast to represent other cultures, and school lessons are teaching new historical “truths”.

• Why are we changing our understanding of our history?
• Is our current understanding of the past so wrong that it needs to be corrected?
• With all the challenges to the historical record, how do I know what to believe about the past events that make me who I am today?

These are the questions I and probably you ask with hesitation, for any change in our understanding of history changes who we are and threatens our self-identity. Today’s topic reviews historical research conducted by academic scholars that will challenge many popular assumptions and beliefs. My intent is not to convince anyone that what they believe is wrong, but to critically explore an understanding of our history, and for each of us to determine for ourselves what we value and how we should conduct ourselves in the sacred interactions we call life.