Category: Notes Anthology

Each of us’ righteousness seemed like a lightbulb. Some shine like 100 watt others like a 15 Watt bulb.  what we must remember is that in the bright sunshine of God‘s righteousness neither  the 15 watt or the 100 watt bulbs are discernible.

Beauty

…we perceive beauty because it is real and true, and discover in it, a gateway into the mystery of the universe, that which lies beneath and within. 

FR Stephen Freeman

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Idols

The prophets warned that the making of idols—those objects or ideas or affiliations that replace for us what should be ultimate—are destructive. At this moment, though, the idols don’t seem to be killing us. They seem to be helping us succeed. In reality, though, they are doing worse than killing us—they are deadening us.

Idols are useful. They draw people together. They give a person a sense of meaning, a cause for which to live and die. Nothing can mobilize a nationalistic sense of identity better than the chant “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:28). Their usefulness, though, is the very reason the Bible says they are useless.

Idols have two fatal flaws: They are self-created and they are dead. The man who “falls in love” with his chatbot can have all the glandular sensations of what seems like a love affair. Ultimately, though, he has to know that what he “loves” is himself—what the algorithms repeat back to him is what he put there in the first place. Idols, the Bible warns, are dead. And what’s worse, the Bible warns, “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 115:8).

At the end of the path to idols, you end up enclosed in your own self, but a part of you knows that what’s controlling you is a construction of your making. You end up, moreover, dead—numb to the very source of your life and being. And then, seeking to answer the deadness, you construct some other idol to give a rush of what feels like life.

Russell Moore

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Nazism 

Nazism was seductive precisely because it promised an immediate fix to parliamentary gridlock, an end to economic chaos, and a refusal to bow to the crushing indemnities and humiliating conditions imposed upon Germany by the western powers after the First World War. For many Germans, the Nazi party was an alternative and perhaps even the answer to the trauma, divisions, and poverty after the First World War.

Nazism was not an alien political doctrine that appeared out of nowhere. Nazism succeeded because it embodied what people either believed or wanted to believe. Nazism was an incredibly eclectic worldview, combining Darwinian science, pseudo-sciences like eugenics, incorporating some aspects of Lutheranism, elements of the philosophy of Nietzsche, the music of Wagner, Nordic mythology, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, numerology, idealized masculinity, nationalism, militarism, anti-communism, and belief in the magical power of ancient artefacts – it had something for everyone!

Nazism appeared to be scientific, spiritual, progressive, and effective, the new type of civilization the world needed. As a philosophy, Nazism was internally consistent to the point that it appeared self-evident to many people, which is precisely why it attracted supporters from all over Europe.

This is why many political philosophers and political theologians have spent so much time studying Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, because we want to understand how a totalitarian movement “works,” how does it seduces and succeeds? How can people participate in a sadist regime where it’s main mode of discourse is terror? We like to think that the Nazi leaders were either monsters or mad. But that probably says more about our sense of horror at the Nazis but does not really explain them.

But let’s be honest, it’s hard to understand the evil of the Nazis, we cannot imagine the rationality for it. But to prevent it one must understand it, which means we must engage in the unpleasant task of trying to get inside the head of the Nazis, into their mentality, look upon their brutality and banality, even if such a gaze burns our eyes.

Michael Bird

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Theology

Theology’s mother tongue is prayer and confession, the language of the liturgy, but these aren’t genres so much as modes that transform disparate genres into vehicles of divine discourse. Like Jacob’s Ladder, the traffic runs both ways.

Brad East 

Belief

It is dishonest to cling to a belief which the facts will not support, but it is equally dishonest to withhold your assent from a belief if the evidence at your disposal is overwhelmingly in its favour.

G. B. Caird 

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Experts

It is a curious fact that in this age of specialization we are prepared to trust the word of the expert in almost every other sphere, but in religion it is tacitly assumed that the person in the street knows best.

If we were consistent, we should pay at least as much respect to the saint in religion as we do to the genius in any other field of knowledge or experience.

If you want to be sure about Christianity, you must try it and see.

Yet only those who have sincerely tried to live the Christian life are qualified to pass judgment on the Christian faith.

G. B.  Caird 

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Pandemic 

March 11, 2020

Four years ago today, society began to shut down.

Shortly after noon Eastern on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid — or “the coronavirus,” then the more popular term — to be a global pandemic. Stocks plummeted in the afternoon. In the span of a single hour that night, President Donald Trump delivered an Oval Office address about Covid, Tom Hanks posted on Instagram that he had the virus and the N.B.A. announced it had canceled the rest of its season.

It was a Wednesday, and thousands of schools would shut by the end of the week. Workplaces closed, too. People washed their hands frequently and touched elbows instead of shaking hands (although the C.D.C. continued to discourage widespread mask wearing for several more weeks).
The worst pandemic in a century had begun.
Today, on the unofficial fourth anniversary, I’ll update you on where things stand.
The true toll
Covid’s confirmed death toll — more than seven million people worldwide — is horrific on its own, and the true toll is much worse. The Economist magazine keeps a running estimate of excess deaths, defined as the number of deaths above what was expected from pre-Covid trends. The global total is approaching 30 million.

This number includes both confirmed Covid deaths and undiagnosed ones, which have been common in poorer countries. It includes deaths caused by pandemic disruptions, such as missed doctor appointments that might have prevented other diseases. The isolation of the pandemic also caused a surge of social ills in the U.S., including increases in deaths from alcohol, drugs, vehicle crashes and murders.

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Key to wisdom

One of the keys to wisdom is that we must recognize our own biases, our own addictive preoccupations, and those things to which, for some reason, we refuse to pay attention. Until we see these patterns (which is early-stage contemplation), we will never be able to see what we do not see. Without such critical awareness of the small self, there is little chance that any individual will produce truly great knowing or enduring wisdom.

Richard Rohr

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

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Overthinking

Somewhere between overthinking and underthinking is responsible and responsive thinking. As a Christian who tries to be a thinking Christian I’ve always taken seriously the discipleship of the intellect, the Christian mind, or as Anselm called it “faith seeking understanding.”

Jim Gordon

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Contemplation

It is impossible to shift priorities if we are in a constant, busy, frenetic lifestyle. There has to be that pause, that breath, that waiting, that willingness to be still until we know. Be still and know—but the stillness doesn’t immediately lead to knowing. At first, we have to be still, and then we have to be patient until the knowing comes about.

Barbara Holmes 

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Doubt

I’m not describing atheists, apostates, or “exvangelicals” here. This is how many ordinary Christians feel. Or at least, it’s the water they swim in, the intrusive thought in the back of the mind, the semi-conscious source of inertia they feel when the alarm blares on Sunday morning. American Christians face no Colosseum, but this emotional and intellectual pressure is very real. The doubts add up.

It doesn’t help that doubt is in vogue. Doubt is sexy, and not only in the wider culture. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told by a pastor or Christian professor that doubt is a sign of spiritual maturity. That faith without doubt is superficial, a mere honeymoon period. That doubt is the flip side of faith, a kind of friend to fidelity. That the presence of doubt is a sign of a healthy theological mind, and its absence—well, you can fill in the rest.

The pro-doubt crowd gets two important things entirely right. First, they want space to ask honest questions. Second, they want to remove the stigma of doubt.

Brad East

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Human Behavior

“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

Viktor Frankl

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True Professional

Edward Said has called the true intellectua: one who pursues their craft not as a profession, working 9-5, but rather for the love of the thing itself.  

A language

“You need a language with which to express things, which at a certain age you felt you could do yourself, and gradually, somehow, it’s like switching from pastel paint to heavy oils.”

Peter Brown

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born to be happy

Solzhenitsyn observed, if “man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die.” And as he pointed out, if such a credo holds, “for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good?” 

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Survivors

Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is, and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly. They’re the ones who can name “healing” correctly, the ones who know what they have been saved from, and the only ones who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves.

Only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. All they can do is thank God they made it through! For the rest of us it is mere speculation, salvation theories, and “theology.”

Richard Rohr

Believing in God

“To me it comes down to this question: do I choose to believe in a universe that is self created, whose laws are self created, where life is ordered out of nothing, or do I choose to believe in a universe that is an expression of the power, beauty, and will of a God whose origins I cannot explain? Both require a measure of faith. I choose to believe that there is a God whose handiwork is seen in the cosmos, who created the laws that order our universe, and who brought forth life on our planet.”

“I believe in God because I believe God is the best explanation for the universe we live in. I believe in God because I’ve experienced what I believe is God’s presence and my life has been positively affected by my faith. I believe in God because I’m drawn to Jesus, and Jesus believed in God. But I also believe in God because I see the impact faith in God has had on the lives of so many people, and through them, on the world.”

Adam Hamilton

extremes

The far left will always end up in failure because they reject the reality of sin…the far right will fail because they believe they are without it…

Phoenix Preacher 

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Dostoevsky said, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”

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We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping? 

A Zen K?an

The sound of two hands clapping is the sound of a person being elevated into a joyful state by art because they are reminded of their connection to all other people facing the same struggles. The sound of one hand clapping is the silence of suppressed joy and appreciation. It is the person who feels delight in another person but is unable to express that out of fear of embarrassment or some other repressed reason. The one hand is raised in desire to participate, now thwarted by a lack of courage. This reluctance to express one’s feelings to another human being is isolating—it is the deafening, unbearable sound of silence.

Kareem Abdul- Jabbar

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Technology and Religion

If the misuses and abuses of technology depend upon how people engineer, design, envision, imagine, and market culture, then simply introducing new technological tools will not lead to the realization of Christians’ deepest fears. Rather, those fears are only realized when Christians, themselves, are complicit participants in affecting the cultural life produced by the misuse and abuse of new technologies. Religious communities have long critiqued how new technologies fail to meet people’s expectations of their material and spiritual well-being. By taking those critiques seriously, perhaps there could be a more holistic, human solution to address the cultural issues behind the fears inaugurated by technological change.

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Good for Connecticut:

Connecticut will cancel roughly $650 million in medical debt for an estimated 250,000 residents this year, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Friday, saying it is the first state to provide this type of relief.

The effort will liberate many residents from “the cloud” over their heads and give them more freedom to buy a home, start a business or continue with their education, Lamont told CNN. That will help them strengthen their financial standing in a state with a large wealth gap.

“It’s a debt that you had no control over,” Lamont told CNN. “It’s not like you overspent. You get hit by a health care calamity.”

Residents whose medical debt equals 5% or more of their annual income or whose household income is up to 400% of the federal poverty line, or about $125,000 in 2024, are eligible.

Those who qualify do not need to apply – they will receive letters in the mail saying their debt has been eliminated as soon as this summer. More than 1 in 10 Connecticut residents have medical debt in collections.

via Scot McKnight

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Knowledge

True knowledge changes us. “If only I had known,” can also mean, “If only I had been a different person.” Knowledge, in this biblical sense, is much deeper than the collecting and management of facts. In biblical terms, we know by participation or communion. When Christ says of his detractors that they do not know God, he dismisses their mastery of the facts (“And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.” John 16:3) Those who accused Christ and urged the Romans to crucify Him, not only knew the facts of the Jewish faith – they were experts.

Fr Stephen Freeman

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God’s fire

Real fire is destructive; throw yourself into a fire and you will be destroyed.
God’s fire is destructive too because it can swiftly eliminate all self-illusions, grandiose ideas, ego-inflation, and self-centeredness. Throw yourself into the spiritual fire of divine love and everything you grasp for yourself will be destroyed until there is nothing left but the pure truth of yourself.

Scientist and theologian Ilia Delio

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The beauty of rising every morning…

…we all arise from bed each day with some pain—the pain of lost loved ones, the pain of lost dreams, the pain of aging out of relevance. Yet, we endure that daily pain because it is the worthwhile cost of the daily joys and delights we experience in loving, in dreaming, and in growing older among family and friends.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar 

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY