Douglas J. Miller

Your Jesus Is too Small

Douglas J. Miller

We can make Jesus look very small if we are not careful. Your Jesus Is Too Small explores how a trivialized Jesus contributes to a collapsed Christian moral character. The 2016 election exposed the truth that for many Christians character does not count, or is a very low priority. Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for President Trump, not known as a man of high moral character. This collapse of character is especially troubling since Christians claim to seek after the mind and character of Jesus Christ. What's more, the ingrained and unrelenting cultural values–combined with our inescapable self-centered pursuits–bombard us every moment and blight our character. After noting how we belittle Jesus, this book explores ways we can exalt him, allowing his character traits to inform and then transform our hearts and minds. A credible Jesus also means that more tongues will confess him and more knees bow before him and that more people will desire his compassionate character. Then we will be morally equipped to address the great crises of our day: persistent poverty, the marginalizing of out-groups, raging violence, and our planet's lingering woes.

Jesus Goes to Washington

Douglas J. Miller

This book explores how Christian spirituality and the political ethic of Christianity's founder, Jesus of Nazareth, might contribute to the most looming emergency of our day–ending human misery while reducing the planet's woes. It advances the new ethical paradigm of sustainability that bespeaks the longings of this remarkable Jewish peasant who elbowed his way into a world filled with social misery, shame, and land exploitation. Donning the mantle of a prophet/lawgiver, he disgraced the justifying ethic of the prevailing Roman oligarchies that finds its active counterpart in today's political landscape. He offered a different political path–a Progressive one–that led to respecting Creation and all its inhabitants. Jesus helps us to cherish humane values and he urges us all–Democrats and Republicans, Independents and Greens, religious and nonreligious–to be united in fulfilling them. Jesus Goes to Washington celebrates the international Earth Charter, the most significant moral document of our generation. Given the urgency of world calamity, the charter implores us to muster every spiritual force at our disposal for immediate action. Being history's most influential moral authority, Jesus provides the needed impetus for achieving a just and sustainable global society.