I am almost done reading Ron Martoia’s book Static: tune out the ‘Christian noise’ and experience the real message of Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 I would highly recommend this book to you and encourage you to read it with an open mind.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be challenging to say the least because Ron challenges some of the long held assumptions we make about salvation.<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0Some highlights… Ron suggests that when we read the Bible, we often read it through the lense of the people Jesus ministered to… those who received healing, the poor, the lame, the marginalized…. since many of us are not poor, or marginalized, then maybe the better lense to look through is that of the religious leaders.\u00c2\u00a0 That really changes how I hear Jesus’ teachings!<\/p>\n
He suggests that we often twist, add to, change the biblical texts to fit our preconceived theologies instead of letting the biblical texts form our theologies.\u00c2\u00a0 He deals most with the salvation as a way to heaven issue and pushes a deeper understanding of salvation as a restoration of shalom which impacts our life now and in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a view I have held for a long time and have wrestled with as well…. If so many of us are “saved” then why aren’t things here on earth different.\u00c2\u00a0 Or to put it another way, if so many of us have said yes to Jesus, then why are we still cheating on taxes, ignoring the poor, fighting with our neighbors, and divorcing our spouses?<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0The book is done in a mostly narrative style (similar to McLaren’s New Kind of Christian trilogy) but not as masterfully.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a fast read until you get to the last few chapters where he really moves beyond the story line with the major part of his thesis.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0Again, I would highly recommend it and would love to be part of a group that\u00c2\u00a0has a converstation\u00c2\u00a0around it.\u00c2\u00a0 Jeff, wanna set that up too!?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am almost done reading Ron Martoia’s book Static: tune out the ‘Christian noise’ and experience the real message of Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 I would highly recommend this book to you and encourage you to read it with an open mind.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be challenging to say the least because Ron challenges some of the long held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22,12,10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-readings","category-change","category-spiritual-formation","category-understanding-context","category-young-adults"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergentbrethren.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}