Danny Taylor: Skinny Guy Thinking it Through

The context of much of Matthew 5 deals with the assumed question, “How much can I get away with without actually breaking any rules?”  Verses 21-26 dealt with hatred and murder.  Verses 27-30 deal with lust and adultery.  You could imagine a new convert to ancient Judaism asking his rabbi, “I have this neighbor, and his wife is smokin’ hot.  Is there any law saying I can’t seduce her?”  To this, a good rabbi would say, “Yes: You shall not commit adultery,” and leave it at that.  A less-than-noble rabbi might say, “Technically, yes, that’s called adultery.  But you know, the Bible doesn’t say anything about imagining what you would do if you could.”   Jesus has something to say about the issue.  He closes yet another loophole, but in doing so, it seems that more problems are created.  Adultery is bad, yes we know.  And Jesus equates “lust” with “adultery” in the same way he equated “hatred” with “murder.”  But what is “lus...

Children often run into conflict with the Rule of Mom.   The rules moms make violate kids’ natural desires.   Like, “No, you may not get a cookie out of the cookie jar,” runs against a child’s natural desire (dare I say “need”?) to have a cookie.   When the Rule of Mom runs against the Desire of Kids, the kids have choices to make: Obey Mom and forego my apparent need, or disobey and risk consequences.   However, sometimes the rules moms make are not always black-and-white to the children making decisions.  For instance, when growing up, during the summer my mom had a rule that we were to come inside the house when the street-lights came on.  That rule seems simple enough: there was a street-light right in front of our house, and when the street-lights came on, we were to be done playing outside.  But my mom just said “street-lights”, and the street-light in front of my friend’s house came on at least a good fifteen minutes after the one in fro...

I had a theology professor in college who once said that a Christian’s relationship with Jesus is most certainly personal , but it is never private .  When he said that, he meant it in the context of the Body of Christ, that though Christians are individuals, nevertheless we comprise of one single, unique, collective body.  However, I think it is also true in how we approach the world around us.  Christianity is certainly a faith system, complete with doctrines to be believed.  Yet it is also something to be seen , or even experienced by those around us, whether they are Christian or not.  Jesus suggests this is the case by calling us “salt” and “light”.   After talking about those things that should Be our Attitude , Jesus then introduces two metaphors to describe our interaction with the world.  There is something about salt and light that speaks to our identity, both from a negative side (what we help prevent) and a positive side (what we hel...