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Posts from the ‘Quotes’ Category

Jun 5

5 Comments

Willard on Faith, Myth Making, and the “Intellectual Slums”

I’ve been looking forward to Dallas Willard’s latest book for a while now, and was happy to see it arrive on my doorstep yesterday afternoon.  Willard is tackling the question of whether/how the claims of faith constitute genuine knowledge (as opposed to private beliefs, opinions, emotions, blind commitments, etc).  I’ve only had time to read the introduction thus far, but it looks like a very intriguing, not to mention timely, project.  Here’s a few quotes from Knowing Christ Today: Read more

Jun 1

Seven Deadly Sins

These have obviously been around a while, but I came across them for the first time last week tucked away in on one of the back pages in MEDA‘s magazine called The Marketplace.  The seven deadly sins, according to Gandhi:

  • Wealth without Work
  • Pleasure without Conscience
  • Science without Humanity
  • Knowledge without Character
  • Politics without Principle
  • Commerce without Morality
  • Worship without Sacrifice

Apr 20

1 Comment

Even During the Night

Surely I know the spring that flows
Even during the night.

The eternal spring is hidden,
But surely I know the place where it begins
Even during the night.

I don’t know its source because it has none
But know that its beginnings come from this one,
Even during the night.

I do know that nothing can equal its beauty
And that from it both heaven and earth drink
Even during the night.

I know there is no limit to its depth
And that no one can wade across its breadth,
Even during the night.

Its brightness is never clouded over,
And I know that from it all light flows,
Even during the night.

I know its current is so forceful
That it floods the nations, heaven, and hell,
Even during the night.

The current that is born of this stream,
I know, is powerful and strong,
Even during the night.

The living stream that I so desire,
I see it in this bread of life,
Even during the night.

St. John of the Cross

Apr 13

4 Comments

The Way God is Made

Those who believe in the immortality of the soul believe that life after death is as natural a human function as waking after sleep.  The Bible instead speaks of resurrection. It is entirely unnatural. We do not go on living beyond the grave because that’s how we are made. Rather, we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are given our lives back again by God (i.e., resurrected) just as we were given them by God in the first place, because that is the way God is made.

All the major Christian creeds affirm belief in resurrection of the body. In other words, they affirm the belief that what God in spite of everything prizes enough to bring back to life is not just some disembodied echo of human beings but a new and revised version of all the things which made them the particular human beings they were and which they need something like a body to express: their personality, the way they looked, the sound of their voices, their peculiar capacity for creating and loving, in some sense their faces.

The idea of the immortality of the soul is based on the experience of humanity’s indomitable spirit. The idea of the resurrection of the body is based on the experience of God’s unspeakable love.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

Apr 11

Waiting

To be a Christian means to be an optimist because we know what happened on the third day. We know that it worked, that Jesus’ leap of faith was not in vain. His trust was not in vain, and the Father raised him up. He trusted enough to outstare the darkness, to outstare the void, to wait upon the resurrection of the third day, not to try to create his own but to wait upon the resurrection of God. Good Friday inevitably comes into every life. So does Holy Saturday. What is given to God is always returned transformed. That is the eternal third day that we forever await.

Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations

Apr 3

6 Comments

God’s Self-Justification

Last night, at a young adults group I lead, we got into a discussion about the violence of certain Old Testament texts and how we are to understand/reconcile these with the ethics of Jesus. This led to a discussion of various other evils—from personal struggles down to the most grievous of historical calamities. It was a good discussion, and I was greatly encouraged by the maturity of their views about God, evil, redemption, and hope. Read more

Mar 28

8 Comments

Sinners Anonymous

I’ve been reading Frederick Buechner again lately and, as always, am finding his way of putting things to be quite memorable.  Here’s a quote from Whistling in the Dark that serves as a good reminder about what the church is about as we head into another weekend.  This comes after a brief discussion of the structure and purpose of the Alcoholics Anonymous program: Read more

Mar 22

2 Comments

Preaching

I preached this morning—something that is still taking some getting used to.  Over the last decade or so, I’ve grown accustomed to preaching once or twice a year, at special events, or as a guest in another church.  The idea of preaching regularly (in my case, once a month or so) still feels like strange, uncharted, fearful, and exciting territory to me. Read more

Mar 18

11 Comments

The Magniloquent David Bentley Hart

I remember a friend from graduate school remarking last year about the experience of reading David Bentley Hart and the challenge to one’s vocabulary this presented.  While I have not read Hart’s magum opus (The Beauty of the Infinite), I did enjoy The Doors of the Sea and am currently making my way (slowly) through his recent collection of essays entitled In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments.  Let’s just say that the online dictionary is getting a workout… Read more

Mar 3

9 Comments

The Ocean of Uncertainty

For those still interested, we’ll get back to the ongoing conversation between Mike Todd and myself shortly. Mike’s off at a speaking engagement in Toronto but has indicated that he plans to respond to my most recent post at some point.  This is a conversation we both feel is worth continuing.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a passage from Joseph Ratzinger that I came across recently (from Introduction to Christianity).  Here’s what he has to say about the nature of faith and doubt at this historical/cultural moment: Read more

Feb 16

5 Comments

Why The “Why?”

I came across Richard Dawkins’s latest impassioned plea for evolution this morning via Arts & Letters Daily. Dawkins’s medium this time is a book review (Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True), but those familiar with the world of Dawkins will find little new here.  Mostly, it’s the same old tired re-hashing of his war against creationism and all who would resist the idea that evolutionary theory answers all questions worth asking or answering. Read more

Jan 5

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The Epic of the Universe

One of the more beautiful quotes I’ve come across in quite some time—from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead:

I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.

Nov 15

5 Comments

Love

You’re going to think that this is the only book I ever read, but Buechner put it memorably again this morning…

The  love for equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love  of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love.  It conquers the world.

Nov 5

Buechner on Theology

From this morning’s reading in Frederick Buechner’s Listening to Your Life:

Theology is the study of God and his ways.  For all we know, dung beetles may study man and his ways and call it humanology.  If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated.  One hopes that God feels likewise.

Jun 7

Imagination and Explanation

We have a pair of mental operations, Imagination and Explanation, designed to work in tandem. When the gospel is given robust and healthy expression, the two work in graceful synchronicity. Explanation pins things down so that we can handle and use them—obey and teach, help and guide. Imagination opens things up so that we can grow into maturity – worship and adore, exclaim and honor, follow and trust. Explanation restricts, defines, and holds down; Imagination expands and lets loose. Explanation keeps our feet on the ground; imagination lifts our heads into the clouds. Explanation puts us in harness; Imagination catapults us into mystery. Explanation reduces life to what can be used; Imagination enlarges life into what can be adored.

Eugene Peterson Under the Unpredictable Plant:

Mar 23

An Easter Quote

[T]hough the historical arguments for Jesus’s bodily resurrection are truly strong, we must never suppose that they will do more than bring people to the questions faced by Thomas, Paul, and Peter, the questions of faith, hope, and love. We cannot use a supposedly objective historical epistemology as the ultimate ground for the truth of Easter. To do so would be like lighting a candle to see whether the sun had risen. What the candles of historical scholarship will do is to show that the room has been disturbed, that it doesn’t look like it did last night, and that would-be normal explanations for this won’t do. Maybe, we think after the historical arguments have done their work, maybe morning has come and the world has woken up. But to investigate whether this is so, we must take the risk and open the curtains to the rising sun. When we do so, we won’t rely on the candles anymore, not because we don’t believe in evidence and argument but because they will have been overtaken by a larger reality from which they borrow, to which they point, and in which they will find a new and larger home. All knowing is a gift from God, historical and scientific knowing no less than that of faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

Mar 15

4 Comments

Worth Reading

I came across two pieces of writing today well worth taking the time to have a look at. First, there’s an excellent article by Tom Ryan recently posted at The Other Journal. Here’s a little excerpt from what is an excellent challenge to the church to be honest about both the the inherent limitations (epistemological and otherwise) of being human, and of the uniquely human capacity for spiritual transformation in and through doubt: Read more

Feb 16

Two Ways of Waiting

Lent is a time of waiting—something we are all, in various ways and to varying degrees, familiar with. During Lent our waiting is oriented towards Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the high points of the Christian calendar. But “waiting” is a theme that extends far beyond the period of Lent. Read more

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