Sturtz Stuff

Went to see the movie Son Of God. Making a movie about Jesus is difficult due to the possibly of stirring up controversy. Christians, sadly, can often be known more what they protest then for whom they are to represent. However, I fear that the Son of God movie presents a domesticated and distorted Jesus. A Jesus that is more one dimensional than 3-D. The Son of God movie presents a Jesus that avoids the political. A Jesus that does not confront the violence of poverty. A Jesus that is ghostly not bodily. A Jesus that forgives yet tells nobody to repent of sin. While I appreciate the effort, time, money and desire to share the story of Jesus with a wide audience I fear the Son of God movie tells an odd, distorted and unbiblical story. 1.        If I didn’t know much about Jesus I would be confused. The movie presents a disjointed and confusing story. It never gets around to explaining what the message of Jesus was nor how that message connected to the th...

This blog post came from the web site Experimental Theology . The site is operated by Richard Beck who is Professor and Department Chair of Psychology at Abilene Christian University. You can click on the link above go to his site. At the end of this post there are some books and web sites listed that you might find helpful. One of the more interesting contradictions in the Old Testament has to do with the events in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. The story is about a census David makes of Israel. For whatever reason, this census angers YHWH bringing a plague upon Israel. It's not clear why taking a census is so bad. The speculation is that in taking a census David is expressing proprietorship over the people, treating Israel as his property. That's a usurpation of YHWH's position as the true king of Israel. All that is interesting in its own right, but the real puzzles are what I'm about to point out. The first puzzle is why David undertakes t...

I went to the GQ magazine online and read the interview that has stirred up bloggers, news outlets and social media. You can read the Phil Robertson interview in GD Magazine here . My takeaway from the article is that Phil Robertson is Phil Robertson. He, just like millions of other people, had his life changed by Jesus. Phil now seeks ways to share Jesus with others. The quotes from the GQ article should be viewed in that light. Phil is not stating anything new, making some major theological statement nor do I think he is connecting homosexuality to bestiality. The reaction to all of this has been, in my opinion, immature. ·          Some Christians are calling on other Christians to “stand by Phil” via social media. Perhaps we should all “stand by Phil” via social media while standing in line at Chick-fil-A. Maybe Phil might take a cue from Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy and invite a member of the LGBT community to a sit down meal at t...

I think Larry's main point (which if you're time crunched just read the last 2 paragraphs) is very helpful in dealing with stuff like: 1. The new book Zealot which does not take into account Larry's well researched position and points he makes here. You can check our Larry position in this book . 2. Certain TV programs on the Discovery or History channel that suggest that the early Christian idea of Jesus as Lord/Son of God was something that evolved over years/centuries. These programs suggest/present as "fact" that early Christian leaders left out certain "gospels" to defend Church teaching not uphold a historical fact. “Early High Christology”: Clarifying Key Issues and Positions December 18, 2013      As a follow-up to my previous posting in which I cited again Andrew Chester’s review of recent scholarly analysis of earliest “christology” here , I want to offer some further comments intended to clarify a few matter...

Luke 1:13-17   But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Why start with John the Baptist? Why this story? Why doesn’t Luke just start his story off by talking about Jesus and his teachings? It would seem that you have to get ready for whatever God is going to do. The promised Messiah does not appear all of the sudden. Luke sta...

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...