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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

It’s Almost July???

George 0 Comments

This year is passing quickly. I continue to struggle with posting to this blog on a regular basis. I have not given up but I do not completely understand by inability… unwillingness … to take the time and energy to write about many things that are on my mind. I have at least four drafts that date back to early this year which I have not completed. Perhaps it is just a phase of my journey. At any rate I am writing today.

(After I wrote the above paragraph, I continued to write some more. For some reason my computer froze up and I lost everything except the above. Perhaps there are dark forces working to keep me from posting.)

Theology – the preeminent question

George 0 Comments

“If you were able to follow Jesus for the three years (or whatever) of his ministry, life, death and resurrection, do you believe you would conclude that Jesus believed the same version of … doctrine … as you do today?”

That question applies to all of theology. In fact, it is the preeminent question of the Christian Life. I do not say the preeminent question of Christian theology, but of the Christian life, because in the end, theology must lead to the lives that we live. Theology must be a description of REALITY. Of real life. Just as mathematical propositions must eventually let the space shuttle fly or a heart monitor give accurate readings, so our theology must prepare us for death, and for the lives we lead before death. Our theology must make us human beings, husbands, fathers, teachers, neighbors, members of a community, and so on.

via IMonk Classic: The Preeminent Question | internetmonk.com.

Feeling Un-raptured

George 0 Comments

Interesting excerpt from Chaplin Mike’s IMonk post today:

One of the books I am currently reading is David Fitch’s The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission: Towards an Evangelical Political Theology.

One of the concepts from Fitch’s book that rang true to me was that of jouissance. Jouissance is a French word with sexual connotations that has the broader meaning of a rather over-the-top sense of pleasure or enjoyment, especially the joy of being proved right over against an adversary. I have often heard and used the word “triumphalism” in a sense similar to this. …

Though we assert that our faith is defined by positive truths and values that lie at its core (for Christians, this is the person of Christ himself), our practice is often more shaped by what (or whom) we are against. …

We often let what we are not and what we are against define us. And when we feel ourselves proved “right” over against the “enemy,” we feel jouissance, a triumphalistic sense of vindication. We stand with our foot on the enemy’s neck. We raise our flag and sing a song of victory. We mock the inadequacy of the enemy’s forces. We experience a burst of self-satisfaction that “proves” to us that we are right.

Harold Camping was wrong. We were right. …

Before we feel jouissance, that sense of emotional release and satisfaction at the discrediting of someone like Harold Camping, we should perhaps take a look in the mirror. It may be easy to spot false teaching like Camping’s, especially when he and his followers spend millions of dollars to plaster billboards around the countryside. But what about all the “plowboys with Bibles” leading churches and “ministries” small and large in places across America and the world? At the foundation, what’s the difference?