The triple tradition is unanimous that Jewish sects at the time of Jesus preyed on the property of widows

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. -- Matthew 23:14

And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: Which devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation. -- Mark 12:38ff.

Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts; Which devour widows' houses, and for a shew make long prayers: the same shall receive greater damnation. -- Luke 20:46f.

Pure and faultless religion looks after the widow and the fatherless in their affliction . . .

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

-- James 1:27

A sick disciple is unthinkable to today's preachers of divine healing

I was sick and you looked after Me.

-- Matthew 25:36

"The least of these my brethren" remains misunderstood divorced from the meaning of discipleship in its apocalyptic milieu

The misunderstanding was recently on vivid display here, where conservative and liberal interpreters feud over the meaning of Matthew 25:40 for the contemporary social situation of wealth and poverty.

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Unfortunately the text has little meaning for the contemporary social situation, except perhaps to teach those who think that they are Jesus' followers that they are not, and those who are self-satisfied humanitarians that they are dull.

The significance of "my brethren" is much more than what its conservative interpreters say it is. The phrase locates it in apocalyptic time, to the activity of The Twelve before the end of the world. It cannot refer to future generations, as if it were some timeless instruction for right living which liberalism for example can pride itself on by making it the law of the land. Jesus does not at all imagine such a future. He does not even imagine our existence. Instead Jesus imagines a future cut short by judgment and the arrival of the kingdom of God. It is the narrowest of time horizons constrained by the expectation of an imminent end of the world.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ... Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:34, 41).

The activity of The Twelve is what is expected of disciples who have paid the cost to escape the apocalyptic sentence of death: Leaving all and following their Master, selling what they have and giving to the poor, embarking on an itinerant life preaching a similar repentance, traveling without visible means of support and relying on God to provide, and so on. This is all of a piece with the teaching on discipleship and the instructions to missionaries elsewhere, summarizing and presupposing it.

"Salvation" comes to a house that provides these itinerants their food, drink, clothing, shelter, palliative care for illness in the event, and companionship if and when imprisoned for posing a threat to the powers about to be overthrown by the inbreaking of God's reign. Such acts constitute their own repentance and solidarity with the "Christian" message.

Needless to say, this is a vision which has almost nothing to do with the Pauline Gospel per se, but amazingly survived in the written record anyway despite its failure to materialize.

It does live on in Paul, however, in another form, in "the collection for the saints". Paul's pledge "to remember the poor" is specifically defined by that, and not by a dull humanitarianism. Paul's collection for the saints in Jerusalem, in fact, is the second great animating feature of his missionary journeys but is still little remarked let alone appreciated in your average church today. As for the dull humanitarianism, we have to wait until the 19th Century and Liberal Christianity before we really get the groundwork laid for that contemporary misreading of the ancient sources referred to above. It was against this that Schweitzer's critique based on apocalyptic was launched at the beginning of the 20th Century.

We talk about that critique a lot here.

For Luke Harrington at Christ and Pop Culture

Sorry, Luke, couldn't help myself. Boring sermon you know, and the mind wanders. Think of it as free advertising.

"I write of a scribbler named Harrington

whose 'juvenilia' show he's a simpleton,

when regretfully I see

he means 'juvenility'

A poor boy just being a charlatan."

Get out of bed, you drunks!

Who has anguish? Who has sorrow?

Who is always fighting? Who is always complaining?

Who has unnecessary bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?

It is the one who spends long hours in the taverns,

trying out new drinks.

Don't gaze at the wine, seeing how red it is,

how it sparkles in the cup, how smoothly it goes down.

For in the end it bites like a poisonous snake;

it stings like a viper.

You will see hallucinations,

and you will say crazy things.

You will stagger like a sailor tossed at sea,

clinging to a swaying mast.

 

 

And you will say, "They hit me, but I didn't feel it.

I didn't even know it when they beat me up.

When will I wake up

so I can look for another drink?"

-- Proverbs 23:29ff.

A juvenile who doesn't realize "juvenilia" refers to compositions by the young, you know, like by him

Poor boy, here, means "juvenility".

Martin Luther wanted to drain the Vatican swamp, using as his Twitter his German translation of the Bible and the Pamphlet

Peter Stanford, here:

The 95 theses – and much of what Luther subsequently said in public as his message spread across the continent, right up to his excommunication in 1521 – were the work of a classic disrupter who, in today’s terms, wanted to drain the “Vatican swamp”.

Fluent in the language of the street, the undeniably charismatic Luther wrote most of his best-known and most inflammatory texts not in church Latin but in German, going on to produce in 1522 the first translation of the New Testament into everyday German, and in 1534 a translation of the whole Bible.

Those in the pews no longer had to rely on the word of priests and bishops instead of the word of God. He realised the force of appealing over the head of “experts” long before Michael Gove hit upon it in the Brexit push.

And in working with the owners of newfangled printing presses, he was among the first to spot the potential of what was the social media of its day as an alternative means of spreading his new anti-establishment gospel. Pamphlets of edited versions of his tracts spread like ripples through Germany, then Europe, Rome and even England. In an age of widespread illiteracy, he made sure he engaged those who could not read by including illustrations, using crude, often satirical woodcuts from the studio of his close friend and fellow Wittenberger, Lucas Cranach the Elder.

So when he stood before the Holy Roman Emperor and the princes and prelates of Germany at the Diet of Worms in 1521, defending his writings on pain of death, Luther had crowds outside on the streets rallying to his defence, stirred up by leaflets and posters saturating the town.

Much as they wanted to be rid of “this petty monk”, as pope Adrian VI labelled him, the establishment could not hand him over to his fate for fear of igniting an uprising. So Luther, unlike those earlier would-be reformers, lived to put his theories into practice.

A proposed definition of "middle class" for The Devil's Dictionary

Middle class 

n. The economic class situated between the working class and the upper class, uglier than either for combining the worst features of the other two into one. It has just enough leisure at once to dream of being the idle rich, and to loathe those who do not.  

Researchers report on "INC, Christianity": Bethel Redding type utopians preaching dominionism

From the report here:

The influence of INC Christianity can be seen in the millions of hits on many of their web-based media sites, large turnouts at stadium rallies and conferences, and millions of dollars in media sales. In our interviews with leaders, we found that Bethel, an INC ministry based in Redding, California, for example, in 2013 had an income of US$8.4 million in media sales (music, books, DVDs, web-based content) and $7 million in tuition to their Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. ... [I]ts proponents have a fundamentally different view of the relationship between the Christian faith and society than most Christian groups throughout American history. ...

Most INC Christian groups we studied seek to bring heaven or God’s intended perfect society to Earth by placing “kingdom-minded people” in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society.

INC leaders have labeled them the “seven mountains of culture.” These include business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion. In this form of “trickle-down Christianity,” they believe if Christians rise to the top of all seven “mountains,” society will be completely transformed.

Baptists who want to extend religious liberty to people who want to kill us are clearly insane

You know, like Russell Moore.

And Presbyterian NeverTrumper David French here in National Review defends him:

At the same time, the ERLC was working diligently to try to bridge persistent racial divisions in the SBC and the Evangelical church more broadly and to persuade the public that religious liberty wasn’t just a Christian concern, but a deeply American value. Towards that end, it controversially (to some) signed on to an amicus brief defending the religious liberty of Muslims seeking to build a mosque in New Jersey. (To criticize this decision is particularly odd given the ERLC’s explicit mission to preserve religious liberty. The same legal standards that apply to mosques will also apply to churches.)

Jesus taught extreme avoidance of temptation because he was pessimistic about human nature and expected imminent judgment

The evidence is unequivocal.

Matthew 6:13  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Matthew 26:41  Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Mark 14:38  Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.

Luke 11:4  And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Luke 22:40  And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation.

Luke 22:46  And said unto them, Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.

Matthew 5:29  If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

Matthew 5:30  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Matthew 13:41  The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers.

Matthew 18:6  But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 18:8  And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.

Matthew 18:9  And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

Mark 9:42  Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

Mark 9:43  And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

Mark 9:45  And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.

Mark 9:47  And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.

John 2:24f.  But Jesus did not trust himself to them, because he knew all men and needed no one to bear witness of man; for he himself knew what was in man.

Matthew 22:16  And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men.

Mark 12:14  And they came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God.

Matthew 7:11  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Luke 11:13  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

Matthew 3:7  Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

The apocalyptic timeline is pessimistic about human beings, no matter how you draw it

There can be no talk of building the kingdom of God on earth among men, no talk of extending it far and wide into every human heart, no talk of progress in the faith, no promise of doing greater works than he has done nor of good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them which is compatible with Jesus' apocalyptic pessimism. 

When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?

-- Luke 18:8

After eating human brains, what's next, Reza Aslan arguing practitioners of ritual cannibalism should be free to practice their religion in the US?

Take, eat, this is my brain . . .

Story here.

Don't read the story if you're eating lunch right now, I'm about to lose mine.

The hubbub isn't about what it should be about, the cannibalism, but about the purported caricature of Hinduism implied by Aslan's documentary.

The guy should be arrested and put away for participating, but hey, he's inviolable because he's a Muslim.

Pope Francis thinks about temptation and faith like a Marxist, not like Jesus

Pope Francis, quoted here:

“Temptation is always present in our lives. Moreover, without temptation you cannot progress in faith,” he said.

If temptation is necessary to advance in faith, in vain do we pray "lead us not into temptation" as Jesus taught his disciples to pray, for then we would be praying not to make progress in faith according to the pope.

Only a Marxist would make faith and temptation antitheses from which a new synthesis of greater faith would ensue.

Opposition to Russell Moore among Southern Baptists is reaching a crescendo

For a summary of important essays by Southern Baptists who oppose Moore's liberalism, see here.

Francis Chan's radical discipleship isn't so radical that he can't own two restaurants, a marina and a hotel

Here, in the opening after the prayer, by his own admission.

He's not exactly the utterly penniless itinerant prophet like Jesus, nor even the itinerant self-supporting apostle and laborer like Paul. He's what is called a rentier. He uses the income to support his family, which lives frugally, and his work, which is noteworthy.

But who knows? Maybe some day he'll actually trust God and go all the way. For now Francis Chan still does not grasp that repentance according to Jesus means, "No man can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he owns."

What do really religious people and leftists have in common?

Both were standing in the same different line from the one where God was, handing out the ordinary sense of humor.

They received this one instead, the one where you happily smile while marching in memory of homicide victims:

Rev. Jackson and Father Pfleger march in Chicago Dec. 31, 2016 

The Religion Laugh of the Day: Rob Bell becomes a Muslim . . .

. . . so he'll have a whole new set of beliefs to deny one day.

Here, in The Babylon Bee.

In Matthew the useless servant is cut off, in Luke to be such is almost a badge of honor

And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. -- Matthew 25:30

So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do. -- Luke 17:10