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2005-10-24T17:39:00.000-04:00

2005-10-24T13:47:00.000-04:00

"...I like the fact that most of the people don’t know me and I don’t know them. I can come to church, enjoy the singing and sermon, and leave, not worrying about anything or anyone. Your way of meeting seems too serious and far too personal for me." (>>)

2005-10-20T21:16:00.000-04:00

"In this application of a homily on wisdom and the Spirit, Paul acts in a way very typical of himself. He attacks a problem by going deeper. He sees the real issue not just in a moral weakness, a refusal to be harmonious and loving as a community. He sees the real issue in a blatant contradiction in the life of the Corinthians. The homily in effect speaks of the essential role of the Spirit in the life of all believers. The homily groups people simply into two groups, those who have recieved the Spirit and those who have not, those who are being saved and those being damned, those for whom the crucifixion of Jesus is God's wisdom and power and those for whom it is a stumbling block. After having made this point in the homily, Paul then turns to the Corinthian Church and says in effect that he cannot speak to them as people endowed with the Spirit (3:1-4). Their jealousies, quarrels, and partisan spirit is in such contradiction to the work of God's spirit, that he must address them as sarkikoi, a word only difficultly translated 'hell bent on the flesh.' Despite the charismatic gifts that the Corinthians feel so proud about, their community behavior puts them dangerously close to 'those perishing,' those for whom the crucifixion of Christ is meaningless." (>>)

carly

2005-10-19T19:21:00.000-04:00

I don't think heaven will be so much clouds and harps, but rather the fullness of the things we feel deepest but only get shadows of in this life, like art and music and love.

2005-10-11T10:42:00.000-04:00

"The point is that no matter how twisted things get, no matter how unfair, no matter how brutal, no matter how tragic, Jesus has walked the path and walks it with us still... The only answer I have is that we are not alone, that God has embraced and entered into human suffering and pain." (>>) [MP3]

2005-10-10T18:45:00.000-04:00

"I'm still unclear as to what I'm supposed to be doing in order to be a better disciple of Christ. I know that I'm supposed to obey the direct teachings of Christ; that I'm supposed to take care of the marginalized and the poor... But I don't know what to do with the Bible. I don't know how to apply scripture to my life; I don't know how to become more a person of prayer; I don't know how to engage myself in the ancient spiritual disciplines that have that have nourished people for hundreds and even thousands of years. I don't know how to do that, it hasn't been translated yet." (>>) [MP3]

2005-10-07T09:03:00.000-04:00

"I want someone to pluck me off the side of the road and love me with total abandon. I’m not talking about God here, not something ephemeral, but a woman, a flesh and blood woman. A woman who’ll cast out my self doubt and drive it into the lake to be drowned. A woman who thinks I’m worth everything." (>>)

2005-10-06T18:28:00.000-04:00

"Now every woman and every man
They want to take a righteous stand
Find the love that God wills
And the faith that He commands.
I've got my finger on the trigger
And tonight faith just ain't enough
When I look inside my heart
There's just devils and dust.

But I've got God on my side..." (>>)

2005-10-03T16:55:00.000-04:00

"In my life, I feel like I've always been about 10 years behind in terms of figuring things out." (>>)

2005-10-03T16:48:00.000-04:00

"I have not grown personally in terms of faith with the kind of consumer-oriented Christianity that is prevalent in America. That has never helped me; it's only stunted my growth. What I mean by that is the self-help, formulaic kind of stuff; the moralist/political angles on our faith tradition. None of that helped me. I didn't grow. And really what happened was there was a switch that turned where I got interested in the more relational dynamic of faith, the whole notion of God fathering us rather than focusing on the rules or whatever." (>>)

2005-10-01T11:21:00.000-04:00

"If we ended up building another television out of [the Internet]... what a shame. We would have spent twenty years with a possibility of having done something great and having lost it. So I'm spending my time, my fortune ... on trying to make sure that we have a future that we actually want to live in, something that we're actually proud of at the end of the day. Having said, 'Yeah, we built something as good as books. We took the Library of Alexandria idea, of having all information available and not only made it available in Alexandria, Egypt ... but took the Library of Alexandria and make it available to anybody all over the world....' That's a worthwhile goal." (>>) [MOV 57:58]

2005-09-28T11:29:00.000-04:00

"I'm trying to figure out what it means to be a follower of Jesus and I need to confess right up-front that often I'm not a very good one." (>>) [MP3]

2005-09-26T21:43:00.000-04:00

"I became obsessed with symmetry. If I stepped on a crack with my right foot, I felt an irresistible urge to step on a crack with my left foot. I added more details until this ritual became all-consuming. If I stepped on a pebble with my right heel, I had to step on a pebble with my left heel. If I missed and stepped on the pebble with the middle of my left foot, I had to step on a pebble with the middle of my right foot while still 'owing' my left heel a pebble." (>>)

2005-09-26T20:09:00.000-04:00

"The gospel for him equals the doctrine of penal-substitutionary atonement... Jesus said that the gospel was 'the Kingdom of God is at hand.' Shouldn't we let Jesus tell us what the gospel is?" (>>) [MP3]

2005-09-26T16:02:00.000-04:00

"They help by making me sad at how hard we all try and at how far short we fall, and the sadness softens me for love." (>>)

2005-09-24T08:45:00.000-04:00

"I was lied to, and I am tired of being lied to." (>>)

2005-09-19T19:36:00.000-04:00

"It's not that he favors children being tossed onto bonfires or teenage girls being gang-raped and mutilated, but he can't bother himself to try very hard to stop these horrors, either. [...] I can't understand why Mr. Bush is soft on genocide, particularly because his political base - the religious right - has been one of the groups leading the campaign against genocide in Darfur. As the National Association of Evangelicals noted in a reproachful statement about Darfur a few days ago, the Bush administration 'has made minimal progress protecting millions of victims of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.' " (>>)

2005-09-19T18:32:00.000-04:00

"A good portion, however, of my diminished appreciation for Gibson's movie is the awareness of how the marketing and promotion of the film took on a life of its own, and brought the distinctly secular, cynical, unholy forces of marketing to bear on some of the most sacred of all Christian imagery and story. I resent the commodification of the Passion of Jesus by those who wanted to make a dollar and draw a bigger crowd. I am fearful- almost certain, in fact- that the beloved story of Aslan is about to be plunged into the same baptism of profiteering and evangelical, church growth driven manipulation." (>>)

2005-09-19T18:09:00.000-04:00

"We believe that today’s church [...] is in a serious spiritual crisis and needs a reformation of theology and practice... From [...] investing in maintenance Christianity (pastors, buildings, church programs) to aligning our finances and possessions with God's heart and purposes: the poor and oppressed, reaching the unreached, mobile apostolic teams, and serving our communities." (>>)

2005-09-12T17:43:00.000-04:00

"...grateful to be able to feel at all." (>>)

2005-09-10T10:28:00.000-04:00

"I see my world through my kailedoscope - all it's broken potential and beauty." (>>)

2005-09-07T21:22:00.000-04:00

"...I think [that] the closer we are to the teachings of Jesus the more on track we're going to be." (>>) [MP3]

2005-09-03T14:34:00.000-04:00

"God, please help me and forgive me where i get prideful and judgmental." (>>)

2005-08-30T20:44:00.000-04:00

"I wanted to fall on my knees, newly born, but I didn't. I walked back home to Pat's and got out the Scotch. I was feeling better, less out of control, even though it would be four more years before I got sober. I was not willing to give up a life of shame and failure without a fight." (>>)

2005-08-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

" 'We live in the most affluent culture in the most affluent period of human history. If we can't discipline ourselves to learn the joys of generous living, I think we're an embarassment to the gospel.' " (>>)

2005-08-30T20:35:00.000-04:00

"...leaping across the abyss of doubt with fear and trembling." (>>)

2005-08-26T09:33:00.000-04:00

"It's so much easier to be snide than vulnerable." (>>)

2005-08-25T20:04:00.000-04:00

"When I said, 'My foot is slipping,' your love, O LORD, supported me." (>>)

2005-08-24T14:59:00.000-04:00

"Please do not take back this country for your personal cause. You are not the only person that lives here, and I especially hope you realize that if you’re a Christian. This country does not exist for you and your allies to get their way over those of a different race, religion, social class, or political ideology." (>>)

2005-08-23T19:14:00.000-04:00

"I have this overwhelming desire to hold up a sign pointing at Robertson that says 'Ummm... this man does not speak for the rest of us.' " (>>)

2005-08-22T18:56:00.000-04:00

"Mark had written several articles for secular magazines and had been interviewed a few times on the radio and had gotten this reputation as a pastor who said cusswords. It is true that Mark said a lot of cusswords. I don't know why he did it. He didn't become a Christian till he was in college, so maybe he didn't know he wasn't supposed to say cusswords and be a pastor. I think some of my friends believed that it was the goal of the devil to get people to say cusswords, so they thought Mark was possessed or something, and they told me I should not really get into anything he was a part of. But, like I said, I was dying inside, and even though Mark said cusswords, he was telling a lot of people about Jesus, and he was being socially active, and he seemed to love a lot of people the church was neglecting..." (>>)

2005-08-22T18:55:00.000-04:00

"So I think we need to let go of the Bible as a modern book, but that doesn't mean we discard it. Not at all! When we let it go as a modern answer book, we get to rediscover it for what it really is: an ancient book of incredible spiritual value for us, a kind of universal and cosmic history, a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live. That letting go is going to be hard for you evangelicals." (>>)

2005-08-22T18:53:00.000-04:00

"i guess i failed you
i guess i cannot win" (>>)

2005-08-22T18:51:00.000-04:00

"I don't want to divide 'New Christians' from 'Traditional Christians' or 'Postmodern Christians' from 'Modern Christians.' I don't have time for that kind of foolishness, so I think we have to be very careful about the language we use. Please help me try to avoid any 'us-and-them' kind of thinking, and if you see me going in that direction, by all means tell me, OK? We're talking about a new kind of Christian, not the new kind or a better kind or the superior kind, just a new kind." (>>)

2005-08-18T16:16:00.000-04:00

"I can't tell if I'm being insubordinate in exploring these thoughts or if I need courage to go farther. I feel that I may be falling away from my faith. But then again, if I hold back from honestly pursuing the truth, wouldn't that be pulling away from you--even worse? If I let go or loosen my grip on some things I've never before doubted will I fall away from you? Or could I actually find myself falling into you? Guide me, please..." (>>)

2005-08-18T12:35:00.000-04:00

"It strikes me how rare these kinds of words, outlines, and dissective ways of thinking are in the Bible, which preocupies itself with earthy stories rather than airy abstractions, wild poetry rather than tidy systems, personal and contextual letters rather than timeless, absolute pronouncements or propositions. I have often wondered, Why doesn't the Bible consist of an ordered schema, like the average curriculum of a semenary? Of course, I'm not against our systematic theologies. I'm begining to see them as an artifact of worship from the modern era, no less sincere or magnificant than medieval cathedrals--in fact, you could call them modern conceptual cathedrals. Rather than condemning, I am simply noticing that our systematic theologies are themselves a modern phenomenon." (>>)

2005-08-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

"And I tell you that any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them is a dry-as-dust religion. Religion deals with both heaven and earth, time and eternity, seeking not only to integrate man with God, but man with man." (>>)

RateMyProfessors.com

2005-08-16T20:35:00.000-04:00

Oh, this is too much fun!

2005-08-16T16:57:00.000-04:00

"No man is strong unless he bears within his character antithesis strongly marked." (>>)

Moving

2005-08-14T13:13:00.000-04:00

"maybe redemption has stories to tell" (>>)

2005-08-13T09:23:00.000-04:00

"And then there's Dobson and the rest, all of them lining up to prevent easy availability of an FDA-approved medication that potentially would prevent tens of thousands of abortions every year." (>>)

2005-08-11T19:13:00.000-04:00

"I realized that my best answers didn’t answer their questions because they were asking questions on a deeper level: they weren’t just asking, 'What’s the answer to my question?' They were asking, 'How can you be sure any question can receive a definitive answer?' " (>>)

2005-08-09T17:22:00.000-04:00

"You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It's clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I'm absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that 'as you reap, so you will sow' stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff." (>>)

2005-08-08T13:54:00.000-04:00

"...this great evil is one of the foulest malignancies ever to worm its way through the stinking flesh of humanity." (>>)

2005-08-08T09:34:00.000-04:00

"be willing to love." (>>)

2005-08-06T16:58:00.000-04:00

"Congregations assume that the best stuff (information, inspiration, motivation, ethos) comes from one source, and should be presented to everyone in a uniform way. Aggregation is a highly individualized process, in which people choose which streams of information to pay attention to... Aggregation ecclesiology implies that people derive meaning and authority from a variety of sources, not just what the guy with the wireless mic and the Hawai’ian shirt says." (>>)

2005-08-05T13:10:00.000-04:00

"Life is outrageously black and white. It's just that that deliniation occurs at a level way deeper than most people want to go, so they take the easy way out and call it gray for sake of not having to make the difficult decisions." (>>)

2005-08-03T19:58:00.000-04:00

"If it seems at times that God cannot be found, there are millions of people across the face of the earth demanding God’s existence. This means something. We demand value for ourselves and for each other... There is something deep and uncompromising within us that cannot look upon the face of a child and consider her to be merely fodder for evolution’s hard turning. And even though we often sin by not living in ways that reflect the values we feel, we are ashamed and dehumanized and repentant. We wish we were better people." (>>)

Rumors of Home

2005-08-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

"There's something moving in the shadows /
there is that rumor of home"

2005-08-01T14:38:00.000-04:00

"...reality spits in the face of my so-called good news." (>>)

2005-08-01T01:57:00.000-04:00

400,000

2005-07-28T21:22:00.000-04:00

"...herein setting an example of charity, with reference to other men's sin and shame." (>>)

Questions in Genesis

2005-07-27T21:36:00.000-04:00

I finished reading through the prophets and am interested in reading more of the OT, so I started with Genesis tonight, which promptly led to a whole lot of questions. Here are some of them.

1: 6-8 -- Is "expanse" refering to the sky, as the Message translates it? But, there isn't water above the sky. What was the Jewish understanding of earth, space and heaven?

1: 26 -- "Let Us make man in Our image..." How did the Jews understand this prior to Christ and the Holy Spirit and the development of the doctrine of the trinity? Is "our" an accurate translation or a trinitarian bias?

1: 29-30 -- Interesting that God only gives plants/fruits as food to Adam and the animals, not animals as food for Adam and other animals. Is carnivorousness a result of the Fall? (I hope not, I like burgers...)

3: 3 -- Obviously not a physical death, is it a spiritual one? Or, is it refering to the loss of immortality in :22? Which, by the way, God comes across sounding kind of insecure here. And how could Adam/Eve become like God just by learning about good and evil and being immortal; obviously there's more than separates Creator and creation than that...

3: 12 -- Adam's kind of a pansy... It's odd that God doesn't comment on that but almost accepts the answer by then chastizing Eve without further comment to Adam.

4: 14 -- When did other people (not Adam and Eve's kids) get on the scene?

I get the feeling that this is more poetic wisdom than literal history. Thoughts/resources/burning stakes? A lot of my questions while reading the first four chapters had to deal with the cultural/chronological context, anyone know of any good resources for gaining a better understanding of that?

2005-07-25T17:16:00.000-04:00

"...I never thought I would find that person for whom I would work this hard or who would do the same for me in return. Thank you for working on this with me." (>>)

"Please say honestly you won't give up on me
and I shall believe" (>>)

2005-07-23T15:09:00.000-04:00

"God wants us back even more than we could possibly want to be back. We don’t have to go into great detail about our sorrow. All we have to do, the parable says, is appear on the scene, and before we get a chance to run away again, the Father grabs us and pulls us into the banquet so we can’t get away..." (>>)

This Song is Orgasmically Beautiful

2005-07-21T18:08:00.000-04:00

"It's clear you've got nothin' to lose while I'm losing sleep." (>>) [MP3] [more]

2005-07-21T00:31:00.000-04:00

"I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist, although I claim to be rather a Calvinist according to Calvin, than after the modern debased fashion; I do not hesitate to take the name of Baptist. You have there (pointing to the baptistery) substantial evidence that I am not ashamed of that ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ; But if I am asked to say what is my creed, I think I must reply: 'It is Jesus Christ.' My venerable predecessor, Dr. Gill, has left a body of divinity admirable and excellent in its way; but the body of divinity to which I would pin and bind myself for ever, God helping me, is not his system of divinity or any other human treatise, but Christ Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel; who is in himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life." (>>)

2005-07-15T00:15:00.000-04:00

"During June 2005, CNN, FOXNews, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur." (>>)

2005-07-14T18:26:00.000-04:00

"You shouldn't confuse being nice with being a tool." (>>)

2005-07-13T10:47:00.000-04:00

"In that particular case a poor defendant (Sanji) living in an apartment above a bakery was enjoined in a civil suit by the Baker, who sought damages arising from the defendant's habit of opening his apartment window every morning and taking in the aromas of the dark crusty bread, warm sweet rolls, and crunchy biscuits that wafted up from the bakery- without benefit or recompense to the plaintiff who toiled over the hot ovens to produce the smells. In his complaint the plaintiff argued in court that the defendant had been 'stealing' the smells, and sought damages for the 'whiffing and sniffing.'

"The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, but in the remedy phase of the trial issued a symbolic judgment where it was arranged that the plaintiff would hear the "clink clink" sound of the defendant's money as it dropped into a bowl, in lieu of an actual settlement." (>>)

2005-07-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

"It makes me feel important just knowing that right now the Baptists are doing demographic studies on how to get me in church!" (>>)

2005-07-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

"...theology as it works itself out in the lives of human beings who are kind of scratching and clawing their way to try to follow Jesus on a daily basis. It's a messy endeavor, and I embrace that messiness. " (>>)

2005-07-07T18:46:00.000-04:00

"This world is seriously f----- up. Not just America. Or Iraq. The whole f------ lot of it." (>>)

2005-07-05T16:20:00.000-04:00

"Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all... ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense- love as distinct from 'being in love'- is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God." (>>)

2005-06-30T18:45:00.000-04:00

" 'When I first met you, and I made you that tape, you were really enthused. You said--and I quote--"It was so good that it made you ashamed of your record collection" '
'Shameless, wasn't I?'
'What does that mean?'
'Well, I fancied you. You were a DJ, and I thought you were groovy, and I didn't have a boyfriend, and I wanted one.'
'So you weren't interested in the music at all?'
'Well, yes. A bit. And more so then than I am now. That's life, though, isn't it?'
'But you see... That's all there is of me. There isn't anything else. If you've lost interest in that, you've lost interest in everything. What's the point of us?'
'You really believe that?'
'Yes. Look at me. Look at the flat. What else has it got, apart from records and CDs and tapes?'
'And do you like it that way?'
I shrug. 'Not really.'
'That's the point of us. You have potential. I'm here to bring it out.' "

(>>)

2005-06-30T18:23:00.000-04:00

"You hear that? She's not very good at slushy stuff? That, to me, is a problem, as it would be to any male who heard Dusty Springfield singing 'The Look of Love' at an impressionable age. That was what I thought it was all going to be like when I was married (I called it married then--I call it 'settled' or 'sorted' now). I thought there was going to be this sexy woman with a sexy voice and lots of sexy eye makeup whose devotion to me shone from every pore. And there is such a thing as the look of love--Dusty didn't lead us up the garden path entirely--it's just that the look of love isn't what I expected it to be. It's not huge eyes almost bursting with longing situated somewhere in the middle of a double bed with the covers turned down invitingly; it's just as likely to be the look of benevolent indulgence that a mother gives a toddler, or a look of amused exasperation, even a look of pained concern. But the Dusty Springfield look of love? Forget it. As mythical as the exotic underwear.

"Women get it wrong when they complain about the media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot's breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis's neck, or Cindy Crawford's bottom, and we don't mind at all. Obviously we'd take Kim Basinger over Phyllis Diller, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Sergeant Bilko, but it's not the body that's important, it's the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don't ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case, I'm not at all sure that it ever did.

"I'm begining to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with, I think (or at least, I'm begining to get used to the idea that I'm so miserable without her that it's not worth thinking about alternatives). But it's much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notions of romance, of negliges and candlelit dinners at home and long, smoldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That's what women ought to get all steamed up about; that's why we can't function properly in a relationship. It's not the cellulite or the crow's feet. It's the... the... the disrespect."

(>>)

2005-06-29T20:02:00.000-04:00

" 'It's no wonder we're all in such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it. And it's much worse in real life, because it's not just snogging and bunk beds...' " (>>)

2005-06-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

"I don't want to cope with the sort of unhappiness Laura's feeling, not ever. If people have to die, I don't want them dying near me. My mum and dad won't die near me, I've made bloody sure of that. When they go, I'll hardly feel a thing." (>>)

Better Days

2005-06-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

"Every fool's got a reason to feelin' sorry for himself
And turnin' his heart to stone
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell
And I feel like I'm comin' home" (>>)

broken

2005-06-28T19:31:00.000-04:00

2005-06-28T18:42:00.000-04:00

"She loves Eeyore. How cool is that?" (>>)

2005-06-24T13:42:00.000-04:00

" 'You have to take the piss out of someone like that, don't you? That Leo Sayer haircut and those dungarees and the stupid laugh and the wanky right-on politics and the...'

Liz Laughs. 'Laura wasn't exaggerating, then. You're not keen, are you?'

'I can't f------ stand the guy.'

'No, neither can I. For exactly the same reasons.'

'So what's she on about, then?'

'She said that your little [...] outbursts showed her how... sour was the word she used... how sour you've become. She said that she loved you for your enthusiasm and your warmth, and it was all draining away. You stopped making her laugh and you started depressing the hell out of her.' "

(>>)

2005-06-24T09:39:00.000-04:00

"When you were looking at Maria in that bed were you thinking about yourself?" (>>)

2005-06-21T18:04:00.000-04:00

"...next time you hear someone talk about the biblical model for courtship, blow a rasberry and then stand up, point, and say with determination and volume (volume is important here), 'Liar!' You can expand upon this single word however your demeanor and the circumstance mandate, but the most important thing here is that you make it known to everyone within earshot that whoever is speaking about any model for discovering and securing a spouse as being the biblical model is speaking naught but lies. Lies. You know. Fabrication. Fiction. Fantasy. Creative truth. That's right. Lies." (>>)

2005-06-21T18:02:00.000-04:00

"I'm tired of games. I'm weary of girls who play at being coy. I'm tired of girls who imagine they need to be hard-won. In fact. The girl who plays at being hard-to-get diminishes herself in my eyes. Stop reading books on the 'Proper' way to relate to a man - on the 'right' way to spark his pursuit. Stop reading Elizabeth Elliot, Joshua Harris, and the Dougs. Simply love God, focus your heart on Christ, and treat your Christian brothers as you would wish to be treated: as a normal human being. Find yourself in friendship with a man. If you like him, let him know. If you don't like him, let him know. It's not difficult. It's not life-changing. But it is a start to a good relationship. " (>>)

2005-06-21T13:04:00.000-04:00

"So, to reach this generation is not going to be tweaking the church service, it's gonna be starting communities that live the Christian life 24/7." (>>) [RM]

2005-06-18T15:13:00.000-04:00

"Jesus spent the majority of His time here with the most overtly sinful people in culture loving, living, and weeping with them. And ultimately redeeming them. Yet He reserved his most harsh and judgmental language for the arrogant church leadership. The devastating contrast is that we do almost the opposite, and we do it representing Jesus, very much in His name. For that reason, I'm not all that surprised that Christians have such a bad reputation in this culture." (>>)

2005-06-14T20:24:00.000-04:00

"Relativism and postmodernism are not identical. Liberalism and postmodernism are not the same thing. Nihilism and skepticism are not identical to postmodernism. I believe most of the Christian critics talking about postmodernism miss this entirely." (>>)

2005-06-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

"Author Barbara Kingsolver writes that rather than buying into the 'love it or leave it' approach to the groups with which we affiliate, a more honorable slogan is 'love it and get it right, love it and never shut up.' This, I believe, is the function of evangelical expatriates. These expats have renounced their citizenship in evangelical subculture, but not their faith. They have ventured out into the wider world, but they remain interested, and often emotionally invested, in their culture of origin. They have become skeptical of how the church manifests its witness, but also dedicated to calling it back to its truest expressions." (>>)

2005-06-10T02:46:00.000-04:00

"I think that secretly, our minds walk hand in hand down a side street... smiling at the warm May weather on our way to get hand-made ice cream downtown, even when our bodies are entwined in the throes of an unspent worldly passion." (>>)

2005-06-10T02:39:00.000-04:00

"Increasingly, U.S. evangelicals have allied themselves with conservative politics. Many rallied around Ronald Reagan, the nation's first divorced President, who rarely attended church and gave little to charity, while viewing with suspicion Jimmy Carter—a devoutly religious President who taught a Baptist Sunday school class throughout his term in office." (>>)

2005-06-10T02:10:00.000-04:00

" 'Christ's death saves even Christians from sin.' " (>>)

2005-06-09T14:41:00.000-04:00

"Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 'It is written,' he said to them, ' "My house will be called a house of prayer," but you are making it a "den of robbers." ' " (>>)

2005-06-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

"What do you prefer? Freedom from terrorists or freedom from the government?" (>>)

2005-06-07T11:36:00.000-04:00

"One of the things he said was that, 'In moments like this God is useless.' And I thought at first, 'What an appalling thing to say.' And then I thought, 'What a brave thing to say.' And then I thought, 'What a true thing to say.' " (>>)

2005-06-07T11:05:00.000-04:00

"The darkness has faded just enough so that for the first time he can dimly see his opponent's face. And what he sees is something more terrible than the face of death – the face of love. It is vast and strong, half ruined with suffering and fierce with joy, the face a man flees down all the darkness of his days until at last he cries out, 'I will not let you go, unless you bless me!' Not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can only have as a gift." (>>)

2005-06-06T14:42:00.000-04:00

"What we must recognize is that Christians should not adopt either modern or postmodern epistemology. Both epistemologies make some important and true claims; and each also makes claims that Christians will want to deny. Some Christians, intuitively sensing the dangers of postmodern epistemology, pan it entirely, reverting to the more familiar modern epistemology. They conveniently forget that epistemological modernism has not always been the Christians friend. Others cherish postmodernism, not least because of its freshness and iconoclasm. They view askance anything that has ties to oldfashioned modernism. So what is required is some evenhanded reflection on both the strengths and the weaknesses of postmodern epistemology."

...

"Postmodernism articulates what we should have known but what modernism made difficult to see, namely, that there is more to human knowing than rationality, proofs, evidences, and linear thought. No matter how much we retain the view that evidence and logic are fundamental to human reflection and discourse, we are now much more aware of the way that aesthetic, social, intuitive, linguistic, and other factors influence our thinking."

...

"Postmoderns correctly perceive that there can never be, among finite knowers, an uninterpreted truth. But from this they incorrectly infer that there cannot be any knowledge of objective truth at all."

(>>)

2005-06-04T11:17:00.000-04:00

"I started The Snowsuit Effort because I was struck with the desire to investigate the people behind the neighborhoods of metropolitan Detroit -- to learn the stories of those who not only live in metro Detroit, but rely on metro Detroit: shopkeepers, the working poor, homeless, panhandlers, etc. On a personal level, I wanted to force myself out of my comfort zone -- to push myself in creative directions that I had purposely avoided. The whole "effort" of The Snowsuit Effort is to challenge myself, to fight the nervousness, trepidation and fear generally associated with photographing strangers." (>>)

2005-06-04T11:05:00.000-04:00

"It is the duty of a man to render himself beneficial to those around him; to a great number if possible; but if this is denied him, to a few; to his intimate connections; or, at least, to himself." (>>)

2005-06-04T10:06:00.000-04:00

"God is good in some marvelous non-understood way."

2005-06-03T15:59:00.000-04:00

"We would only ask, if you accept our critics' evaluation of our work, that in fairness you abstain from adding your critique to theirs unless you have actually read our books, heard us speak, and engaged with us in dialogue for yourself. Second-hand critique can easily become a kind of gossip that drifts from the truth and causes needless division." (>>)

2005-06-03T00:35:00.000-04:00

"Over the Rhine was one of the primary influences on many of us being able to leave the CCM culture mindset without needing to toss out our faith as well. They (along with Vigilantes of Love) were a great example of what real faith could look like in the real world, in real terms, without all the evangelical baggage and superfluous trappings, in a way that was honest and genuine and expressed in a way that a believer could live with and not feel uncomfortable (for lack of a better word) about - not forced or embarracing or pressured to 'be a good commercial for Jesus.' " (>>)

2005-06-03T00:01:00.000-04:00

" 'Theology is a community affair. Consequently theological truth takes the form of a dialogue, and does so essentially, not just for the purposes of entertainment. There are theological systems which are designed not only to be non-contradictory in themselves, but aim to remain undisputed from outside too. They are like fortresses which cannot be taken, but which no one can break out of either, and which are therefore starved out. I have no desire to build any such fortress for myself. My image is the Exodus of the people, and I await theological Red Sea miracles. For me theology is not church dogmatics, and not a doctrine of faith. It is imagination for the kingdom of God in the world, and for the world in God's kingdom.' " (>>)

2005-06-02T14:40:00.000-04:00

New MxPx songs. Ian unashamedly jumps up and down drooling like a sixteen year old scene kid.

2005-06-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

juxtaposition

2005-06-02T12:15:00.000-04:00

"Clearly, what conservative Christians have been reading about the Emerging Church has not been accurate." (>>)

2005-06-02T00:47:00.000-04:00

"Within Christian thought two large theological traditions exist: kataphatic and apophatic theologies." (>>)

2005-06-01T21:18:00.000-04:00

"Heres the deal. We might be heretics. " (>>)

2005-06-01T21:03:00.000-04:00

"Since the parable was designed to hold forth the prepared and the unprepared to meet Christ at His coming, and how the unprepared might, up to the very last, be confounded with the prepared--the structure of the parable behooved to accommodate itself to this, by making the lamps of the foolish to burn, as well as those of the wise, up to a certain point of time, and only then to discover their inability to burn on for want of a fresh supply of oil. But this is evidently just a structural device; and the real difference between the two classes who profess to love the Lord's appearing is a radical one--the possession by the one class of an enduring principle of spiritual life, and the want of it by the other." (>>)

2005-05-31T15:49:00.000-04:00

"why are we so weak?" (>>)