What Does God Desire?

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

The drama of war is overrated. Old people send young people to fight for them. Young people kill one another. Young people kill old people, women and children. Old men profit. Young people who return are scarred and injured for the rest of their lives. Old people make up justifications for destroying countless lives. VICTORY - hoorah! DEATH TO TYRANNY - hoorah! FREEDOM - hoorah! DEMOCRACY - hoorah! OUR WAY OF LIFE - hah!

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

Through the haze, I see your "face."
Through the silence, I hear your "voice."
Through the vast library of human words, I read your "words."
Through the claims about Jesus, I meet a true "human being."
My life flows on, a melody played for you.
I hope you enjoy it.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

"My timing was off. I meant to arrive after sliced bread."

[The greatest before sliced bread? I'm sure He never said it.]

D. Blog: No to Sacrifice

God Does Not Desire Sacrifice

Sacrifice as a religious typology is a human creation. To cling to it as if God requires it ignores the great prophetic voices that dismiss sacrifice as irrelevant, distasteful even, to God. In much of Christian theology, the sacrifice typology has been imposed on Jesus in a misguided attempt to explain why the chosen one could be killed. In the process, Christians dismiss the fact that Jesus had nothing to do with the sacrificial system during his earthly life. He seems, in fact, to have challenged the entire system – overturning tables of those who sold sacrificial animals in the courtyard of the temple where sacrifices were to be made, and predicting the destruction of that very center of the system of religious sacrifices.

God has no interest in scapegoats or in human attempts to appease God. They are totally unnecessary and without effect. As Jesus said, the entire question of religious life boils down to this: do we love God? Do we love our neighbors? The sacrifice of life business has no place in God’s realm.