And the thing is, the list doesn’t erase the heartache, it just sits next to it. The good God works out is an AND, not an OR. So often, I think we feel like we have to deny the bad to find the good. And I just don’t think that’s right.
From Joanne Heim
This ‘heresy’ has created the impression that it is quite reasonable to be a “vampire Christian.” One in effect says to Jesus: “I’d like a little of your blood, please. But I don’t care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won’t you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I’ll see you in heaven.” But can we really imagine that this is an approach that Jesus finds acceptable?
From “Why Bother With Discipleship” by Dallas Willard (HT Leah Klug)
What can a parent do then?
Get “radical,” Dean says.
She says parents who perform one act of radical faith in front of their children convey more than a multitude of sermons and mission trips. A parent’s radical act of faith could involve something as simple as spending a summer in Bolivia working on an agricultural renewal project or turning down a more lucrative job offer to stay at a struggling church, Dean says.
But it’s not enough to be radical — parents must explain “this is how Christians live,” she says.”If you don’t say you’re doing it because of your faith, kids are going to say my parents are really nice people,” Dean says. “It doesn’t register that faith is supposed to make you live differently unless parents help their kids connect the dots.”
From Kenda Creasy’s new book, Almost Christian, via CNN
Multitasking has been normalized. It is costly to the soul,” he said.
From Jennifer Grant at Her.meneutics
Recent msnbc.com headline: “Is Text Messaging Ruining People’s Lives?” accompanied by a picture of Tiger Woods. Yeah. It’s clearly the text messaging.
From a Facebook satus update from my friend, Josh Staub.
Q: So every Christian is called to be a pacifist?
Q: So how do you respond to people who say that’s unrealistic?
A: Try lifelong monogamous fidelity in marriage. Do you think that’s
realistic? Yet we do it. I’m not terribly cowed by the charge of being
unrealistic.
From an RNS interview with Stanley Hauerwas
“No, the one who in love forgets himself, forgets his suffering, in order to think of someone else’s, forgets all his misery in order to think of someone else’s, forgets what he himself loses in order lovingly to bear in mind someone else’s loss, forgets his advantage in order lovingly to think of someone else’s – truly, such a person is not forgotten. There is one who is thinking about him: God in heaven…The self-lover is busy; he shouts and makes a big noise and stands on his rights in order to make sure he is not forgotten- and yet he is forgotten. But the one who loves, who forgets himself, is recollected by love. There is One who is thinking of him…”
Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (read this in the comments section of one of Eugene Cho’s blog posts)
Doug has been working on a few assignments for an Ethics class he took at Fuller last month, and occasionally he will email me snippets of what he is reading. Last night, he sent the following:
“If conversion should be a turning to God and neighbor…then we must ask ourselves whether we perhaps do not show greater respect to images made of wood than to human beings who are living images of God. We must ask ourselves whether we are not more courteous to images than to the human beings who are sunk in ignorance, sorrow, poverty, and slavery.”
-Bishop Leonidas Proaño