Category: Notes Anthology

Jesus is not a consolation prize when things do not go our way in life. He is the King.
Matt Redmond

Paradox
What do the empirical data actually have to say on one of the greatest paradoxes of our time, which is: If a major point of yoga is quieting the ego and reducing focus on self, why are there so many yoga pose pictures on Instagram?

Certitude
I want to point out that there are two different kinds of certitude: mouthy and mystical.
Just for the sake of alliteration and cleverness, I call the first one “mouthy certitude.” Mouthy certitude is filled with bravado, overstatement, quick, dogmatic conclusions, and a rush to judgment. People like this are always trying to convince others. They need to get us on their side and tend to talk a lot in the process. Underneath the “mouthiness” is a lot of anxiety about being right. Mouthy certitude, I think, often gives itself away, frankly, by being rude and even unkind because it’s so convinced it has the whole truth.
We have to balance mouthy certitude with “mystical certitude.” Mystical certitude is utterly authoritative, but it’s humble. It isn’t unkind. It doesn’t need to push its agenda. It doesn’t need to compel anyone to join a club, a political party, or even a religion. It’s a calm, collected presence, which Jesus seems to possess entirely. As Jesuit Greg Boyle writes, “There is no place in the gospel where Jesus is defensive. In fact, he says, ‘Do not worry what your defense will be’ [Luke 12:11]. Jesus had no interest in winning the argument, only in making the argument.”
Richard Rohr

Lecturing
Lecturing never works. Think about it, the only time we use the word “lecture” in a positive sense is when we voluntarily go to one, which we have probably paid for. That tells us that sometimes we need to wait for the ones we love to come to us for help and guidance and entrust them to God in the meantime.
Matt Redmond

Baseball box score
“Every player in every game is subjected to a cold and ceaseless accounting; no ball is thrown and no base is gained without an instant responding judgment—ball or strike, hit or error, yea or nay—and an ensuing statistic. This encompassing neatness permits the baseball fan, aided by experience and memory, to extract from a box score the same joy, the same hallucinatory reality, that prickles the scalp of a musician when he glances at a page of his score of Don Giovanni and actually hears bassos and sopranos, woodwinds and violins.”
Roger Angell

Moral Seriousness
What do I mean by moral seriousness? I don’t mean guilt and shame. I don’t mean sin and Judgment Day. I simply mean that being a good person was a front burner priority in my childhood home. Moral integrity and virtue were talked about, they were goals. Goodness mattered to my parents, and they wanted it to matter to me. And as a parent myself I put being a good person on the front burner for my two sons. Telling the truth and being honest mattered. It was a priority. Keeping promises mattered. Being patient, kind, and generous mattered. Sticking up for those being picked on at school mattered. Including those who were excluded mattered. Sharing mattered. Eschewing materialism mattered. Resisting stereotypes and racism mattered. And above all, love mattered.
Richard Beck

Is God a fool?
In its excellence, the world did not know Christ. We not only dispise fools but seek incessantly to portray our enemies as fools (“those idiots!”). However:
“God resists the proud but gives more grace to the humble.”
I many times suspect that God stands before us as a “mute fool,” giving no answer to our accusations and recriminations apart from the silence of his corpse on the Cross. One of the desert fathers once said, “If I cannot edify you by my silence, then I certainly cannot edify you by my words.”
In our world, perhaps only a fool could speak the truth. But, then, it would mean that only fools could understand him.
Fr Stephen Freeman

“We cannot make Him visible to us, but we can make ourselves visible to Him. So we open our thoughts to Him — feeble our tongues, but sensitive our hearts. We see more than we can say. The trees stand like guards of the Everlasting; the flowers like signposts of His goodness — only we have failed to be testimonies to His presence, tokens of His trust. How could we have lived in the shadow of greatness and defied it.” 
Abraham Hershel – I Asked for Wonder

Every Opportunity
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:5–6
Make the most of every opportunity. (v. 5b)
What is the opportunity? I used to think the opportunity was to try and work in some way to share the gospel message with them, which in retrospect looks more like trying to get people enlisted on my multilevel marketing discipleship pyramid scheme.
I think of the sharing the gospel differently now. It’s more about the mystery than the messaging. As we have discussed, the message of the gospel is the mystery of Christ, and the mystery of Christ is Christ in us. To the extent I am attuned to “Christ in me,” I can be present to the person sitting across from me. To the extent I can be present to that person, Christ will presence himself with us and the mystery will become manifest. As I become genuinely interested in another person, Jesus manifests his interest in him or her.
The opportunities are everywhere. The overwhelming majority of people in the world, outsiders or not, are not listened to. No one leans into them and listens with genuine interest. This is what supernatural love looks like in ordinary clothes.
JD Walt

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Spiritual Person
The mark of a spiritual person, in the tradition of Jesus, is not in some kind of super-spirituality but the holiness of his or her humanity. Jesus did not become a human being so that we could become something other than or more than human beings. He became a human being so that we could embody the holiness of humanity.
The hallmark of real Christianity is not elevation but descent. It is not revealed through people who venture higher up, aspiring for more spiritual experiences, but those who journey downward, ever increasing their experience of loving and serving others.
J D Walt

Words You Should Never Say to Your Pastor
The full sentence could say, “People are saying that you don’t visit enough.” Another example is: “People are saying that our student ministry is not doing well.” Or one more example is: “People are saying that you don’t have good office hours.”
The sentence might specify a group while maintaining anonymity for the individuals: “Some elders are not happy with you,” or, “A lot of the staff are unhappy.”
You get the point. It could be phrased a number of ways, but the meaning is still similar. “People” is never defined. The true complainer is never identified. It is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing sentences pastors and staff will hear. Here are some reasons for the frustration:
The complainer lacks the courage to speak for himself or herself. So he or she hides behind the deceitful veil of “people are saying.” Leaders in churches know that when complainers lack courage to speak for themselves, or when they have to hide behind anonymous complainers, they are trouble in the making.
The leader has no recourse or action to take. These complainers never identify the source or sources. So the pastor or staff person cannot follow up and speak directly to the dissidents. He or she is left with a complaint that cannot be resolved due to anonymity.
The leader immediately questions the motive of the complainer. The moment the ministry leader hears those words, “People are saying,” he or she doubts the credibility and the heart of the complainer. The approach is cowardly; it thus is always seen through the lens of doubt and frustration.
This approach is a double frustration for the ministry leader. First, he or she has heard yet another criticism. Most ministry leaders have to deal with criticisms too often. Second, the ambiguity of the complaint and the source of the complaint can leave a leader wondering if the problem is really bigger than reality. He or she can waste a lot of emotional energy on something that really may not be such a big deal.
Indirect criticisms can be the most painful criticisms. Most ministry leaders deal better with someone who is direct and precise in his or her concerns. But indirect criticisms such as “People are saying…” or “I love you pastor, but…” hurt more because cowardly actions and duplicitous behavior are added to the criticism itself.
https://churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-articles/266017-the-one-sentence-pastors-hate-to-hear.html?fbclid=IwAR1au7_1wJFFAeqSrBQaDWPMQg_nNxxJ3SpRddrqji0cS8M1OL5L012WUOI

Suffering and Evil
Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward Him. But if personal suffering gives sufficient evidence that God doesn’t exist, then surely I shouldn’t wait until I suffer to conclude He’s a myth. If my suffering would one day justify denying God, then I should deny Him now in light of other people’s suffering.
Believing that God exists is not the same as trusting the God who exists. A nominal Christian often discovers in suffering that his faith has been in his church, family, career, or social network, but not Christ. As he faces evil and suffering, he may find his beliefs shaken or even destroyed. But genuine faith—trusting God even when we don’t understand—will be made stronger and purer.
If your faith is based on lack of affliction, it’s on the brink of extinction and is only a frightening diagnosis or a shattering phone call away from collapse. Token faith will not survive suffering. Nor should it.
https://www.epm.org/blog/2022/May/4/honest-faith?fbclid=IwAR0m-syB1GSiL2ns9nhi7_XsV8ay4PEiRB–WDVxPSfHjO1qYsJR8KT22jA

Progress
“In 1942,” Marian Tupy, who runs the invaluable HumanProgress.org, wrote a few years ago, “some 68 percent of white Americans surveyed thought that blacks and whites should go to separate schools. By 1995, only 4 percent held that view. In 1958, 45 percent of white Americans would ‘maybe’ or ‘definitely’ move if a black family moved in next door. By 1997, that fell to 2 percent.” In surveys asking whether you would be opposed to a neighbor of a different race moving next door, America doesn’t come out as the least racist country in the world, but we do far better than many countries. We beat Germany and France (3.7 percent), Spain (12), Italy (11.7), Mexico (11.4), Russia (14.7), China (18), Turkey (41.21!), and even Finland (6.8).
Jonah Goldberg

Spending More Time With God
A few years ago a female student wanted to visit with me about some difficulties she was having, mainly with her family life. As is my practice, we walked around campus as we talked.  
After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:“I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God.”
I responded, “Why would you want to do that?”
Startled she says, “What do you mean?”
“Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?
“Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you’ve wronged?”
She thinks and answers, “Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God.”
Richard Beck

Going backwards
The Taliban’s Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue issued a decree over the weekend mandating women in Afghanistan wear either a burqa or abaya that covers their body from head to toe. The rule—which comes with escalating punishments if violated, culminating in a woman’s “male guardian” being jailed—is a return to a similar Taliban policy from the 1990s

What We Need Most
What we need most
in order to make progress
is to be silent
before this great God
with our appetite
and with our tongue,
for the language
he best hears
is silent love. 
—John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love

Celebrity
No, I’m not a celebrity, but I do experience the temptation to think and act like one.
I see the dangers for others and myself. I know that success is a dangerous basis for self-esteem and a poor source for identity. It is unhealthy to think that productivity and ministry are the same thing. It is selfish to invest more time in your platforms rather than in the people who need you.
In my own head, I’m a celebrity, so how do I get outta here? How do I think and act like Christ’s servant and not like a guy who is destined to end up on Preachers in Sneakers?
Mike Bird

Partisanship
…if you think that most-partisan cohort is seething with anger because they suffer from painful oppression, think again. The data is clear. As the More in Common project notes, the most polarized Americans are disproportionately white and college-educated on the left and disproportionately white and retired on the right. 
The people disproportionately driving polarization in the United States are not oppressed minorities, but rather some of the most powerful, most privileged, wealthiest people who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more freedom and opportunity than virtually any prior generation of humans, all while living under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet.
It’s simply an astonishing level of discontent in the midst of astonishing wealth and power.
David French

Death and Resurrection
I believe that Christians make a serious mistake when we begin to speak first about God rather than first about Christ and His death on the Cross and resurrection from the dead. It is a mistake because it presumes we know something about God that is somehow “prior” to those events. We do not, or, if we think we do, we are mistaken. The death and resurrection of Christ are the alpha and the omega of God’s self-revelation to the world. Nothing in all of creation is extraneous or irrelevant to those events.
This is to say that unbelief and faith are equally a part of the death and resurrection of Christ. The death and resurrection of Christ contain the utter and complete emptiness of hell, the threat of non-being and meaninglessness, the absurdity of suffering and of injured innocence. They also contain the fullness of paradise, the complete joy of existence and the ecstasy of transcendent love. Everything is there.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Price control
“…dollar prices are like the news. They tell you about something; they aren’t the thing itself. If we don’t like what we read in the news, changing the words on the page to say something better is just propaganda. And because falsified news, like a price control, isn’t truthful, it leads people to make bad decisions, damaging to them and to others. Ultimately, the only way to change news we don’t like is to get at what is causing the unpleasantness in the first place. In the case of runaway inflation, that cause is irresponsible management of the money supply.”
For Law & Liberty, Catherine Ruth Pakaluk

Gospel
The gospel is complete in and of itself. It is the perfect offering of the love of God for us. Though it is complete, it must be extended, and it must be extended with the same character with which it was first given. I am becoming more and more convinced that we can tell people about Jesus all day long and still not extend the gospel. Why? Because the gospel is more than simply telling people about Jesus. The gospel is more than an explanation about Jesus. It is a demonstration of Jesus. In fact, if you have to make a choice between telling someone about Jesus and showing them Jesus, you should probably do the latter. Why? Because someone may not remember what you said, but he or she will never forget what you did.
We’ve all heard the apocryphal quote oft attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel everywhere. If necessary use words.” Can we be honest? People tend to like this because they would rather avoid the awkwardness of talking about Jesus. Permit me a moment of unvarnished keeping-it-real truth-telling. The nature and character of the gospel do not tend to come through the deeds of a person who does not want to talk about Jesus. (And because I know I will be hearing from my dad about my use of the term “apocryphal,” I’ll get out in front of that by saying apocryphal means Saint Francis didn’t say it. For crying out loud, Saint Francis preached the Gospel to animals—with words!)

In summary, to share the gospel is a fully embodied act of ordinary yet supernatural love for other people. It involves our words, our deeds, our dispositions, and our overall posture and bearing toward other people. It means “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24b NRSV).
When we truly share the gospel, it always comes at a cost to ourselves, and yet it always makes us more than we were before. This is the why the power of the gospel is found only in the way of the cross.
J D Walt

The Problem with Faith
Elie Wiesel once said, “If I had not had faith, my life would have been much easier.” Faith in God, “faith in a faith” as it were, complicates evil because it begs for explanation in a world created, sustained, and overseen by a God who is good.
“Perhaps you are not looking for answers. You are looking for responses to your questions, to your life, for ways to live rather than ideas to espouse. Answers close things down; responses do not.”  Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom.

College admission essays
 It’s not fair for us to ask teenagers to describe their personalities. Teenagers are endearing but ridiculous people who can barely heat up a cup of ramen noodles and whose brains won’t be fully formed for two more presidential terms. Any teenager who is asked to describe themselves and doesn’t say, “I am scared and confused and my hormones have sort of turned me into a werewolf,” is lying.
Obviously, parents are writing many of these essays. Incredibly, many applications include the pointless step of making students check a box to verify that the application contains their own work, which is a verification system so ineffective that it makes the “I am 18” buttons on adult websites seem like the security at a Swiss bank.
College essays are arbitrary—exactly what’s being measured or why is unclear. They’re gameable—much like a pinewood derby car, many of the best ones are made by parents. They seem to benefit the wealthy—not every family can shell out big money to punch up an essay through a concerted program of expert tutelage and not-so-subtle negging. Say what you will about the SAT: The kid has to actually fill in the bubbles. They can’t take the test home and get help from Mom, Dad, teachers, the internet, and a gaggle of advisors that would seem excessive for a medieval child monarch.  

From 0.01% to 0.o0000.1%

• 

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You’ve come a long way baby!
Girls are now outperforming boys at nearly every level of education. They earn 60 percent of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and comprise 70 percent of high school valedictorians. Women are also dominating many workplaces. Women today hold a majority of the nation’s jobs, including 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. As for men, they are dropping out at alarming rates. More prime age males are out of the labor force today than during the Great Depression.
https://www.thebulwark.com/tucker-carlson-and-the-crisis-of-masculinity/

STILL ON THE JOURNEY