Tag: politics

The Birth of Freedom

by Phillip Ross • August 6, 2010 • 0 Comments

Why would anyone believe that all men are created equal? That all should be free? Why would any nation consider this a self-evident truth? For the millions around the world who have never tasted liberty, this question cries for an…

Believe in What?

by Phillip Ross • August 6, 2010 • 0 Comments

â€œBelieve passionately in what you do, and never knowingly compromise your standards and values. Act like a true professional, aiming for true excellence, and the money will follow.â€ â€“ David Maister (1947- ), business management consultant. The Advice Business: Essential…

No Neutrality!

by Phillip Ross • August 2, 2010 • 0 Comments

The thesis is that if and when Christians individually and as a community assert the kingship of Jesus Christ in the world (this present evil world, alienated from God, the Father), the world will not merely oppose such a confession…

Leadership

by Phillip Ross • August 2, 2010 • 0 Comments

Application Purpose Principle Passion Virtue Character Calling Leadership Grace Christ A contemporary theory of leadership states that there are three basic ways that people become leaders. The first two explain the leadership development for a small number of people, the…

Christian Marketing

by Phillip Ross • August 2, 2010 • 0 Comments

“Remember, everything we do gets hijacked by marketing.” That was the warning Sun Microsystems Inc. Chief Researcher John Gage had for developers working on emerging grid computing standards at the Global Grid Forum in Seattle in June, 2003. His comment…

Crisis of Leadership

by Phillip Ross • April 17, 2010 • 0 Comments

Sex sells. And because it does, itâ€™s everywhere in our contemporary society. Ours is a consumer society, and sales are the life-blood of a consumerism. And sex is the sizzle in our consumer blood. Here in Marietta and everywhere else…

Moral Decrepitude

by Phillip Ross • July 11, 2009 • 1 Comment

How do we get out of the mess of moral decay of American society generally, and in Marietta specifically? (Note: Marietta, OH, has recently been wracked with a sex & drugs crisis that has cost the jobs of several firemen…

Clear As Mud II

by Phillip Ross • August 29, 2008 • 0 Comments

If you haven’t read Clear As Mud, please read it first. Since the DNC (Denver 2008) has just ended let me speak to its origin. Two nights ago the keynote speaker, Mike Warner, mentioned that Thomas Jefferson was the founder…

Clear As Mud

by Phillip Ross • August 27, 2008 • 0 Comments

A logical consequence of Deism is that God did not manifest Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Christ came to free people from bondage to the law of Moses, but not through the absolute abandonment of all law. Paulâ€™s training as a Pharisee made him the most biblically competent of the Apostles, which is reflected by his dominance as an author of the New Testament letters. My intention here is not to impose a foreign metanarrative upon the text, but to reveal the actual metanarrative of the Old Testament in the light of Christ as Paul presented it to the Galatians. That metanarrative was not what he had been taught as a Pharisee, nor what they had been taught by the Temple establishment. It was shockingly different, but it made undeniable sense of the Old Testament. The Temple establishment version was full of ancient mystery and symbolism that was difficult to understand, and cast the role of Israel as the hero of the story. Paulâ€™s version, on the other hand, was clear, simple, and practicalâ€”though it required the abandonment of much well-established Temple superstition. Paulâ€™s version cast the role of Jesus Christ as the hero.

While understanding the story of the Old Testament in the light of Christ is not difficult, abandoning our own false presuppositions about it requires some personal tenacity. Jesus continues to challenge our ideas about who we are and our role in history, Godâ€™s story. The story that Paul grew up with was the story about the importance and purity of the Temple. But the story that he learned from Jesus was about the corruption and failure of the Temple. Similarly, Christians today are Sunday-schooled in the importance of the institutional church, but the actual ongoing story in the light of Christ is about the corruption and failure of the church as an institution. In the following pages you will see that this story has played out over and again throughout history because of the pertinacity of sin.