God Is Stranger


Book Description

Have we missed the Bible’s consistent teaching that God is other, higher, stranger? Krish Kandiah offers us a fresh look at some of the difficult, awkward, and even troubling Bible passages, challenging us to replace our sanitized concept of God with a more awe-inspiring, true-to-the-Bible God. Allow yourself to be surprised by God as you find him in unexpected places doing the unexpected.




Stranger God


Book Description

Accessible, challenging, funny, and one of the best reads on how to love others in any situation. Love and hospitality can change the way you see the world and others. That's exactly what modern-day theologian, Richard Beck, experienced when he first led a Bible study at a local maximum security prison. Beck believed the promise of Matthew 25 that states when we visit the prisoner, we encounter Jesus. Sure enough, God met Beck in prison. With his signature combination of biblical reflection, theological reasoning, and psychological insight, Beck shows how God always meets us when we entertain the marginalized, the oppressed, and the refugee. Stories from Beck's own life illustrate this truth -- God comes to him in the poor, the crippled, the smelly. Psychological experiments show how we are predisposed to appreciate those who are similar to us and avoid those who are unlike us. The call of the gospel, however, is to override those impulses with compassion, to "widen the circle of our affection." In the end, Beck turns to the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux for guidance in doing even the smallest acts with kindness, and he lays out a path that any of us can follow.




A Stranger in the House of God


Book Description

Growing up the son of agnostics, John Koessler saw a Catholic church on one end of the street and a Baptist on the other. In the no-man’s land between the two, this curious outside wondered about the God they worshipped—and began a lifelong search to comprehend the grace and mystery of God. A Stranger in the House of God addresses fundamental questions and struggles faced by spiritual seekers and mature believers. Like a contemporary Pilgrim’s Progress, it traces the author’s journey and explores his experiences with both charismatic and evangelical Christianity. It also describes his transformation from religious outsider to ordained pastor. John Koessler provides a poignant and often humorous window into the interior of the soul as he describes his journey from doubt and struggle with the church to personal faith







The Soul of the Stranger


Book Description

Evocative readings of the Torah through the lens of transgender experience, exploring the ways trans perspectives can enrich our understanding of religious texts, traditions, and God




God Is Stranger


Book Description

What happens when God turns up? 'Has God become as familiar and forgettable as a fridge magnet? That's the danger Krish Kandiah faces up to in this wonderfully readable and very challenging book. Bible stories come to life as Krish tells them afresh, richly illustrated with personal experience and social relevance, and in each case the living God turns up - strange, dangerous, and, like Aslan, not safe but good.' CHRIS WRIGHT, LANGHAM PARTNERSHIP In an age of social and political uncertainty, Krish Kandiah turns to less familiar and more uncomfortable parts of the Bible to discover the true character of God - but be warned: he may be stranger than you think. Building on the challenges he explored in PARADOXOLOGY, Krish strips us of our comfortable assumptions and invites us to look afresh at God's character. When Abraham welcomes three men for dinner, he ends up pleading for the life of a city. When Jacob meets God by the river, they end up in a fight. And when two forlorn disciples meet a stranger on the road, their lives are turned upside down. GOD IS STRANGER challenges us to lay down our expectations of God and delight in the power that is proven by his very strangeness. 'Be warned: this book could seriously affect your view of yourself, of the world and of God - I highly recommend it to you!' PAULA GOODER, BIBLE SOCIETY 'An important and timely book from someone who lives out its message.' PETE GREIG, 24-7 PRAYER INTERNATIONAL




Jesus the Stranger


Book Description

This book is "a narrative journey, a thematic presentation of the suffering, alienation, and rejection of Jesus Christ by a host of people, those for whom Jesus was "the other," and in many respects, therefore, a stranger. Jesus is presented in this grand constructed narrative, carefully laid out and composed of key gospel texts, against the backdrop of a cast of oppositional characters who unwittingly help to portray Jesus in his utter goodness, deep humility, and abiding love."--Introduction




Welcoming the Stranger


Book Description

World Relief staffers Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang move beyond the rhetoric to offer a Christian response to immigration. With careful historical understanding and thoughtful policy analysis, they debunk myths about immigration, show the limits of the current immigration system, and offer concrete ways for you to welcome and minister to your immigrant neighbors.




The World Turned Upside Down


Book Description

The paranormal television series Stranger Things taps into the mysterious elements that have fueled spiritual questions for millennia. The otherworldly manifestations in Hawkins, Indiana offer compelling portrayals of important spiritual truths--and many of these truths are echoed in the supernatural worldview of the Bible.




Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams


Book Description

Rowan Williams is a complex, creative and versatile thinker. Not only a theologian and church leader, he is also a poet, a translator, a literary critic, a social theorist and historian. His imaginative vision brings together the streams of modern literature, patristic theology, Russian orthodoxy, German philosophy and Welsh piety. In this lucid and elegant guide, Benjamin Myers explores Williams' thought from the 1960s to the present. He shows that Williams has developed an immensely resourceful - and distinctively Christian - response to some of the major social, moral and intellectual challenges of our time.