It’s time to reverse the connotative polarity of “parochial”: It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

I no longer care so much how You do it, God. It seems apparent that You do [answer prayers].

Did you ever think the reason your life has become somewhat more pedestrian is that your prayers have become so, too? The thought occurred to me while on my prayer walk this evening, and it excited me.

upon seeing Neighbor Dave at his retirement party at The Tavern…

Scott: Do you know what retirement means?
Ea: Yeah! It means giving up.

“God speaks to us. Our answers are our prayers.”

— Eugene Peterson

Let it be true that my prayers are always answers to God’s speaking. But when I first read the quotation, which I found in a Krista Tippett interview, I read it as: “The answers we seek from God are the prayers we pray,” as if He is the one providing the food for prayer.

“We cannot be too careful about the words we use. We start out using them, and they end up using us.”

– Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

“To get” has replaced all instances of “to give” at Christmastime:

• “I’m going to get Sullivan a mortar and pestle” instead of “I’m going to give Sullivan…”
• “I hope I get a Wii” instead of “I hope I receive a Wii” or “I hope someone gives me a Wii.”

The change has removed all generosity from the concept of gifts. Strange.

Live whimsically, especially from dinnertime through the kids’ bedtime. That will make it more likely that you make time for things like calling your mother-in-law.

Instead of God taking responsibility for creating, what would happen if we view God as taking responsibility for being created? That is, in Christ, God the human being fulfills humanity’s responsibility before God to present itself humbly, obedient and trusting in the face of all the vicissitudes inherent in that nature, and fulfills human nature’s calling and purpose. In this case Jesus’ death fulfills created nature, loving and trusting God within the constraints of created finitude. Christ, the God-Man, represents creation to God, takes responsibility for being creatED (not for creatING), unites creation to God, and in so doing reconciles the world to God, not God to the world.

— Tom Belt, “God takes responsibility for sin – or not.”

Now there’s a thought.

I feel a certain reorientation in my reading life these past two days, and it has to do with love. If I am to do everything in love, then I am to:

• choose what to read in love, that is, in thanksgiving that there are so many good books from which to choose,
• choose what to read for love, that is, thinking of the books’ relative capacity to facilitate or express my love for God and love for others—by which I mean specific others around me, not just books that will answer questions raised by what other people on the Internet are thinking about,
• read savoringly, because to do so any other way is a waste of time that benefits no one, including myself, unless I’m reading purely for information, and is therefore unloving. Reading for understanding, entertainment, or aesthetics doesn’t even happen if I don’t read savoringly.
• read only at times when I can read savoringly, a constraint which will have the added benefit of making my responsiveness to the actual world around me much better and...

love noun 1 fondness and esteem that leads one to act toward the good of and the enjoyment of relationship with

I cannot pretend to know what’s best from a legal standpoint regarding the issues in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Nine of our brightest legal minds are working on it right now, and they’ll probably be split 5–4. I tend to favor allowing such anti-discrimination laws like what Colorado has because the I don’t see the cakebaker as endorsing any harm. But regardless, the way of Jesus is clear: Bake the cake. To understand why, read Matthew 5:38-48, especially vv. 39–41.

[five minutes after bedtime lights out]
Sullivan: Mom?
Carla: Yes?! [long pause]
Sullivan: Why, when, or how did burritos originate?

“I no longer spend most of my time with college professors like myself. I’ve traded in the PhDs for Kristi and my friends at Highland.”

— Richard Beck

Perhaps we could call secular Christmas “Wintercheer.”

I seek a metaphor to illustrate a possible metaphysics of my claims that “only our good works will be saved” and that the “line between sheep and goat runs right through me.” How do I survive but my unrighteous deeds do not? How is it so unpleasant as to be called Gehenna?

friend:

Can you help me answer a few of these questions:

1. If we affirm Homosexuals because they are “born that way” when clearly it is at the least not the natural ideal, then what would keep us from affirming someone who is born with a propensity to steal, or lie, or fornicate, or any other thing? A huge component to following the narrow way of Christ is denying our “natural” selves.
2. Along those lines, what would you do if a leader in your ministry said they don’t think the passages about sex outside of marriage apply to today, and they will be sleeping with whoever they want. They point out that it’s really just a few passages that mention this. If I’m open to accepting a different opinion on this issue, why not any and every issue?

What is the pandora’s box of sin we would be opening if we allowed this?

me:

Glad to help. I do see a risk of opening Pandora’s box if we allow same-sex marriage in the Church without a clear...

Apparently, it’s “deliver us from the evil one” (NRSV, NIV, NLT, HCSB) and not “deliver us from evil” (NAS, KJV, ESV) That makes more sense. Gets God closer to batting 1.000 for the prayer His son instructed us to pray.

I’ll try to alternate nonfiction and fiction.

“The dark paradox, then, is this: the more we seek to alleviate our loneliness through digital connectivity, the more lonely we will feel. Along the way, we will forsake solitude as a matter of course. Curiously, it may not even be loneliness as a desire for companionship that the design of social media fosters in us. Rather, it is a counterfeit longing that is generated: for stimulation rather than companionship. In the end, we will be left with the most profound loneliness: perpetually feeling a need for connection that we cannot satisfy and finding that we have not even our own company. To recap: no abiding sense of companionship, no solitude, no place for thought.”

— Michael Sacasas, “Solitude and Loneliness”

“I’m not Atlas, on any conceivable level.”

— Tom Belt, in a pithy, poetic expression of our dependency of God and others

“It’s almost as if sex is not just a meaningless commodity traded between the consenting but, in fact, is an act so deeply powerful that we should consider wrapping it in an institution of personal commitment and public accountability.”

— Matt Popovits

friend:

In the next chapter Jesus seems to switch from Salvation by “what they do” to belief in Him. In chapter 5 he indicates that he’ll raise people who did good deeds up to life and those who did bad deeds to judgement, and then in Chapter 6 it’s those who behold and believe in him that he’ll raise up….

A bit conflicting…How do I get raised up to life!?

Also while I was in the US, one of our leaders here gave a passionate talk about the evils of homosexuality and how the bible “clearly” states this is sin. So that is causing some waves…

Fun fun.

me:

Hi Ethan –

I find my eleventh-grade math-class logic lessons useful here. First of all, there is no p → q statement in John 6:40. It does not say, “If you see the Son and believe in him, then you will have eternal life and I will raise you up on the last day.” So no need to worry about that one. But, you’ll say, at least two other verses in the chapter can be formulated as such:...

“Being incarnate was an embarrassment, a design-fault that God may have intended in the Italians but surely not in the English.”

On the English supposed “quiet suspicion of sensuality” that he saw in the old English. It made me laugh out loud.

“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.”

This captures why my sexual ethics.

“Much as we should be grateful for the language and liturgy of the Anglican Church, we must deplore the weird interdiction which killed of polyphony at the very moment when Tallis and Byrd…had learned to rival Palestrina and Victoria in this supremely religious art form.”

The Anglicans outlawed...

friend:

If we’re to take 1 Corinthians 15:22 as making any sense at all, and if we agree that all have sinned/died (in Adam), how can we not end in Universalism?

To not end there is to make Adam more powerful than Christ.

In reply, I wrote:

me:

I suppose one might interpret “made alive” in a very literal sense, affirming that everyone will be resurrected, but allowing that some of those resurrected will be wholly condemned.

But yes, I agree with your take below. Romans 5:18 is very similar.

Have you read “Universalism and the Bible” by Yale philosopher Keith DeRose? Reading it was probably the last straw for me.