Category: Uncategorized

The Work of Mercy: Admonish the Sinner, Part 1

Of all the works of mercy, probably the most thankless and despised is admonishing the sinner. Nobody wants to do it (except human toothaches), and people never want it done to them. Repent! is a word that eats at the heart. Your conscience nags, “Who are you, you great hypocritical gasbag, to go all John-the- […]

The Work of Mercy: Counsel the Doubtful, Part 2

Doubts can be located in the emotions, intellect, or will. Emotional doubts can be potent, but very often, when you interrogate them, there’s no There there at all. Those who seek to counsel the doubtful can often be of tremendous help simply by listening and letting the doubtful one speak his feelings aloud so that […]

The Work of Mercy: Counsel the Doubtful, Part 1

Doubt can be the emotional equivalent of a brief spring rain or a hurricane. People doubt whether to place two bucks on the Mariners (don’t) or whether the God in whom they have trusted all their life is a sham, fraud, and delusion. Doubt can be a healthy exercise in learning to put aside our […]

The Work of Mercy: Instruct the Ignorant, Part 2

The notion that Jew or Gentile can claim to be top dog in the pedagogy of salvation is like the idea of patients in a cancer ward squabbling about who is the least terminal. Our position, under God, is that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). And that’s […]

The Work of Mercy: Instruct the Ignorant, Part 1

Back in 1971, when experiments in educational theory were just becoming all the rage, my fellow seventh-graders and I were pulled out of what used to be called a “junior high” and packed off to a newly built experiment in education called Eisenhower Middle School. It was the latest thing: a school without walls, a […]

The Work of Mercy: Bury the Dead, Part 2

The ambiguity of our position as fallen creatures is on full display in how we treat the dead. In the Old Testament, burying the dead is as much a pious work of mercy as it is in the Christian tradition. But as in the Christian tradition, it is also something nobody is especially eager to […]

The Work of Mercy: Bury the Dead, Part 1

“The body,” I was taught growing up, “is just the shoebox for the soul.What matters are the shoes, not the box. So when it’s time to go to heaven, we throw the box away.” Along with this good solid dose of gnostic thinking came a certain aesthetic that regarded the human person as a ghost […]

The Work of Mercy: Ransom the Captive, Part 2

Not surprisingly, the way Jesus described his mission was precisely in terms of slavery and ransom for the captive. It is worth quoting the passage in full, for it reveals how radical Jesus’ approach to the issues of power and slavery were: And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him, and […]