Sturtz Stuff

Today is National Buy Nothing Day . National Buy Nothing Day one of the campaigns promoted by Adbusters . Adbusters is a media organization and magazine that supports social activism aimed at combating the destructive forces inherent in capitalism. Much of this effort is focused on waging "meme warfare" against mindless consumerism. National Buy Nothing Day is an example of this. In an attempt to push back on the frantic shopping going on today--Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year,  some have described as "the most dangerous day of the year for Christians". Recently Pope Francis warned about the "idolatry of money"  claming that our current culutles obsession with money is hurting the old, the young and the poor. And if you want to do more than opt out Adbusters encourages a variety of culture jamming activities. A list of activities from Wikipedia that people have done for National Buy Nothing Day: Credit card cut u...

This is blog post from Larry Hurtado who has spent tons of time write about and resreaching the early origins of Christianity. If you want the original blog post click here . For some time now, the general view has been that earliest Christians met (e.g., for group worship) in houses, at least mainly. In a newly-published study, Dr. Edward Adams (Kings College London) queries this, contending that the evidence for this view isn’t as solid and consistent as commonly thought, and that the extant evidence suggests instead a variety of settings. The book results from a research project that extended over a few years, and should be considered carefully by anyone seriously interested in the question: The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? (London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2013). Adams first (Part 1) reviews the evidence for use of houses as Christian meeting-places (NT texts, extra-canonical texts, archaeological evidence, and “comparative evidence,” i.e...

Luke 12:13-21 13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward G...