Wednesday, March 10. 2010
We recently posted a link to a homey discussion about how God speaks to us. But here's Gagdad Bob:
God's speech (happily) shatters all human containers for the same reason that a three dimensional sphere shatters a piece of paper.
Sunday, March 7. 2010
Anchoress. Is it God speaking, or is it just me? I often wonder about that.
We posted about the prodigal son a couple of weeks ago. We are finding Tim Keller's The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith so compelling and eye-opening that we want to re-recommend it, especially during Lent.
Image is Rembrandt's Prodigal Son
Saturday, February 27. 2010
If not, why not? Alpha USA. It is a wonderful thing. Do it, if you hear the call.
I did.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
We linked Mead's Sunday Jeremiad: Petty Prophets of the Blue Beast earlier today, but I feel it needs highlighting. He begins:
 There’s nothing like Lent for reflecting on the sins of other people; I thought I’d start at the top — with the bishops of my own church. As the Episcopal church along with the other mainline Protestant denominations diminishes, we don’t have to look far to see bishops and leaders who are largely failing in their core assignments: to tend to the health and promote the growth of the congregations in their area. Yet even as we have fewer and fewer effective and successful leaders, we have no shortage of political, ‘prophetic’ bishops. When they can, they meet with world leaders and jet off to exotic locales to bring peace and fight for justice. When they can’t do that, they sign statements of concern, issue reports and otherwise tug on the skirts of an indifferent public seeking attention for their political views.
In the mainline churches, which is what I know best, the political views leaders express are generally those of what could be called the ‘foundation left’ — emotionally grounded in concern for the poor and development, historically linked to the ‘new left’ mix of economic and social concerns as developed in the 1960’s, shaped by an atmosphere of privilege and entitlement that reflects the upper middle class background of the educated professionals who run these institutions. The social sins they deplore are those of the right: excessive focus on capitalism, too robust and unheeding a promotion of the American national and security interest abroad, insufficient care for the environment, failure to help the poor through government welfare programs, failure to support affirmative action, failure to celebrate and protect the unrestricted right of women to abort. I am of course speaking very generally here and there are lots of individual exceptions, but many of these folks are generally tolerant of theological differences and rigidly intolerant when it comes to political differences: they care nothing at all about doctrines like predestination but get very angry with people who disagree with them about issues like global warming or immigration reform. Theological heresy is a matter for courtesy and silence, but political heretics fill them with bile.
Read the whole thing.
Monday, February 22. 2010
"Jesus tells us that everything we had ever thought about how to approach God is wrong."
 After church yesterday, my Lenten study group listened to a DVD of Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, teach on the prodigal son. (We are using Keller's Prodigal God as our guide this Lent.)
Among other fascinating points, Keller observes that Jesus used the parable to depict two kinds of lost sons - the seemingly-"good" kind and the obviously-"bad" kind. The elder "good" son is crippled with the sins of spiritual pride and self-righteousness, and the younger is just an everyday rotten kid. However, Keller's main point in this regard is that neither son loved the father - they both focus on what they can get from the father (the inheritance in the elder's case, and a job in the prodigal's case) rather than on loving the father. They are lost because neither is in a loving relationship with the father.
Keller holds up a vision of a Christianity which consists of a transformative relationship of love and communion with Christ and God which is, as he puts it, "beyond morality and beyond religion." He invites us to be reborn in a loving relationship with the Father. The fruits of that - the "fruits of the Spirit" - may emerge after and be more than the "clanging cymbals" of empty, dutiful, or self-validating virtue.
I like this message because I have never directly associated Christianity as being centrally about doing "good" or being "good." Indeed, I sometimes think a good church sign might be "Sinners only, please." Good character and behavior are damn important in life and important to the people we are involved with, but not basic to Christianity. Being respectable, honest, dutiful, responsible, self-controlled, reliable people are primarily secular and/or psychological issues, despite Calvin.
In Christ's time, the Pharisees (represented by the elder brother) were scrupulous about doing the right thing but lost track of their relationship with God during their search for goodness and correctness. Christ gave them hell for their pursuit of rightousness and, famously and scandalously, chose to hang out with lepers, whores, tax-collectors and the like (the sinful younger brother who might, someday, have to recognize a need for redemption).
One of my comments in our group was in this vein:
"Seems to me that there are many rational, practical, mature caring adult, legal, narcissitic, relational, and emotional reasons to be a good and upright person in this world and to live a life of decency and honor, but getting on the Father's good side and getting the Father to do what we want is not one of them."
As one reviewer of Keller's book asks, "Which brother am I?" My private answer: "A bit of both and, I hope, a bit of loving son."
There's a trailer of Keller's DVD here.
Sunday, February 21. 2010
 Rend your heart, confront your flaws and weaknesses, pray for forgiveness, grace, and for the uplifting of the Holy Spirit's redemption. I love and need the terrible journey of Lent, and I always like the way Anchoress talks about it:
And so we begin, again, the forty days of finding our way back to the God who says, “even now, return to me with your whole heart . . . rend your hearts, not your garments and return to the Lord, your God.”
I have always appreciated that idea of “rending” the heart. Take your hands and tear it open, and expose yourself to God, willingly, needfully, humbly. Open wide the heart; let the poisons that have hardened it or fouled its workings drain out. Make room for God, who will replace our stony hearts with flesh, and renew our spirits.
Wednesday, February 17. 2010
Anchoress: Unbearably self-revealing.
May your Lent be as self-revealing (if painfully so) and confessional, and yet as grace-filled, as I suspect mine will be.
The Lord has already served me up a dose of tough love this year through true but unwelcome messages to my soul, and I know what I have to address.
Tuesday, February 16. 2010
A bit of a rant, Get Rid of the Holy Crap, From Mead. One quote:
...let me post a provocative thesis on the wall: If virtually the entire regional and national staff of every mainline denomination were to be called home to heaven overnight in a mainline version of the Rapture, leaving only the equivalent of Bishop Baker and his secretary in their place, I am sure that someone somewhere would notice a difference, but the effect on either the spiritual state of American Christians or the health and well being of local congregations throughout the United States would be hard to detect with the naked eye.
Sunday, January 31. 2010
Our friend Right Wing Prof, who died too young of cancer after this past Christmas, wrote this piece two years ago about his religion and worship and invited us to post it because he wasn't going to (I added the photo of the Good Friday cross in my church, taken before our Stations of the Cross worship):
 Psalm 130, called De Profundis, is chanted after Holy Thursday Mass while the altar is stripped bare:
"Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.
Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.
Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities."
I rarely write about my faith. It is, to me, an intensely personal realm of my life I am uncomfortable sharing. As Holy Week is upon us, however, it is time to break that silence.
We often hear that Christianity in the U.S. is at a crossroads, but I believe that we came to the junction 20-30 years ago, and some stayed the course, while others did not. I am no fan of ecuminism, at least as it usually exists, which requires that we turn off the road to Gethsemane so as to make others more comfortable, or welcome them into our fold without asking that they believe. I do pray for reconciliation, and I believe that the body of Christ on earth is wounded. I am a traditional, conservative Roman Catholic, but I am not a denominationalist. I do not see how criticizing others for their faith can be productive, either to my salvation, or to the Church.
As I said, I believe we have come to the crossroads and chosen whether to remain on the path or leave it. I refer not to Catholics and Protestants, but orthodox Christians -- which encompass Roman Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, some of the Protestant traditions, and the LDS -- and heterodox groups -- which encompass the Anglican Communion and most mainline Protestant traditions. Each took their own path, one toward Christ, and the other, away. I do not condemn the heterodox groups, but I also do not take them seriously, nor do I consider them Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. And it is not by my judgment that I do not consider them Christian, but their own disavowal of Christianity.
I see little point in mourning their departure. They did so of their own free will, knowing exactly what they were doing. I feel for the Christians like my sister-in-law who have always been affiliated with one of these groups (she's a lifelong Methodist) and have not found the courage or will to leave. But I ignore the bodies, their statements, and agendas.
I said above that I pray for reconciliation, but I do not hope for it within my lifetime. I am content to worship, and let other Christians worship as they will. We are all children of God, and Christ died for us all. I bear no ill will to evangelicals, even those who believe that I drink baby's blood at Mass every Sunday.
I have been seeing healing over the years. I have a colleague who is a conservative Southern Baptist. He and I were talking some ten years ago when he told me he was going to Ash Wednesday services at his church. I found this a bit jarring: Ash Wednesday services at a Southern Baptist church? I said so, tactfully, of course, and we had a long, productive discussion, first about how his church was reaching back into the past and rediscovering the liturgical year, then the importance of the liturgical year in a Christian life. Since then, I have seen quite a few similar instances of Protestants from what we usually think of as the far opposite side of the spectrum from Catholicism rediscovering and celebrating the ancient rites of the Church, often during Lent.
One can easily be a Sunday Catholic, just as one can easily be a Sunday Presbyterian, and do no more than attend Mass on Sundays. Many do, and often migrate to parishes that cater to their kind, with clergy and laity that expect little. Those of us who feel their faith more poignantly, and more frequently than just on Sunday mornings, migrate to less feminized, more masculine parishes, where priests and laity expect a great deal more than weekly attendance. We expect more from each other because being a practicing traditional Catholic is a difficult faith that requires the most of us, even though we usually fall short. We keep ancient fasts, even though the Church no longer requires it of us. We read and pray the monastic hours daily, even though we are not ascetes. We do everything to keep our faith in the foreground of our lives every day. We pray that we may be better Christians and find stronger faith. And we look upon our brothers and sisters, Christian and non-Christian, with charity.
We are human, and so, we do not achieve the goas we set for ourselves. But without striving toward those goals, we believe we can no longer call ourselves Christians.
Central to our lives as Christians is the liturgical year. We anticipate the birth of Christ during Advent, and celebrate that birth on Christmas. During Lent, we contemplate the central mystery of Christianity, that God sent his Son to die for us that we may be resurrected to eternal life as He was. And while Advent is a sacred time, to Catholics, Lent is the most sacred, solemn part of the year because of that central mystery.
We celebrate that mystery at every Mass, but Lent calls us to make that mystery the center of our contemplation. On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, we are reminded of our mortality, that we will die, as did Christ upon the cross. And Ash Wednesday leads to Holy Week, as our lives must lead to death and resurrection. During Lent, vestments are the purple of forgiveness and the passion, and the Alleluia is left out of the Mass.
Continue reading "A re-post: In anticipation of Lent and Holy Week: De Profundis, and How I Worship God"
Monday, January 4. 2010
My pastor quoted from Tim Keller's new book, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters in his New Year's sermon yesterday.
He called Keller a prophet. (He refers to anyone who speaks difficult, deep Truths as "speaking prophetically.") On the subject of even good things becoming false idols, he used these Keller quotes which I took from an Amazon review:
"The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them." Thus anything can be an idol and, really, everything has been an idol to one person or another. The great deception of idols is we are prone to think that idols are only bad things. But evil is far more subtle than this. "We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life."
If you happen to be in NYC on a Sunday, you could do worse than to visit his Redeemer Presbyterian Church. (It's a church, ie not a fine building but a congregation of God-seekers and worshippers.) They have five worship locations in Manhattan.
Pastor Keller usually preaches at their 6 pm service at Hunter College.
Sunday, December 27. 2009
A Dietrich Bonhoeffer prayer from an Advent sermon:
Lord Jesus, come Yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Take my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death, in Jesus' name.
Friday, December 25. 2009
From a post by Michael Novak:
Those of us who are of Catholic mind do not believe that the Enlightenment began with Kant (“What is Enlightenment?”), or Locke or Newton, or even with Descartes. We cherish Plato, Aristotle, Cicero. But the first Enlightenment began with Christ Our Lord.
It was only with the Christ that EQUALITY meant every human being, barring none. From then on, no one was “barbarian.” Each bore in his own soul the mark of being called to be a dwelling of the Father and the Son — being called beyond all other calls a son of God. Neither mother nor father, neither civil society nor state, can answer to this call for you or me. None has any deeper bond or precedence than the relation of Creator and human creature. It is a bond of Spirit and Truth.
Thus was revealed each human's LIBERTY primordial, and in that liberty, EQUALITY with all. No other but self can say to the the Father “No,” or “Yes.” That choice is for each single one of us inalienable. That choice brings each into the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all who are equal in the sight of God.
And that is how universal FRATERNITY became a human principle and an object of our striving.
Moreover, a singular feature of the coming of the Christ is that all have access to him — rich pagan kings riding from the East, Roman centurions (those who would put him to death, even they), Jew and Greek, and those of every nation, station, and state of virtue or of sin. From Bethlehem went out the message of the First Globalization — the global call to become one human family. But only by the narrow path of the free choice of each.
This was the First Enlightenment. There has been no deeper nor more all-embracing since.
Whole thing here at NRO
Saturday, December 12. 2009
Re-posted -
 This 2003 movie, which had the misfortune of being overshadowed by Gibson's The Passion and was never released in theaters, would make a good Christmas present.
Sticking tightly to the language and sequence of this very literary Gospel which was written 2 centuries after Christ's death, the 3-hour version captures all of the key moments of Christ's ministry, and is especially good at capturing the rabble-rousing, reckless and provocative style of his ministry and its inevitable culmination on the cross. It's easy to see why people wanted him out of the way - he was a big trouble-maker and no-one was insulated from his demands or his harsh judgements. Not a go-with-the-flow guy, and John depicts more the Jesus of Truth than the sweet Jesus of Love, yet love of God is the whole story.
The role of Pilate is small but fascinating, and made it clear that we are all Pilates. What would I have done? Probably what Pilate did. Captain Vere in Billy Budd. The story of Pilate is a Greek tragedy, and I feel sympathy for his fate. My only complaint about the film is that Jesus spends more time talking about his relationship with God than he does preaching the rest of his message that was to change the world. I am not a Bible student - but that focus is a reflection of John's Gospel, which was a message to gentiles - "He is in me and I am in Him" - obviously not a message designed to engage the Jews of the time: "Crucify him. Crucify him."
The Jews were not quite ready for a Messiah, nor is anyone, anywhere, any time. How are we to know whether a messiah is the real thing? Pilate is us, and the Jews are us. A holy dream in which we ourselves play every role, as we do in all dreams. Anyway, powerful and very moving stuff, and the narration by Plummer adds a lot.
Something special for those who want to hear and see.
Friday, December 11. 2009
 Readers know that, at Maggie's Farm, we delight in both the religious and the secular hedonistic aspects of Advent and Christmas.
The hedonistic, fun aspects of the season are residues of the Roman Saturnalia. The fathers of the church were clever to recycle popular pagan feast days by pinning Christian feast days on top of them (eg Easter, Christmas).
Our Puritan New England ancestors hated Christmas and banned its celebration for many years.
The best Advent sermon I ever heard was preached by a lady pastor. She used the metaphor of pregnancy - "expecting" - for the possibility of Christ's spirit growing in our hearts and the expectation of that miracle.
On the topic of birth and re-birth, I still feel that A Christmas Carol combines the religious joy and the secular pleasures of Christmas better than anything else. Scrooge becomes a re-born Christian and experiences all of the joys of it.
Of course Dickens' short novel is worth reading, but the only version worth watching is the 1951 Alastair Sim version.
If it doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you are probably subhuman.
Although almost all use quotations from the Bible to buttress modern day arguments, relatively few have ever read it. Actually, I should say any of them. For there’s the Jewish Bible, the Catholic Bible, and various Protestant Bibles, and among these are various translations, inclusions and exclusions.
One of the narratives, that of the Maccabees, is not included in the Jewish Bible. There’s several reasons offered: The two Books of Maccabees are in the Alexandrian Greek version, and only those Books in the original Hebrew are included. (Other Books of similar non-Hebrew language or not accepted as divine scripture, like Judith, are as well in the Apocrypha, some in some denominations’ Bibles.) The reign of the Maccabees’ heirs were not of the sacred line of David and, therefore, unworthy to be treated as kings. Their rule was tarnished by corrupt practices, and contributed toward the internal divisiveness and, then, destruction by the Romans of the Jewish homeland, the wholesale massacres of Jews there and diaspora to alien lands for the remainder. Then, there’s the rationale that for a people in exile, subject to survival under and adaptations to inhospitable or suspicious foreign ways, it was not good politics to exalt recent Jews as warriors in the codification of the Jewish Bible.
Today, with the increased ability of Jews to practice openly and participate constructively in Western societies, and with pride in having a homeland to secure safety for all Jews who would return there, the relatively minor holiday of Chanukah is celebrated widely. Providing a celebration for Jewish children at the time of year that others celebrate Christmas has made of Chanukah a major holiday. lt also fits with the recovery of a homeland of refuge in Israel, and is a celebration in which many Christians can choose to share. (Senator Hatch wrote this song for Chanukah, for example. I met him in 1996, and he does always wear a Star of David or a small Mezzuzah around his neck.)
Still, if Chanukah is degraded to just blue-and-white lights in place of red-and-yellow, or icicles, Chanukah is made meaningless.
One must remember there are two Books of Maccabee. The first Book deals with the profanation and oppression – in which many Jews went along to survive -- leading to the brave fight by a few for religious freedom that overwhelmed seemingly undefeatable might.
(There’s also the side-story of Hannah and her seven sons, who endured the most severe tortures practiced in those times, the descriptions of which would even sicken a surrealist, rather than renounce their faith.)
The second Book deals with the resanctification of the Holy Temple. The custom of the eight day miracle of lights grew from this resanctification, even though there’s weak evidence to substantiate it happening that way.
I’ll leave the canonical and scholarly debates here for others, in order to draw a lesson. Chanukah and the Maccabees fits within the Jewish Bible’s narrative, whether formally or by custom. And, more attention deserves to be given the first Book, to understand the second. Fight, or surrender to comforts and fears and, thus, perish.
The Jewish Bible is a series of opportunities for living the guidance provided by G-d through experience and direction, often failing to do so in successive generations and paying terrible prices to relearn and return to basic truths. In this sense, Jews are fated to be a small self-selecting people, those who adhere to these basic truths, while by basic frail human nature others fall and fail by the wayside, merging into ostensibly safer masses.
The modern state of Israel struggles with these choices, and so far has risen – beyond any’s expectations -- by rejecting the sophistry of self-serving internal weaklings, defectors, and collaborators paid off by Israel’s enemies, and by evading false friends in high-places within other governments, who all recommend paths that are well-known to lead to defeatism and doom.
So, depending on the transliteration, to all a Happy Chanukah, or Hannukah. These young people in a flash mob on Ben Yehuda Street are the spirit that bring pride to fighting to endure in basic truth, for the benefit of all. There are onlookers and there are participants. Without modern Maccabees, participants in fighting for life, all would be enslaved.
Wednesday, December 9. 2009
The Annunciation. Fra Angelico, c. 1430
Matthew 1:18-25
"Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way: When, as His mother, Mary, was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately. But while he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS; for He shall save His people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born son; and he called His name JESUS."
I wonder how many practicing Christians accept the biological accuracy (rather than the mystical meaning) of the virgin birth.
(The Roman Catholic dogma of Immaculate Conception - an RC dogma as of 1854 - is a separate topic.)
The Isaiah prophecy was that an "alma" or "almah" (Hebrew) will bear a son, and shall call him Immanuel. What's an "alma"?
It sounds like a word that we might translate as a "maiden" or a "maid," because Hebrew has a word for a virgin - "betula." Some view our current take on Isaiah's prophecy as a simple translation error - or even as a deliberate error on the part of translators.
Interestingly,
When the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was issued in 1952, the words "young woman," not the word "Virgin, were used for alma in its translation of Isaiah 7:14. This upset the Fundamentalist Christian community, which maintains that alma in Isaiah refers to the mother of Jesus, who conceived miraculously, without cohabitation with a man. These Fundamentalists expressed their vehement opposition to the new translation by holding burnings of the Revised Edition of the Bible.
Is it a tempest in a teapot? Is it of deepest significance? If interested, one can Google these topics and read about them endlessly. As an ignorant, relatively unschooled, ordinary Christian, I am not sure that the subject of the virgin birth is all that important but, seeing as it is part of the Apostle's Creed and that there is much mystery and miraculous in Christianity, I guess wiser, deeper people than I am have decided that it is. (To me, all of creation and existence itself is a miracle, and I remind myself daily to remember that.)
The Apostle's Creed goes something like this, with some minor variation:
- 1. I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
- 2. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
- 3. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
- 4. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
- 5. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again.
- 6. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
- 7. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
- 8. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
- 9. the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,
- 10. the forgiveness of sins,
- 11. the resurrection of the body,
- 12. and life everlasting.
- Amen.
Tuesday, December 1. 2009
 A daily online advent devotional guide.
I am going to have them send me a daily reminder.
Thursday, November 26. 2009
Saturday, November 21. 2009
You can have these sent to you daily via email. Here's today's:
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
Hebrews 13:5 (New International Version)
This is the season for gratitude.
Friday, November 20. 2009
I always celebrate my birthday on Thanksgiving. Selfishly, at least I’m guaranteed a turkey and good bottle of Beaujolais. When fortunate, I’m able to share it with family and friends, which is the ultimate of what Thanksgiving is: time to give thanks for others sharing theirs and our ability to share our bounty in America.
Aside from the 4th of July, there is no other holiday in America that is in every respect for all Americans. Indeed, I’ve been with recent immigrants from many countries who eagerly look forward to joining in our Thanksgiving rituals and meals, because it is for them an important rite of passage to becoming Americans and showing their feelings of gratitude for being here in our land of opportunities.
Thanksgiving, also, says much about the American character, that we early on officially enshrined a national holiday for giving thanks.
In 1789, George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation with these words: “Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….” (Read the whole proclamation.)
As you make your plans for Thanksgiving, this early post is to remind you of why we celebrate and dedicate ourselves, in gratitude for all we’re given, achieve, and share, thanks to G-d and each other in America.
Sunday, November 1. 2009
You are not alone. So have I, many times. But less frequently, as time goes by.
Sunday, October 18. 2009
From scholar Richard Rubenstein's The Religion of Sacrifice and Abraham, Isaac and Jesus:
Judaism never entirely rejected the idea that God demands the sacrifice of the first-born son. However we evaluate the existence of child sacrifice in ancient Judah, Israel, Canaan, and the colonies of Canaan-Phoenicia, it is evident that we are dealing with a God who demands the death of children. In reflecting on the issue of child sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, Levenson comments, “…the mythic-ritual complex that I have been calling ‘child sacrifice’ was never eradicated; it was only transformed."
A prime example of that transformation is the pidyon ha-ben ritual in fulfillment of the commandment already noted: “You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.” (Exodus 34:20) In this ceremony, the father presents his first-born son to a cohen or hereditary priest on the thirtieth day after his birth whereupon the priest asks the father, "Which do you prefer, your son or your money?" The father declares that he prefers his son and presents the cohen with five silver dollars, the symbolic equivalent of five biblical shekels, in order to "redeem" his son. The priest accepts the coins with the ritual formula, "This (the coins) in place of that (the child). This in exchange for that."
 Read the whole thing. We Christians often refer to Christ as "the lamb of God;" "Lamb" because a "spotless lamb" was one of the ritual Jewish sacrifices of the time, used as a symbolic substitute for human sacrifice like Abraham's ram in the thicket.
Christians view the sacrifice of Christ - God's "son" - as the final and essential sacrifice needed to redeem a fallen mankind. Thus the ancient themes of blood and human sacrifice endure and give deadly serious substance to our worship today.
My August photo of the stone urns in Carthage which contained the ashes of firstborns sacrificed to Baal:
Monday, October 12. 2009
From David Virtue's "England, Oh England, How Often Would I have gathered You...":
Britain is spiritually famished. It is starved from hearing the Word of God. Churches that focus on music and Eucharist are not drawing the crowds. People want to hear something that will change their lives. They want to hear about God, who He is, and what He is doing. They do not want sermons on the environment or Labor's policies for senior citizens. The average pulpit is bereft from hearing the Word of God.
Enter ALPHA. If it wasn't for ALPHA, one wonders if the Church of England would have any relevance at all. The other truth is that if the Church of England would do its job properly, there would be no need for ALPHA.
The very fact that ALPHA exists bespeaks the failure of the church to communicate the simple verities of the gospel to ordinary people. And it took an attorney turned priest to do it. The biggest growth in cities like London is precisely because of ALPHA's outreach into the urban jungle. ALPHA has been so successful they have taken over dying churches and filled them with new converts, much to the chagrin of laissez faire vicars who believe their benefice should not be beholden to these "happy clappy evangelicals."
Here's the link to Alpha USA.
Sunday, October 11. 2009
Hebrews 12: 1-3
1Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
Monday, October 5. 2009
"Please understand. God's goal is not to make you happy. His goal is to make you His."
I do not know who said that.
Friday, September 18. 2009
Be a light unto the world
The ten day period from Rosh Hashanah, beginning tonight, through Yom Kippur is often called the Ten Days Of Repentance or Penitence or Atonement, but the term High Holidays emphasizes the personal, inward looking nature of this time, our highest obligation being self-responsibility for our thoughts and deeds. The repeated blowing of the Shofar symbolizes the sounds from Mount Sinai in the 40-days until receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites trembling in awe, hence another name for the holidays Days Of Awe.
Central to the High Holidays is Teshuvah, or return. Sincere, complete Teshuvah allows us to begin anew, our sins forgiven, and to be our mission as the light unto others. Teshuvah, according to Maimonides, requires four steps:
1. Leaving the Sin
Leaving the sin consists of stopping the commission of the sinful act. One cannot do Teshuvah if one continues to do the sin, even if he or she were to perform the next three steps perfectly.
2. Regret
Regret consists in sincerely regretting one's wrong action. One must be genuinely ashamed and embarrassed over one's sins.
3. Confession Before G-d
Acceptance for the future consists of resolving in one's heart never to commit the sin ever again.
4. Acceptance for the Future
Confession before G-d consists of an oral confession spoken out loud, in which one formulates in words the commitments and attitudes one has reached in his or her heart. One should say, "I have sinned, I have done such and such; I deeply regret my actions, and I declare before G-d, Who knows my innermost thoughts, that I will never do this sin again."
But...
1. The above steps only work for sins committed against G-d; for sins committed against other people, one must first ask forgiveness from that person before G-d will accept the Teshuvah.
This is the source of the practice by many Jews to contact all of their family, friends and co-workers during this period to ask for forgiveness for anything we may have done to upset them during the past year(s).
2. These four steps are of course only valid if we do Teshuvah AFTER THE FACT. One cannot say in advance - "I can do this sin, then do Teshuvah and He will forgive me..." It simply doesn't work that way as it may in other belief systems
On the other hand...
One should keep in mind that Teshuvah is an ongoing process that cannot be accomplished overnight. No matter how many times a person may stumble in the Teshuvah process, that person has to simply pick him or herself up and keep trying to stay on the right path.
What G-d is really looking for is the sincerity of the effort that a person puts into their Teshuvah!
Near the conclusion of Yom Kippur we fervently implore G-d to have heard our sincerity, in the prayer Neilah, that ends with “Thou desirest the repentance of the wicked and not their death, as it is written: ‘Have I any desire, says the Lord, for the death of the wicked man? Would I not rather that he should mend his ways and live?’"
This Roman rite prayer book, printed by Joshua Solomon Soncino in 1486, is one of the earliest published. Volume 2, containing the prayer for the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), is open to a penitential prayer in the fifth and final service of the Day of Atonement, Ne'ilah (the closing of the gates). It begins: "Thou stretcheth forth thy hand to the sinner, and thy right hand is open to receive the repentant." It is the only prayer printed in large type throughout. Could this have been done with Marronos in mind, those who had been forcibly converted but retained loyalty to the ancestral faith?
Mahzor Minhag Roma (A Prayer Book of the Roman Rite), Casalmaggiore, 1486. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress
If you think Teshuvah is an easy task, just consider the sins listed in the oft-repeated prayer Al Chet, as we traditionally pound our chest.
We greet each other at the start of the High Holidays with L'shanah tovah tikatev v'taihatem (or to women, L'shanah tovah tikatevi v'taihatemi), which means "May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year." The “inscribed” refers to the Book Of Life, the judgments of G-d being sealed upon each at the close of Yom Kippur. Go back and review the sins list again, and again, and Return to the righteous path G-d desires of us and we of each other.
Tuesday, September 8. 2009
"Please understand. God's goal is not to make you happy. His goal is to make you His."
Max Lucado
Sunday, September 6. 2009
 Here they are. (h/t, Smart Christian) Examples:
Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration.
Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general.
Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.
Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
Resolved, Never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
Resolved, To be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.
Resolved, To maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.
Do we find Edwards' life fascinating? Yes, as we have noted previously. We view him as the link between the Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers.
Besides writing and thinking and preaching and raising ten kids, Edwards loved to take a boat down from MA to NYC for lobsters, oysters, and good conversation with the Presbyterians. Probably also to get a break from all of the kids.
Except for a brief stint in a Presbyterian church in NYC after graduating from college, Edwards spent most of his life in western MA, which in the 1730s and 40s was frontier. He was fired as Pastor of Northampton (actually, voted out by the town government, which hired and paid the pastors in those days) because they felt he was overly harsh about morality. So he moved west to become the pastor of the Indian mission town of Stockbridge.
He ended his career with a brief Presidency of The College of New Jersey (now Princeton), where he died after a smallpox inoculation at age 54. A Yale grad who had excelled in the sciences, Edwards followed fellow Yale grad Aaron Burr Sr, of Fairfield, CT, in that job.
A re-post from 2007 -
 Paul Davis, author of Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life, has an opinion piece in the NYT: Taking Science on Faith. It begins:
Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?
Read the whole thing. Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex in a piece titled The Faith of Scientists expands on the topic, referring to the ideas of philosopher V.W.O. Quine. A quote:
When Quine came up with his holistic version of knowledge, he also demonstrated that our most necessary scientific principles are actually the least provable. For example, most scientists, when asked what constitutes the starting principles of reality, will probably say something about one of nature's fundamental laws, like gravity or the theory of natural selection. But these are precisely the same things that we will never see directly. (As Gertrude Stein once wrote, "The laws of science are paper laws, they make believe that they do something.")
Read this whole thing too. The notion that the laws of nature have no existence seems obvious, but it turned on a lightbulb for me. The point, as I see it, is not to discredit the scientific method or scientific theorizing, or to glibly equate science with religion: the point is that we must have humility about the depth of our knowledge.
Photo: Starburst Galaxy NCG 3310 "blazing with star formation", from the Hubble site.
A re-post from our archives -
 The Bird Dog family enjoys providing coffee hour at church. It's a gratifying ministry because it promotes fellowship. The more goodies you provide, the more fellowship you nurture, and the longer folks stick around and get to know eachother.
If a church is a manifestation of the living body of Christ, you can't have loose body parts all over the place: a congregation needs to congregate, in small groups and in large. Other churches in the area have copied our tradition of providing more than coffee and a pitiful bowl of goldfish crackers. We do brunch, essentially. Here is what we brought today:
Bagels and cream cheese; red and white grapes; plain pound cake, sesame pound cake, walnut pound cake; Vermont cheddar, brie, and Roquefort cheese and crackers; blanched carrots, broccoli, sugar snap peas and string beans with blue cheese dip; strawberries with sugar to dip them into (no matter how many you bring, they will disappear fast - the kids go for them like piranhas); cheese "Danish" pastries, tortilla chips with that excellent Costco salsa and Costco guacamole; corn muffins, chocolate chip muffins and blueberry muffins; croissants. Coffee, cider, and orange juice. I forgot to bring the sliced red peppers for the vegetable dip, and forgot the strawberry jam for the corn muffins.
I was surprised by how the blue cheese disappeared first today, and I brought a huge hunk. We don't bring doughnuts anymore because the little kids stuff themselves with them and the fussy parents don't seem thrilled with that. Next time, I think we'll bring a spiral-cut ham with honey mustard, and slice up a mountain of baguettes. This would be good with a ton of sliced melons. (Too bad we don't do wine and beer too - people would never go home.)
Friday, August 21. 2009
I take the view that the core tenets of all religions are essentially the same and should guide each individual, and as applicable to what should be governments’ very limited role in our personal lives should guide the role of governments.
The Seven Noahide Laws are found in the same Testament basic to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and are similar to tenets found in Eastern religions:
1. Belief in G-d
2. Respect for and praise of G-d
3. Respect for human life
4. Respect for the family
5. Respect for others’ rights and property
6. Creation of a judicial system
7. Respect for all creatures
To quote my religious guide to the importance of these basics:
Without these laws as a bedrock of government, a society will either have despotism, where individuals’ lives are compromised and possibly abused, or anarchy, where every person pursues his or her own needs without regard for the law.
There are varying views of the relationship of politics and religion. At one extreme, government forbids or represses or dictates the activities of one, a few or all religions. The ideology of the state, and avoidance of any challenges to its sole power, is paramount. We have too many real examples of this. At the other extreme, the dictates of a religion, or of a segment of a religion, dictates or is allowed to substitute for the usual role of government. Islamic Sharia courts and laws are one widespread example. Another is in Israel where the traditional Orthodox maternal lineage to be Jewish, and a traditional Orthodox conversion to be Jewish, is government policy. Although those following more relaxed standards are not persecuted or otherwise, they are still at a disadvantage in some important respects.
At both extremes, sometimes or often the reasonable differences or even the essential rights of individuals may be injured.
In the United States, we more than other nations have taken great care to walk the fine line. Still, in the past few decades, this fine line has been challenged by tensions expressed in two major issues, abortion and marriage, and now we can add health care.
When government requires that taxpayer funds pay for abortion or that private health insurance pay for abortion, and even moreso when government requires that medical practitioners perform abortions regardless of individuals’ conscience or religious scruples, government has crossed the line.
When government requires that the legal privileges and obligations of voluntary union between two consenting adults only be between a man and a woman, government has crossed the line. Civil unions are the role of the state. Sanctification as marriage is the role of religions.
Government has an accepted and important role to play in the protection and furtherance of public health, most particularly as regards pandemics but also in promoting better and more widespread health care. Experience in the United States, and elsewhere, demonstrates this is most accomplished when there is the freer choice and competition in the private sector, to the maximum degree possible, that best serves adaptivity, innovation and individual circumstances.
In the current health care debates, the overwhelming majority of Americans reject that government should take over control of health care. Unfortunately, primarily due to the strong arm tactics and language of its advocates both polarizing and enlarging opposition, we may for now also lose the opportunity to make some far smaller but important incremental improvements.
President Obama has now crossed another important line. His phone calls to garner support from religious leaders of several faiths who lean toward liberal political views is not objectionable in itself. (Neither is it objectionable for religious leaders to have political views, but they should refrain from imposing them on their flock or ignoring the contending justifiable moral, practical and factual considerations.) What is objectionable, far over the line, is that President Obama requested they preach from their pulpits support for his political position.
This is an important issue. It is a completely inappropriate and precedent-breaking overt effort by President Obama to use our religious leaders as his mouthpiece/propaganda "tools." If our religious leaders do, they are "fools." If we tolerate this, we are being badly used, such congregations’ majority political leanings toward liberal indeed being abused, for manipulation by President Obama. Then, are such congregations a religion or a political party? If the latter, it indicates one of the reasons why so many depart from organized religions in the US. Individuals in congregations, and those in leadership positions in congregations and our community, should speak out strongly to our religious leaders how truly inappropriate this is, as well as dangerous, to our communities of faith, to be a propaganda arm of any Washington administration, political party, or policy. President Obama's steering of sermons is far beyond anything that's ever been tried before, and should be recognized for what it is, blatant and disrespectful. At least, do our religious leaders have any self-respect or respect for us in their congregations? If not, they have forfeited respect, and should forfeit their pulpits.
Friday, August 14. 2009
A post of the above title, by Auster. Good fun about the cosmos, first causes, the vertical dimension of existence, etc.
I never had any problem hypothesizing a Big Mysterious Something, but many times I have had problems with the idea of a personal God who would be interested in me, much less love me. Still, I know that that is intellectualizing, and that God does not reach out to us mainly on an intellectual plane.
He talks to us everywhere, inside and outside. I just need to listen more. BD taught me that.
As Sippican might say, "There is no Second Congregational Church." No, there isn't. Not yet, anyway.
I had the pleasure of shaking hands with the Rev. Norman Koop on the steps of the First Congregational Church of Woodstock, on Sunday morning. I had heard many good things about him and his congregation (including the Dartmouth folks who cross the river to attend), and had listened to some of his sermons online.
You can listen to his some of his preaching at Sermon Audio.
Here is the church's Statement of Faith. Yes, it is what I call a "strong dose" church in what polls say is the least religious state in the USA.
I have no time for weak dose churches. I like that old-time religion: The living Jesus and the living Word: straight up, no ice. As a sinner, Christ is what I need.
Glad to have met ya, Reverend.
Tuesday, August 11. 2009
It would be nice to simply wake up one day and suddenly be a mature Christian, but in order to grow up in God, we will have to go through trials. There is no other way to grow strong spiritually than to go through trials.
1 Peter 5:10 says, And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. You may not like trials, but this verse says that when you are going through trials after you have suffered a little while, you will grow to be firmly rooted and grounded (strong, firm and steadfast) in God.
Similarly, James 1:12 says, Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. Here again, you don't get the rewards (the crown of life) until you have persevered under trial and stood the test.
So, learn to be thankful in your trials, because in order to get your breakthrough, you need a trial to break through.
Therefore, don't be discouraged during times of suffering. Know that after you have suffered a little while, God himself will make you strong, firm, and steadfast.
Friday, August 7. 2009
From the review of physicist John Polkinghorne's new book at First Things:
As he notes in the preface, for fifty years such contextual theologies as feminist theology, liberation theology, or African theology, have been flourishing. Polkinghorne takes the novel step of treating science and religion as an important type of contextual theology in its own right, recognizing that science, no less than other aspects of modern thought and culture, can suggest insights and provide information that are vital for theological reflection. “Theology conducted in the context of science must be prepared to be candid about the evidence for its beliefs,” he says forthrightly, but science does not dominate the conversation: There are clear limits to its authority and competence that both believers and unbelievers need to realize.
The overall message Polkinghorne brings is a crucial one: Science cannot provide its own metaphysical interpretation. As he says with typical precision, “Physics constrains metaphysics, but it no more determines it than the foundations of a house determine the precise form of the building erected on them.”
Sunday, August 2. 2009
Quoted by our Pastor this morning, from a letter from a Christian martyr in Zimbabwe, quoted in Brennan Manning's (1996) The Signature of Jesus:
I'm part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit's power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made - I'm a disciple of his. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, sight walking, smooth knees and colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.
I no longer need preeminance, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean in his presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and I labor with power.
My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven, my road is narrow, my way rough, my companions are few, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the enemy, pander at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
I won't give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go til he comes, give til I drop, preach til all know, and work til he stops me.
Friday, July 10. 2009
 It's John Calvin's 500th Birthday today (1509-1564). He was indeed one of the shapers of the Western world.
Marvin Olasky offers Three Cheers for John Calvin.
Here's a Calvin quote via Marginal Rev:
Whatever be the kind of tribulation with which we are afflicted, we should always consider the end of it to be, that we may be trained to despise the present, and thereby stimulated to aspire to the future life. For since God well knows how strongly we are inclined by nature to a slavish love of this world, in order to prevent us from clinging too strongly to it, he employs the fittest reason for calling us back, and shaking off our lethargy.
Thursday, July 9. 2009
268 years ago, as of yesterday, Jonathan Edwards preached his most famous sermon in Enfield, CT.
At that time, our readers know, CT was a Congregationalist theocracy, in effect, and the Yale-educated (especially in the sciences) Edwards was a well-known but back-woods preacher.
Scriptorium takes a look at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
The prissy-mouthed portrait of Edwards does not capture what a fun-loving guy he really was (not kidding).
Wednesday, July 8. 2009
 It's the Codex Sinaiticus, a 1600 year-old Greek Bible.
The British Museum curator notes that it does raise some theological questions in its differences from modern versions.
The hand of God moves in mysterious ways, and, sometimes, we humans are His deeply flawed and inadequate agents - or wish to be.
Sunday, July 5. 2009
From a review of the book God is Back in The Washington Monthly:
Where once it was widely assumed that modernity and its handmaiden "secularization" would kill off religion, the reports of God’s death turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. Indeed, Micklethwait and Wooldridge assure us, "the very things that were supposed to destroy religion—democracy and markets, technology and reason—are apparently combining to make it stronger." Europe was wrong, and America right. Irreligion in Europe is the anomaly, and the "hot religion" (namely Evangelical Protestantism) of the United States is the future. "American-style religion" is very much here to stay, and on the whole that is a good thing—especially for business.
Back? I never knew He left. Maybe He was just vacationing in my neighborhood, where we ignorant bumpkins cling to God and our guns instead of investing our limited capacities for faith in the arrogant, incompetent bozos in government - most of whom, today, could never do much of anything in real life (except for Sarah Palin, who knows how to make a living fishing, and Mitt, who understands finance).
But is God good for business? I thought God was all about God's kingdom - the invisible kingdom, and not man's. Read the whole piece.
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
From Dr. Bob's The Temperature of Hell (no, it's not about "climate change"):
In our therapeutic culture, where all is tolerated but the good, the assertion that there are consequences for our behavior, either temporal, or especially eternal, is a truly noxious notion. The idea of Hell is perceived as an anachronistic anathema, promoted cynically by clergy controlling the poor, ignorant fools who follow them. Even those with a nominal belief in a deity will attest, with a pretense more wishful than wise, that a God of love would never condemn those who reject Him to Hell. In some sense–surely not that which the proponents of such pop theology intend–this may well be true. It will be, for those who enter that dark, hopeless, and agonizing eternity, not something dictated from on high by a vengeful God gleeful at our torture. It will be our own choice, fully, to reject the mercy and grace which has been offered to us without cost by Him who gave everything to draw us toward an eternal relationship, filled with unspeakable joy and peace, with Him.
Saturday, June 6. 2009
Another quote from the John Rawls book review we linked this week:
What makes belief in inviolable or natural rights reasonable? It is not enough to argue that each individual possesses an inalienable inviolability because all are, as Rawls holds in both A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, free and equal persons. Or that our inalienable inviolability flows from our moral capacity to form and act on rational life plans. Neither our natural freedom and equality nor our capacity to form, choose, and act on rational life plans rules out that conquest and dominion over others represents the best use of our freedom.
When all is said and done, the mature Rawls’s epic intellectual labors do not illuminate this fundamental perplexity. Indeed, those labors obscure the perplexity, even as the difficulties are diminished — though they are far from overcome — by the young Rawls’s theological doctrine. Inasmuch as it conceives of man as in but not entirely of the natural world, and possessing a spiritual dimension or soul for which he is not responsible but which is of ultimate worth and allows him to transcend determination by nature, the young Rawls’s doctrine fortifies a liberalism whose guiding thought is that of an inalienable inviolability possessed by all individuals.
Such considerations provide more than ample reason for scholars to vigorously open or reopen the question of Rawlsian liberalism’s — and the larger liberal tradition’s — religious roots.
Thursday, June 4. 2009
I've gotten around a bit.
I've rubbed shoulders with all sorts of kooks. True believers of the believingest kind, without much truth discernible in the final recipe. Holy rollers; snakehandlers. A few animists. Dopers, Buddhists, straight-up Leninists soldiering on long after Lenin lost interest. Knights of Columbus. People that wouldn't eat meat on Friday all the way to Sikhs that would stab you with their little dagger if you lit a cigarette next to them. People that speak Klingon.
But in all my travels I've never encountered a bigger bunch of intellectual anti-matter apocalyptic paranoid delusional wharrgarbll cult nonsense than this item from ABC News. Think about that. If David Koresh and Ted Kaczinski got married and started sharing notes, they couldn't come up with a less reasonable worldview than one of the three major networks serving as a news outlet to the american continent. ABC must be hiring interns from The Onion, because this is listed under Science and Technology:
It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within the next century, life as we know it could come to an end. Our civilization could crumble, leaving only traces of modern human existence behind. It seems outlandish, extreme -- even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, it is a very real possibility. And unless we make drastic changes now, it could very well happen. Experts have a stark warning: that unless we change course, the "perfect storm" of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change has the potential to converge in the next century with catastrophic results.
Well, they got it partially correct. I indeed "would rather not face" these "ideas," in the same way I don't want to face the ideas being yelled at passing cars by men who sleep on park benches and wet themselves regularly.
So people with misspelled signs, unkempt beards, and who wash themselves in the bubbler in the public park are my go-to guys for such apocalyptica. Who are the "experts" that ABC News goes to for their volcano-maiden advice?
Continue reading "Got Apocalypse?"
Wednesday, June 3. 2009
From a fine review of a new book about God and Lou John Rawls:
 Persons flourish in community. A community is not an “aggregate of individuals,” but rather the special form of association through which individuals, in and through relations to others and to God, become persons. In becoming a person one recognizes that other human beings are, like oneself, created in God’s image. “The Imago Dei,” Rawls declares, is “that which in man makes him capable of entering into community by virtue of likeness to God, who is in Himself community, being the Triune God.”
Faith, sin, and grace, Rawls maintains, revolve around personality and community. Faith is “the inner state of a person who is properly integrated and related to community.” Sin is the destruction and repudiation of community. It receives expression in egotism, or pride, self-love, and vanity; egoism, or exclusive attention to the satisfaction of natural desire; and despair, or the nihilistic escape from the world. Grace is “the activity on God’s part which seeks to restore the person to community.” It overcomes sin and accomplishes conversion. Since ethics is bound up with community and personality, and community and personality are bound up with God, “there can be no separation between religion and ethics.”
Photo of John Rawls
Sunday, May 31. 2009
Another Taize chant: Veni Sancte Spiritus. I love this one.
Anchoress reminds us that
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit are Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel (Right Judgment), Fortitude (Courage), Knowledge, Piety (Reverence) and Fear of the Lord (Awe of God).
Good gifts indeed. Who does not hunger for these?
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