Truth Guard - Home. Provender. Thy Word is a Light Unto My Path. The Prophets' Story - English.mp4. When Love Trumps Right Belief. Each of us has directives we live by. The directive to love is at the very heart of most faith traditions, along with being the first and foremost standard to live by for many who do not profess a specific religious belief. But as we know, directives can often be in conflict with each other, leading to what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. I may have love as my most important guiding principle in life, but if someone tries to take something precious from me, whether in the form of possessions, power, or even people, I may also firmly believe that it is right for me to defend, leading me to respond in ways that are anything but loving.
What do I do? If and when these two directives are in conflict, do I love or do I defend? Before I do anything, I must discern which directive is the more important guiding principle in life. When I look to Scripture in my faith tradition, I find the most important directive to be love. In other words, Wesley was saying love trumps right belief. My take: Why my church rebelled against the American Dream. Editor’s Note: David Platt, Ph.D., is the author of the New York Times bestseller Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream and is senior pastor of the 4,000-member Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama.
By David Platt, Special to CNN We American Christians have a way of taking the Jesus of the Bible and twisting him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with. A nice middle-class American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts. A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who for that matter wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings comfort and prosperity to us as we live out our Christian spin on the American Dream. But lately I’ve begun to have hope that the situation is changing. But many of us are realizing that Jesus has different priorities. The Top 100 Christian Books of 2010. The books in the table below represent the top 100 bestselling Christian books of 2010.
It is based on unit sales for the twelve months ending December 31, 2010. Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/rachwal81 We created these lists from a proprietary database we have assembled at Thomas Nelson. It is based on various point-of-sale systems from multiple sales channels. If you are just getting started with Evernote, I suggest that you buy Brett Kelly’s remarkably practical e-book, Evernote Essentials, Second Edition. It is worth setting aside a couple hours to work through this brief, 95-page book. It will save you DAYS of learning Evernote on your own. This list is not perfect. Questions: What observations do you have about this list? Want to launch your own blog or upgrade to self-hosted WordPress?