Scott Stilson

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You know, whoever came up with the term ‘dad jokes’ has clearly never met my mother.

— Sullivan

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“Climate change is a pivotal opportunity for humanity to create new ways of living that regenerate instead of degrade Earth’s systems.”

— Eric Sauder, “Penn State Climate Solutions Lab [draft proposal]”

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If one wishes to read a book to add to one’s mental furniture, one must read it with attention. I do not really believe it is necessary to take all the separate steps mentioned in How to Read a Book. In fact, I think there is one enormous emotion almost omitted—I mean love. Instead of reading as a task, why not read because we love the book, or love its subject, or love its author, or anyhow love reading?

— William Lyon Phelps, in a review of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book (1940), as quoted by Alan Jacobs

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I enjoy:

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There’s no such thing as an intrinsically loving act. So don’t pray that everything you do be intrinsically loving. Pray that you do everything in love.

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“And as she said this she had the feeling for almost the first time in her life that she was acting a part.”

— Sally Carroll Happer in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace” (1920)

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My reflections on excerpts from Do We Need the New Testament?: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself (2015) by John Goldingay:

A novel summary of the Gospel in light of the Old Testament:

In a sense God did nothing new in Jesus. God was simply taking to its logical and ultimate extreme the activity in which he had been involved throughout the First Testament story.

[…]

One might almost say that God had to provoke humanity into its ultimate act of rebellion in order to have the opportunity to act in a way that refused to let this ultimate act of rebellion have the last word.

[…]

My argument is that the execution and the resurrection were indeed the logical end term of a stance that God had been taking through First Testament times, so that the First Testament story does give an entirely adequate account of who God is and of the basis for relating to God. Because of who God has always been, God was already able to be in relationship with his people, despite their rebellion. God has...

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At the end of the day, my belief that Jesus is alive comes from hearsay. I need to be OK with that. Am I?

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The Bible is a reference book—a reference book authorized by God through His people. That “reference” status contains not enough information for us to gauge the historicity of its narratives or the authority of its imperatives. It is authoritative, but that doesn’t make every apparently historical account or even divinely issued command in it so.

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Why is it wicked and adulterous to seek a sign? Is Sullivan wicked and adulterous in “waiting for proof” of You?

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“It is a sin when someone knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it” (James 4:17).

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Community is built, not found. Therefore, stay for UBBC’s little post-service social time even though it is on Zoom.

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Deliberate, unhurried, and unworried. That’s what I want to be.

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If the church is the people, then the gatherings and their proceedings are at their worst an excuse to bring those people together that we might realize more our inheritance of God’s kingdom. That means I should not wring my hands to worry about proceedings, whether liturgical as in the the case of UBBC, or low-churchy, as in our house churches. If I am to be unhurried, unworried, and deliberate, then I must be so about church. I will not worry about the way church proceeds. I will simply be deliberate.

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“You going to be here much longer?” He asked, and then turned rather red. She might suspect his reasons for asking.

“Another week,” she answered, and stared at him as if to lunge at his next remark when it left his lips.

– Warren & Bernice in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1920)

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“Do you have—fun while you’re on stage?”

“Uh-huh—sure! I got in the habit of having people look at me, Omar, and I like it.”

— Horace and Marcia in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Head and Shoulders” (1920)

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Correspondence about there “no longer remaining a sacrifice for sins“ (Hebrews 10:26)

friend:

As I’ve left the penal substitutionary atonement understanding of things, I’ve come to believe that God’s forgiveness was present before the Cross and that the blood of Jesus was not legally necessary for God to forgive sins: It was necessary for us to understand it. Because of this, I don’t see forgiveness in legal terms, but rather in terms of relationship: We simply return to Him, which was available pre-Christ as well.

Yet there are many troubling passages which allude to a legal understanding, as in “If you do this, then legally you’re out of mercy.” Among them Hebrews 10:

> For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there is no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has ignored the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve...

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Wars were all very well in their way, made young men self-reliant or something, but Horace felt that he could never forgive the President for allowing a brass band to play under his window the night of the false armistice, causing him to leave three important sentences out of his thesis on “German Idealism.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald • “Head and Shoulders” (1920)

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Parenting Scriptures

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Éa: You’re very good at putting buns in. But you’re not very good at sleeping in them.
Carla: Build me up and tear me down! Build me up and tear me down!
Éa: At least you’re even!

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I have been undisciplined about having fun the past couple days.

— Scott, rubbing his eyes

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How do you reconcile the antinomy between these two excerpts from the Sermon on the Mount?

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:14-15).

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Take care not to practice your righteousness in the sight of people, to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven…[W]hen you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your charitable giving will be in secret…[W]hen you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret…[W]hen you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting will not be noticed by people but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees...

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My dubiousness about people using the names of the people they’re talking with, which Dale Carnegie suggests in his book as a key to winning friends and influencing people, is sound—times have changed since Carnegie’s book—except, huzzah, when you use the name in exclamations of thanksgiving, co-elation, or congratulation. In those contexts, it is pure simpatico, building the relationship 100%.

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“‘Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.’”

F. Scott Fitzgerald • “Babylon Revisited” (1931)

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Family walks are the best.