Isaac Villegas

Isaac S. Villegas 7-20-2021
An illustration of children smiling and walking into open arms.

Illustration by Nick Blanchard

MOST OF THE friends I grew up with in church youth group don’t call themselves Christians anymore. They left church behind years ago. Yet here I am, still a very churchy Christian. Why have I stayed in the faith after all these years? Why do we keep doing this Christian thing?

We are tempted to convince ourselves that God will reward our faithfulness with blessings—either in this life or the next. This is a Christian logic as old as the Bible, a theology taken from the lips of Jesus himself: “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:4). Prosperity theology isn’t an aberration but a perennial Christian impulse, an urge within all of us as we try to justify to ourselves our faith.

This way of thinking about beliefs, according to Meister Eckhart, turns God into a cow. “People look upon God with the eyes with which they look upon a cow,” he preached in the 14th century. “To love God the way they love a cow, because it gives you milk and cheese. This is how people behave who want to love God because of external wealth or inner comfort ... they love their self-interest.”

This month’s stories from Mark’s gospel invite us into the disciples’ struggle to understand why they’ve chosen to follow Jesus. Discipleship, we’ll discover, is a constant exposure to the selfish motives for our faith as we stumble into God’s truth—that, as Eckhart preached, “God loves us without a why.” God loves us without a reason, without making calculations. God loves us because God loves us.

Mitchell Atencio 5-03-2021

Cover image courtesy of Dona Park

“Defund The Police? An Abolition Curriculum,” written by Melissa Florer-Bixler, Chantelle Todman, Ben Tapper, Kris Henderson, and Isaac Villegas, is a 10-week course on how churches can engage police abolition.

Rich Preheim 6-09-2016

The Rev. Isaac Villegas officiates at a wedding. Image via Dan Scheirer / RNS

A year ago, the Mennonite Church USA was one of many Christian groups struggling with dissension over the place of gays and lesbians in the church. Today, it’s not just struggling, but falling apart.

The divisions reached the highest level of leadership after a member of the denomination’s Executive Board resigned last month after officiating at the wedding of two lesbians, a violation of church rules.

Isaac S. Villegas 5-01-2012
Isaac Villegas, photo courtesy NC Council of Churches

Isaac Villegas, photo courtesy NC Council of Churches

Many people in our country say that their Christian faith is a significant force in their lives. I am one of those people. As I listen to my sisters and brothers in the church discuss immigration legislation, I wonder why our faith hasn’t lead us into a way of life that defuses this contentious debate. 

If, as Christians claims, the story of the Bible is important to us, then we shouldn’t be so worried about foreigners; we shouldn’t be so afraid of immigrants.