Hosea looked at a massacre the Bible said God ordered and declared: no, that's not what God wanted. The lens gets better. The picture gets clearer. What we thought God was like five or fifty years ago doesn't have to be what we think forever. Color was always there. We just needed better tools.
This passage isn't about God punishing you for taking communion wrong. It's about what happens when the wealthy eat and the poor go hungry.
Certain ideas get so deeply embedded in the tradition—repeated so often, sung so confidently—that no one stops to ask whether the original actually says what we think it says.
This week: why Paul would kick someone out of church, the chaos monster hiding in your Bible, and what to call a group of TSA agents.
When most people hear "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven," they think of the afterlife. They think of where you go when you die. They think of clouds, harps, and a gated community in the sky. That's not what Jesus was talking about. Not even close.
I write about the Bible, books, and what it means to be human — with a bias toward love and liberation. Free subscribers get two emails a week. Paid subscribers get a third, plus access to everything on the site.
