One of the great things about writing this blog are the comments I get.
I read some blogs that seem to collect nothing but cheering fans. I read others that attract savage attacks and screaming matches. I’ve been blessed by the people who comment here. They deepen my thinking and push back against my flabby ideas. They open angles I had not seen or considered. They point out mistakes.
All that is preamble to highlight a recent comment by Mike Mather, pastor of Broadway UMC in Indianapolis. In his comment on my post “Barth on a billboard,” he writes this:
I do know that so much of the liturgy and practice of the church seems to be something that says in one way or another: 1) God can’t do this if we won’t (wrong, I think); or, 2) We are God’s hands and feet in the world (wrong again, I think). My sense of our evangelistic call is not to be God (which we, obviously can’t be) but to recognize and celebrate God’s presence and power in the world. God doesn’t need us to do that. God is doing just fine, it seems to me. … God doesn’t need us to open homeless shelters and soup kitchens – but if we recognized God’s presence in the homeless and hungry – as individuals whose names we know – we might find ourselves doing what Isaiah says and taking the homeless into our homes and sharing dinner around the tables in our homes. I can hardly think of anything that would more dramatically show that we believe in God’s power and presence.
I cut a good chunk out of Mike’s comment to keep it short, but the whole thing is worth reading in context.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
