“I’m not Atlas, on any conceivable level.”
— Tom Belt, in a pithy, poetic expression of our dependency of God and others
“Next time, before you proclaim that ‘we never talk about X’—remember this only unveils how small your ‘we’ is.
“Now I know only in part; then I will know fully”—and in the meantime, it drives me my ignorance drives me crazy.
“God loved us while we were yet monsters.”
“Sexual puritanism is an attempt to safeguard possessions more valuable than pleasure. The good that it does outweighs the evil, the English knew this. They were seriously repressed, largely because repression prevented them from carelessly throwing away those things—chastity, marriage and the family—which slip so easily from the grasp of people whose natural tendency is to keep each other at a distance.”
— Roger Scruton, “English Character” in England: an Elegy
“Being incarnate was an embarrassment, a design-fault that God may have intended in the Italians but surely not in the English.”
— Roger Scruton, on the supposedly English “quiet suspicion of sensuality”
“I often think our broken church/social structures reflect our homes. Families teach us that even when are different and disagree, we are one.”
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou
“Trust is important, but trustworthiness is even more so. Trust is only as good as is the trustworthiness of that in which we place our trust.” Thank you, Miroslav Volf, for saying what I said two years ago about why faith is a virtue.
When the apostles returned, they gave an account to Him of all that they had done. Taking them with Him, He withdrew by Himself to a city called Bethsaida. But the crowds were aware of this and followed Him; and welcoming them, He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing (Luke 9:10-11).
Sometimes—probably often—Jesus gave preference to the needs, desires, and priorities of others over His own.
“If the grass feels greener on the other side, it might be the Holy Spirit reminding you to water the grass you’re standing on.”
Here are my notes on Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates:
On reading at Whim:
“The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free” (p. 48). Reading these sentences was electrifying to me coming off of Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasure of Reading. It also captures some of why I don’t read the news: I don’t wish to be subject to what people I don’t know, who are paid to write, say is important.
A double standard:
“…they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them…” and so on through the paragraph (78–79). Earlier in the book, he calls Samori to respect the story of each individual, to not let the experience of single souls get wiped away by the necessarily generalizing statements of history. But here, he pins the blame for the “sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects” on me. It’s wrong to conflate an individual’s helpless inaction with his will.
On the burden of “television”:
It occurred to me reading page 82 that we think that because we can see something, we can do something about it. But in these days of telegraph, tele-audio, and television, we still haven’t invented teleportation or omnipresence. We are closer to omniscience than ever before, with omnipresent eyes, and perhaps omnibenevolence, but we have neither true omnipresence nor omnipotence.
On godless holiness of the human body:
“And hell upon those who shatter the holy vessel” (87). What makes vessels holy if not the imago dei?
On personal moral fatalism:
“But you are human and you will make mistakes. You will misjudge. You will yell. You will drink too much. You will hang out with people you shouldn’t. Not all of us can be Jackie Robinson…” (95). I do not understand moral fatalism. I agree that sin is inevitable. But I disagree with anyone who says so. How anti-inspirational can you get?
On grand change:
“’It only takes one person to make a change,’ you are often told. This is also a myth. Perhaps one person can make change, but not the kind of change that would raise your body to equality with your countrymen” (96). RIGHT!
On the good old days and wicked men:
“…I raise it to show you that there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such” (98).
On the myth of race:
“’Race’ itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem” (115).
Finally, at the end of the book, Coates takes an unexpected environmentalist turn that inspires me.
“Things getting worse isn’t always a bad thing.”
— Carla
“Rule of thumb for my life: When God seems absent, or there’s not enough God, I’m on the verge of finding more God than I could have imagined.”
“God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:11).
This evening, I am uncomfortable with men ascribing action to God. It makes me want to throw out all of the parts of the Bible where that happens. Why would God send a deluding influence on anyone?
I don’t always mind the aches and pains and the memory glitches that attend aging. They remind me that night comes. My hope is that light shines in the darkness.
— Dale Allison, “Heaven and Experience,” Night Comes (2016)
“I do not want to merely be called a Christian, but to actually be one.”
—St. Ignatius, as quoted by Stephen Crosby
“Where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry.”
— John Calvin
Now there’s a thought.
For this reason we don’t lose heart. Even if our outer humanity is decaying, our inner humanity is being renewed day by day. This slight momentary trouble of ours is working to produce a weight of glory, passing and surpassing everything, lasting forever; for we don’t look at the things that can be seen, but at the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, KNT).
We look at the things that can’t be seen. That’s a religious paradox strict empiricist might choke on. But besides being poetic, it’s true, and whether the objects of our gaze are real or not, our hope in them has real sustaining power.
It’s also leads to a thought we as believers ought to remember: We are, in the end, talking about Someone invisible. Why balk at the idea that some folks don’t believe?
“A wise enemy will attack you on two fronts: exploit your weaknesses, and undermine confidence in your strength. Don’t be surprised when there is much ‘push back’ against you from all quarters (natural and spiritual) when you set your mind to be authentically who you are in Christ and bless the world by expressing it. Our adversary and Christian religion will tolerate you listening to sermons and singing worship songs, etc. Set your sail to be authentically you in Christ, and war is on.”
“Imagine yourself if you weren’t following Jesus. Are you basically the same person? Then you aren’t following Jesus.”
“Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (Mark 4:40). You, O Lord, have been asleep in the boat of my life as it gets “tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14). But in this text, at least, You tell me I have nothing to worry about. “I’m in the boat, aren’t I?”
“‘Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?‘ Job 40:2. God never approves fault finding with God.
— John Piper
Whatever the value of the perspective the book of Job offers to modern readers, the above is certainly worth a thought.
Why is faith a virtue?
If you ask a believer to focus on God in prayer, the part of their brain responsible for attention and concentration becomes very active. If you ask an atheist to do the same, the characteristic patterns of prayer don’t appear because there’s nothing for the atheist to focus on. Science tells us that the way humans understand God is more a feeling and experience than an idea or set of beliefs. For atheists, the pattern of connections across the brain that create this experience aren’t there. There is no God in their brains. It turns out that some belief in God is vital for people to experience and know God. In some measurable way, you have to leap before you look.
That seems foolish to many people, and I’m one of them. The Bible constantly extolls the virtues of faith and belief in things unseen. I think that reflects an intuitive understanding of what we’ve learned about the neurology of belief in modern times. Many of best things about Christianity only happen after you know God, but God can’t be proven. That’s why faith is extolled as such a virtue.
— Mike McHargue, “Walking With God Through Doubt”
If my intellectual faith—that is, my confident intellectual assent that Jesus is alive, or even that God exists—dies, I do want to keep what faith I can muster along the Richard-Beck definitions supplied below aligned with Jesus. He will always be a great totem, and this way I can continue to celebrate Him with my family.
Sacramental faith: A faith with and through the body. This is the faith of the book of James, the faith of obedience. It’s the faith of discipleship, moving one’s body through life the way Jesus moved his body through life. It is the faith of orthopraxy (“right practice”). The first Christians were called followers of “The Way.” This is the faith of the path, what Eastern religions call the dharma.
Doxological faith: The faith of worship and allegiance. The early Christians confessed that Jesus was Lord, a radical political claim That is, regardless as to whether you believe in the Incarnation or the Resurrection, a Christian confesses that Jesus is Lord, the telos of her ethical and political existence. Doxological faith is the claim that, at the end of the day, the teachings of Jesus are the authority in my life, what monastics call the “rule.” Everyone has to make choices in life, big choices and small choices, and we make those choice in light of some conception of what is “good” or “best.” Doxological faith makes Jesus that criterion.