Reviving Old Scratch

Reviving Old Scratch PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506401368
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The devil has fallen on hard times. Surveys say that even the majority of Christians doubt Satans existence. Burdened by doubts, skeptical believers find themselves divorced from Jesus dramatic confrontation with Satan in the Gospels and from the struggle that galvanized the early church. In Reviving Old Scratch, popular blogger and theologian Richard Beck reintroduces the devil to the modern world with a biblical, bold, and urgent vision of spiritual warfare: we must resist the devil by joining the kingdom of Gods subversive campaign to interrupt the world with love. Beck shows how conservative Christians too often overspiritualize the devil and demons, and progressive Christians reduce these forces to social justice issues. By understanding evil as a very real force in the world, we are better able to name it for what it is and thus to combat it as Jesus did. Becks own work in a prison Bible study and at a church for recovering addicts convinced him to take Satan more seriously, and they provide compelling illustrations as he challenges the contemporaryand strangely safeversions of evil forces. The beliefs of liberals and conservatives alike will be tested by Becks groundbreaking ideas, fascinating stories, and clear thinking. Because if Jesus took Satan seriously, says Beck, then so should we. Winner of the 2017 Book of the Year Award from The Academy of Parish Clergy!

Reviving Old Scratch

Reviving Old Scratch PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506401368
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
The devil has fallen on hard times. Surveys say that even the majority of Christians doubt Satans existence. Burdened by doubts, skeptical believers find themselves divorced from Jesus dramatic confrontation with Satan in the Gospels and from the struggle that galvanized the early church. In Reviving Old Scratch, popular blogger and theologian Richard Beck reintroduces the devil to the modern world with a biblical, bold, and urgent vision of spiritual warfare: we must resist the devil by joining the kingdom of Gods subversive campaign to interrupt the world with love. Beck shows how conservative Christians too often overspiritualize the devil and demons, and progressive Christians reduce these forces to social justice issues. By understanding evil as a very real force in the world, we are better able to name it for what it is and thus to combat it as Jesus did. Becks own work in a prison Bible study and at a church for recovering addicts convinced him to take Satan more seriously, and they provide compelling illustrations as he challenges the contemporaryand strangely safeversions of evil forces. The beliefs of liberals and conservatives alike will be tested by Becks groundbreaking ideas, fascinating stories, and clear thinking. Because if Jesus took Satan seriously, says Beck, then so should we. Winner of the 2017 Book of the Year Award from The Academy of Parish Clergy!

Reviving Old Scratch

Reviving Old Scratch PDF Author: Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781506401355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The devil has fallen on hard times. Surveys say that even the majority of Christians doubt Satans existence. Burdened by doubts, skeptical believers find themselves divorced from Jesus dramatic confrontation with Satan in the Gospels and from the struggle that galvanized the early church. In Reviving Old Scratch, popular blogger and theologian Richard Beck reintroduces the devil to the modern world with a biblical, bold, and urgent vision of spiritual warfare: we must resist the devil by joining the kingdom of Gods subversive campaign to interrupt the world with love. Beck shows how conservative Christians too often overspiritualize the devil and demons, and progressive Christians reduce these forces to social justice issues. By understanding evil as a very real force in the world, we are better able to name it for what it is and thus to combat it as Jesus did. Becks own work in a prison Bible study and at a church for recovering addicts convinced him to take Satan more seriously, and they provide compelling illustrations as he challenges the contemporaryand strangely safeversions of evil forces. The beliefs of liberals and conservatives alike will be tested by Becks groundbreaking ideas, fascinating stories, and clear thinking. Because if Jesus took Satan seriously, says Beck, then so should we. Winner of the 2017 Book of the Year Award from The Academy of Parish Clergy

Stranger God

Stranger God PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506438415
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Accessible, challenging, funny, and one of the best reads on how to love others in any situation. Love and hospitality can change the way you see the world and others. That's exactly what modern-day theologian, Richard Beck, experienced when he first led a Bible study at a local maximum security prison. Beck believed the promise of Matthew 25 that states when we visit the prisoner, we encounter Jesus. Sure enough, God met Beck in prison. With his signature combination of biblical reflection, theological reasoning, and psychological insight, Beck shows how God always meets us when we entertain the marginalized, the oppressed, and the refugee. Stories from Beck's own life illustrate this truth -- God comes to him in the poor, the crippled, the smelly. Psychological experiments show how we are predisposed to appreciate those who are similar to us and avoid those who are unlike us. The call of the gospel, however, is to override those impulses with compassion, to "widen the circle of our affection." In the end, Beck turns to the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux for guidance in doing even the smallest acts with kindness, and he lays out a path that any of us can follow.

Unclean

Unclean PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
ISBN: 071884047X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the unclean in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities arewell aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.

Hunting Magic Eels

Hunting Magic Eels PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN: 150648767X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
We live in a post-Christian world characterized by doubt and skepticism. Richard Beck argues that this is evidence not of a crisis of belief but of a crisis of attention. Now in paperback, Hunting Magic Eels reveals how we can cultivate an enchanted faith in a skeptical age and recover our ability to experience God as a living, vital presence.

Shanghai Faithful

Shanghai Faithful PDF Author: Jennifer Lin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 144225694X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than any country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation. Shanghai Faithful is both a touching family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing spread of Christianity in China. Five generations of the Lin family—buffeted by history’s crosscurrents and personal strife—bring to life an epoch that is still unfolding. A compelling cast—a poor fisherman, a doctor who treated opium addicts, an Ivy League–educated priest, and the charismatic preacher Watchman Nee—sets the book in motion. Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to the thriving house churches and cathedrals of today’s China. The Lin family—and the book’s central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi—offer witness to China’s tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family’s resolute faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh look at Christianity in China—past, present, and future.

Trains, Jesus, and Murder

Trains, Jesus, and Murder PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 150645559X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"Saints and sinners, all jumbled up together." That's the genius of Johnny Cash, and that's what the gospel is ultimately all about. Johnny Cash sang about and for people on the margins. He famously played concerts in prisons, where he sang both murder ballads and gospel tunes in the same set. It's this juxtaposition between light and dark, writes Richard Beck, that makes Cash one of the most authentic theologians in memory. In Trains, Jesus, and Murder, Beck explores the theology of Johnny Cash by investigating a dozen of Cash's songs. In reflecting on Cash's lyrics, and the passion with which he sang them, we gain a deeper understanding of the enduring faith of the Man in Black.

The Made-from-Scratch Life

The Made-from-Scratch Life PDF Author: Melissa K. Norris
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736965343
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Do you long for simpler days? Do you wish you had the time to offer your family home-grown meals? Does your heart cry for a quiet place in this fast-paced world? Blogger and homesteader Melissa K. Norris inspires with practical and easy methods to help you cook from scratch, garden, preserve your own food, and see God's fingerprints in your everyday busy life. You'll learn how to plan, plant, and harvest for eating and preserving troubleshoot common gardening problems with natural solutions improve your family's health with natural cooking and cleaning methods Whether you live in the middle of the asphalt jungle or on the side of a mountain, you can experience the pioneer lifestyle and start your own homesteading journey. Because when you surround yourself with things made from the hand of God, you can't help but see Him.

Big White Ghetto

Big White Ghetto PDF Author: Kevin D. Williamson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621579948
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
"You can't truly understand the country you're living in without reading Williamson." —Rich Lowry, National Review "His observations on American culture, history, and politics capture the moment we're in—and where we are going." —Dana Perino, Fox News An Appalachian economy that uses cases of Pepsi as money. Life in a homeless camp in Austin. A young woman whose résumé reads, “Topless Chick, Uncredited.” Remorselessly unsentimental, Kevin D. Williamson is a chronicler of American underclass dysfunction unlike any other. From the hollows of Eastern Kentucky to the porn business in Las Vegas, from the casinos of Atlantic City to the heroin rehabs of New Orleans, he depicts an often brutal reality that does not fit nicely into any political narrative or comfort any partisan. Coming from the world he writes about, Williamson understands it in a way that most commentators on American politics and culture simply can’t. In these sometimes savage and often hilarious essays, he takes readers on a wild tour of the wreckage of the American republic—the “white minstrel show” of right-wing grievance politics, progressive politicians addicted to gambling revenue, the culture of passive victimhood, and the reality of permanent poverty. Unsparing yet never unsympathetic, Big White Ghetto provides essential insight into an enormous but forgotten segment of American society.

An Ethic For Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land

An Ethic For Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land PDF Author: William Stringfellow
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1592448747
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
From 'An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land': America is a fallen nation. Americans exist in time, in the era biblically called the Fall. America is a demonic principality, or conglomeration of principalities and powers in which death furnishes the meaning, in which death is the reigning idol. Enshrined in multifarious forms and guises, it enslaves human beings, exacts human sacrifices, captures and captivates Presidents as well as intimidating and dehumanizing ordinary citizens. Strong statements, yes, but timely in the biblical context which forms William Stringfellow's perspective of our contemporary situation. Identifying America as a fallen nation with the parable of Babylon in the Book of Revelation - not with Jerusalem the holy nation, as Americans are naively and vainly wont to do - Dr. Stringfellow issues as trenchant an indictment of our society as has been made since Philip Wylie's 'Generation of Vipers'. Shockingly prophetic, dismaying, and sobering, William Stringfellow's rigorous biblical theology will surely offend the self-righteous. But the citizen of Jerusalem, alien in Babylon, will welcome the bluntness and insight with which he speaks.