Curious Christian

Exploring life, art, spirituality, and the way of Jesus

Lord, make me an instrument of peace

Published by

Matt Stone

on

2013-03-19

The Prayer of Saint Francis Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, …
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Theology for sinners and the sinned against

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Matt Stone

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2013-03-11

“The Protestant doctrine about the justification of sinners, and today’s theology about the liberation of the oppressed, do not have to be antitheses. They can correct and enrich one another mutually. The full and complete Protestant doctrine of justification is a liberation theology: it is about the liberation of people…
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The Gospel of Peace and the Way of Peace

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Matt Stone

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2013-03-09

I’ve been sitting with this quote from “The Missing Peace of Evangelical Missiology: Peacemaking and Respectful Witness” by Dr. Rick Love. He writes: “So how should the mandates of peacemaking and evangelism fit together? The biblical foundation layed in this study, along with the poignant stories from Nigeria and Indonesia…
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Top 200 Ministry Blogs

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Matt Stone

on

2013-03-08

I received a nice pick-me-up this afternoon. After seeing some unusual traffic coming through on Glocal Christianity I found out I’ve again ranked well on Church Relevance’s Top 200 Ministry Blogs list, coming in at 112. I’d fully expected to have dropped off the list by now given the dominance of multi-author and big…
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Missional Church, Reconciling Church

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Matt Stone

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2013-03-04

I’ve been reading an interesting essay by D. Marco Funk which relates the ecclesiology of John Howard Yoder to the missional church and reflecting on this passage in particular. The question we asked earlier, about how the Church can partner with God in his mission to the world, is not the…
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Is curiosity biblical?

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Matt Stone

on

2013-03-01

I was recently reading a blog post by Zalman Kastel, a Jewish Rabbi I had the pleasure of meeting last month at an Anabaptist conference in Sydney, when was drawn to his comments on curiosity. Specifically, “A key strategy for positive inter-group relations is curiosity. Yishai Shaliff taught me the…
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Schooling: can you have your irreligious cake and eat it?

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Matt Stone

on

2013-02-19

A curious oddity in contemporary Australian society is the simultaneous flight from religious identification and flocking to religious schools. Earlier today the Sydney Morning Herald reported that, even though we’re one of the least religious nations in the world and becoming even more so, paradoxically “we have this large and increasing…
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The four elements in the Temple veil

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Matt Stone

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2013-02-06

For some time I’ve been interested in the symbolic function of the Temple in Jerusalem and hints that the Temple functioned as a microcosm, that is, as the sacred cosmos in miniature. To date my interest has been in the implications for the interpretation of Genesis 1, the climax of…
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Foundations of Taoist Practice

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Matt Stone

on

2013-01-29

If you are interested in learning about Taoism I highly recommend “Foundations of Taoist Practice” by Jampa Mackenzie Stewart as an introductory article. It explains such concepts as: the Way (Tao), nothingness (Wu Ji), primordial energy (Qi), Yin And Yang, the Five Elements (Wu Hsing), the Eight Trigrams (Pa Kua), Martial…
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Have we understood “dualism” and “otherness” too narrowly?

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Matt Stone

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2013-01-29

“I have been suggesting that the way in which we think dualism is often unnecessarily subject to oppositional, hierarchical patterns. Samkhya has shown us one way in which dualism – the difference of spirit and matter – need not imply the subordination of one to the other but can denote a dynamic,…
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