The Bible is very clear about condemning sexual immorality. But there is but one moral absolute: love, that is, self-donation for the benefit of another motivated by a view of that other as wonderful. While that pole means a lot of human-facing behavior will remain classified as immoral in almost all situations (adultery [although not, perhaps, consensual extramarital sex], stealing, killing), some behavior, like same-sex sexual activity, will be reclassified over time. Culture will condition to what degree a specific act is immoral.
I don’t care what you think about sola gratia. If you don’t do what Jesus says in the Sermon, you’re building on sand.
I want include idle solitude in my life. I also want to read Richard Foster again.
Feminism is chivalry.
This spoken after I saw a gal at Torta’s wearing a “Girls to the Front” jacket, which has something to do with Riot Grrrrls, which is a feminist music movement out of the Pacific Northwest.
I must remember that friendship is the gift I am most able to give the world, and that it’s people that matter most before anything else earthly.
I rode my rented bike today from the hotel to Kerry Park Overlook to the Fremont Troll to the Chittenden Locks to West Point at Discovery Park.
I sent a message to Carla upon watching the sunset from West Point saying, “If God is only as beautiful as this, He is enough to hold my attention for eternity.”
After returning the bike to Velo, I spent the entire walk back to the hotel worrying about where to put my stickers—the place stickers I get for my bike and the Restoring Eden stickers—in a place where they can be on display forever (so my computer, water bottle, and bike, which I think I’ll be replacing in the next ten years) but not call too much attention to myself or violate the virtue of humility.
You’re more helpful than a rabid dog!
— Sullivan, thanking a friend who was helping clean up
“To put off obeying him till we find a credible theory concerning him, is to set aside the potion we know it our duty to drink” (George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, vol. 3, “Justice”).
The anxiety I feel was I rise some mornings is not due to a threat to my theism. It is due to a feeling of ought and a greed for accomplishment.
love noun 1 Self-donation (e.g., of attention, energy, time, material resources, money) born of high regard for someone or something
This made me think of Carla.
Janet’s example inspires me to conceive of a scheme in which we proactively pursue a relationship with next-door neighbors at all times. So, for example, the next time Dave’s birthday rolls around, we give him a gift.
“Such people will go on and on about visions they’ve had; they get puffed up without good reason by merely human thinking, and they don’t keep hold of the Head. It’s from Him that the whole body grows with the growth God gives it, as it’s nourished and held together by its various ligaments and joints.”
— Colossians 2:18-19, my emphasis
Paul here—or whoever wrote this wonderful letter—is making a case they the Colossian church shouldn’t listen to people trying to put rules onto them because of visions they’ve had. But I extract a principle here that corrects: Visions are not what will sustain your faith. Connecting to Jesus is what will sustain your faith.
I am grateful for a wife whose life beckons me to be empathic. She came home from work and told me what she had found out from Carole via Facebook: that Janet has been transferred to Danville for a blood transfusion that she needs in order to be able to go through chemotherapy to fight the lymphoma. Carla told me explicitly that she wants me to feel sad like she does. I didn’t at first, and I still don’t very explicitly. It’s the lack of lucidity, the lack of being there that disturbs Carla—and indeed, that is the most disturbing thing about it. She wants to “doula” for Janet, camping out at the hospital or nursing home or wherever to advocate on Janet’s behalf. Janet had conjunctivitis for days before they put her on erythromycin for it—despite her having said something repeatedly to her caregivers about it. I say go, Carla, go, do the good work of advocating on behalf of the woman who taught us how to be neighbors.
I am grateful for a son who knows more and more what he wants out of life. One of those desires is simple: LEGOs, four sets of which he very happily and explicitly gratefully received as gifts yesterday for his birthday. His joy, gratitude, and assiduity made me proud.
Following Richard Beck’s lead, I will attempt to answer in quick, bulleted form why I pray, even if and when most prayer requests go unanswered. I pray because in prayer:
- amplifies, directs, and actionizes my empathy,
- pledges my allegiance to God (or, if He isn’t real, the idea of Him and the virtues it represents to me),
- develops self-control,
- helps me sort out my thoughts,
- gets me outside,
- is generally healthy, like meditation, for the mind, and
- does, particularly on those rare occasions when I feel like God is directing me to pray something very specific, lead to answers!
Everything I pray for must lead to action on my part as well.
One could make a formula that would calculate the solidity of my conviction that God is real. The formula’s elements?
- the amount of sleep I’ve gotten,
- the degree of self-control I’ve been exercising, and
- the last time I prayed.
“Housatonic” means “beyond the mountain place,” and to me it means that my source of life and faith must come directly from You, not mediated by reading others.
You’re daring me to find You by helping others (Matthew 25:31-46).
I am grateful for the opportunity to help Janet in her time of need. But I want need not to be! Carla has visited a few times over the past several days because Janet has been loopy because of some medication she is one in connection with her perma-asthma that set in this winter like last. Apparently, MRIs at the hospital today may have revealed lymphoma.
I am grateful for the resilience and emotional maturity Éa displayed upon getting her ears pierced at Ikonic Ink downtown today. It hurt, but she displayed (and was multiply congratulated by onlookers for) stoicism while Miranda the “piercing artist” was doing her work. When it was done, she cried honest, quite-but-unashamed tears in Mommy’s arms. May all my children know what to do with their sadness and pain.
And may more families make family outings at tattoo and piercing parlors?
I am grateful for the moment of clarify I had reading Romans 14 this evening: If I let Paul’s use of the word “doubt” (diakrino) in vv. 22-23 interpret James use of the same word in James 1:5-8, then it is clear that Boyd’s thesis about “doubt” not being synonymous with uncertainty is true.
Actually, reading all of Romans 14, which touches on ritually-based vegetarianism and people following their own consciences, was exciting.
I am grateful for the light resolution I made while on my evening walk tonight that I can thank God for everything good and usually thank someone else for everything, too—a resolution I put into practice by thanking Christian Carion for making Joyeux Noël, which we watched with the Rookes last night.
I am grateful for Carla, whose beauty and diligence inspire me.
“I do not want to merely be called a Christian, but to actually be one.”
—St. Ignatius, as quoted by Stephen Crosby
This is how I feel.
Doubt baby review:
- empathy
- action-orientation (Jesus' main thing)
- final marginalization of Teen Mania-esque emphasis on making converts
- metaphysical flexibility (for me and for others)
- humility
- pluralism & ecumenism
- lightheartedness
- reset for my fight against sexual sin
- reset for my distraction at work
I am less self-disciplined, less loving, and less diligent whenever Carla leaves.