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Politics of Scripture

Essays featuring a specific Book of the Bible.

Recent Politics of Scripture

A Psychotherapeutic Reading of Thomas

This reading of Thomas’s story, for me, is a powerful reminder that faith is not a straight line from doubt to belief. It is a complex journey through relationship, rupture, and repair. From the perspective of self-psychology, Thomas represents not merely an individual struggling with uncertainty, but anyone who has experienced the pain of exclusion (a break in connection).

The Politics of Resurrection

If we want to experience the full effect of Easter, we must recognize that it’s not just about Jesus…it sends ripples through the cosmos as it signals the dismantling of worldly kingdoms built on exploitation and invites us to participate instead in a social order that reflects God’s intentions for the flourishing of all.

The Cross as Resistance, Solidarity, and the Triumph of Justice

While deeply engaged with the concerns of everyday life such as healing, feeding, and engaging people in matters of justice and community, Jesus offers an alternative vision: one shaped by self-giving love and radical faithfulness to God’s kingdom, rather than by the structures and strategies of empire.

Being Dead and Coming Alive

A colonial understanding of resurrection has only associated it with life after death, whereas a decolonial Dalit theology engages with new life experiences by breaking the grounds of death here and now, in life before death.

Beyond Blood

One alternative to a disorienting retributive hierarchy … is repentance, offered to the living, not the dead. This is the honest acceptance of one’s own sin that leads to a turning from the destructive habits of assigning greater or lesser guilt to others. The activity of repentance, in turn, becomes the basis for the possibility of reconciliation between God and offender, between offender and the offended.

Citizens of Heaven

Heavenly citizenship for Paul is certainly not about escaping social responsibility within this life. The path that follows Christ is a path that moves one’s focus from earthly things to heavenly.

A Life of Virtue Demands Disruptive Moments of Awareness

We all experience our own wildernesses in our lives… What we do with the experience is what matters. Do we use it as a foundation to be altruistic in how we live our lives, or do we end up embodying the same mindset of those who hurt us?

The Freedom of the Spirit

The Spirit is the decisive factor in any ethical and political existence that would strive for truth, for justice, and for a mode of persuasion that can challenge the world’s assumptions of what is possible without rhetorically pulverizing those who do not yet agree or pretending that we are better or wiser than we really are.

Love in a World Filled with Enemies

The part I find most difficult to accept in Jesus’s teaching from Luke 6 is not the extent of the love he commands, but rather his matter-of-fact acknowledgment that his followers will have enemies.

Grounding the Mind/Body/Spirit for Faithful Resistance against Hopelessness

These devastating times and the repeated actions informed by the continued propagation of supremacist ideals may seek to drive us into hopelessness and inaction, but we know this is not the end. History reminds us that promoting an “us vs. them” thinking is destructive to all, including the earth.

The Woman Who Changed Jesus’ Mind About Dehumanizing Immigrants 

All human beings (including me) are capable of dehumanizing others. Moreover, all dehumanizers (including Jesus) can change their minds.

Love Never Fails

For those of us who have experienced marginalization, are we confident that God is actively seeking the lost and rejected souls in our communities? And for those of us with social privilege, do we embody this confidence by extending love to those on the margins—the outcast, the silenced, those with no voice or vote?