Claim OwnershipMusing The Mysteries
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After a 30-year pastoral ministry, Barney Wiget is now a Bible teacher, mentor of young spiritual leaders, and friend of the urban poor. This podcast includes a number of his most recent audio musings about Scripture and its Author. A wide range of Barney’s writings can be found on his blog and website.
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This message given at Hope Church in November 2019 focuses on the problem of suffering and evil in a world made by an all loving and all powerful God.
James’ vision for the Church was where the rich and poor sit next to each other, embracing each other in mutual, symbiotic relationships wherein the rich man needs the poor man as much as the poor man needs his rich brother.
James 5:1-6 -- addressing and undressing classism in the Church… You can’t be the kind of Christian that James describes and, at the same time, judge the relative worth of other humans based on their socioeconomic success or race or any other external factor.
God does allow a lot of people to acquire wealth to use for his glory, but to make consumptive acquisition a universal promise for all and an evidence of great faith and true spirituality is, in my opinion, not only mistaken, it’s evil!
Please listen to my justification for this brash statement in this brief commentary on James 4...
No one has more “envy and selfish ambition” than the devil and he’s happy to share it with anyone willing to log in and download it…
Christians who are "classless" either give away their position for the sake of the community or give out of their privileged position for the community’s sake…
You’d think it would go without saying that we should check our prejudices at the church door for at least an hour of worship, but apparently we can't! It doesn’t speak well of us if we won’t even treat people who aren’t like us with dignity for one hour on Sunday mornings. Let's see what James has to say about it.
A rich guy gets a good seat and the poor guy who sits on the floor of the church! Not exactly what Jesus envisioned!
Here's part 2 of my intro to the Epistle of James; this time focusing on the writer and how he mirrored the practice and teaching of his 1/2 Brother, Jesus on the topic of "Classless Christianity!" Listen at the peril of your prejudice.
In the world, some are disdained and others acclaimed for their socioeconomic station, but for followers of Jesus those distinctions are irrelevant. Christ annihilates classism! If you wonder whether or not this is biblical, check out my take on James 1:1-11.
The Epistle of James confronts classism in the Church and by the Church. Besides the teachings of Jesus, this letter is the New Testament's most concentrated teaching on social justice.
Is there a different way to see this famous mantra of prosperity promisers?
Intercession is the kind of praying that we do on behalf of those who don’t know how to or don’t care to pray for themselves. And when we pray this way we’re playing our role in the world as “priests," responsible to not only intercede for our Christian family but for the rest of the human family – terrorists included.
This is a kitchen table talk wherein I unpack a blog I did a while back on "The Candy Store Church." It's a little cynical, so beware. I mean no disrespect. I do love the Church and just want us to be better than this...
You can find the blog at: https://musingthemysteries.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/the-candy-store-church/
This is Part 2 of 2 episodes on the basics of a life of prayer. You'll find the outline and list of passages referred to at https://musingthemysteries.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/a-primer-on-prayer/.
I’m concerned about the prayer lives of many Christians with whom I engage. I don’t see many prayer meetings in churches anymore and it seems to me that many spiritual leaders and church members have less than exemplary lives of prayer.
This is a primer on the topic of prayer, the outline with a list of passages can be found on Musingthemysteries.wordpress.com.
The kind of love that produces balance/shalom doesn’t love everything. It hates some things but never hates people. Love hates only the things that hurt people. It’s not biblical balance when you hate the democrats or the republicans or gays or whites or blacks or Asians. What you should hate is what does harm to the gays, whites, blacks, Asians, democrats and, yes, even republicans.
In this message based on Elijah and Elisha I address young disciples in particular toward a courageous life of discipleship. I encourage both young and old to listen to this, apply it to your own lives, and share it with someone you think would benefit from it.
Here's a kitchen table talk on the purpose and power of worship. I find that most Christians worship for the propriety and pleasure of it, but have not understood the power of it. This is a simple message that I first shared with some friends with whom I worship weekly in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco at a place called "Hippie Hill."
You’d be hard pressed to find a better example of courage in Bible than the prophet Elijah. This is the guy who openly rebuked kings, predicted a drought, was fed in the wilderness by ravens, raised the dead, called down fire on a water-soaked altar, and was eventually taken to heaven in an angel-driven chariot! He was a pretty special guy whose bravery seems out of reach for us. And yet James said he was a “man just like us”! So there must be something we can glean from his example and apply it to our own contexts. Listen and ask the Spirit for more courage to share Christ with a co-worker, to ask someone for forgiveness, to ask a pre-christian friend if you can pray for them, to speak up when prompted by the Spirit, to confront a Christian friend who’s living in a compromising way . . .
Soren Kierkegaard said, “Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.” Here I propose an alternative to that culturally dictated frenetic pursuit.
For an outline of the passages referred to here, see my blog post called "Simple Pleasure" at https://musingthemysteries.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/simple-pleasure/.
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