This Week In Cool Stuff: 05/26/12

-Over at Anarchist Reverend, Shay talks about all the "shoulds" in his life:

I should be out protesting injustice everywhere and getting arrested, I should be living in a communal house, I should be educating lots of people about trans* issues, I should be updating this blog more, I should be engaging in more conversations about queer inclusion in the church, I should go out more often with friends, I should read less and be more social, I should show up at community events, I should, I should, I should.

And then when I don’t do these things I feel guilty. Weighed down by feeling like I am not a good enough Christian, not a good enough radical, not a good enough person.

Story of my life!

-Jessica Bowman at Bohemian Bowmans writes about getting rid of all the evangelical guilt in her life:

I could only lay in bed at night, weeping and gnashing my teeth in the hedge of fire that had been created around me.  I felt nothing but guilt, all the time.  Nothing but inadequacy. Nothing but failure.  Every time I wasn’t perfectly loving to my children, every time I didn’t channel my inner Kirk Cameron and ask the lady at the drive thru window if she had ever told a lie …

Once again, story of my life!

-Addie Zierman at How To Talk Evangelical teaches us about "organic Christianity:"

To me, organic faith looks less like a tidy, three-minute testimony and more like seeds strewn across so much time. It is less about inviting my neighbor to church, more about inviting her over for coffee. It’s not really about sending my kids off to Sunday School class, but rather standing with them in the rain as it falls, telling them, God is here! He’s giving the plants a drink of water. Isn’t that cool?

-Fred Clark at Slacktivist explains how St. Peter was right and Al Mohler is wrong about homosexuality:

For Peter, his rooftop vision wasn’t about kosher dietary laws — it was about people. He says this explicitly: “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

That’s a very different conclusion from the one Mohler draws. Mohler says this story — this scripture — is about purity laws. Peter says this story is about God’s commandment that no people should be excluded as impure.

I’m going to have to side with Peter on this one. Peter was right. Mohler is wrong.

Reminds me of the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8. Eunuchs were considered unclean under the law of Moses. Yet in the Bible, we see Philip baptize an Ethiopian eunuch. Makes you think, don't it?

-And finally, congratulations to Jeff Goins on the birth of his first child!