Archive for November, 2009
Be careful what you wish for
In his recent book, Stumbling on Happiness, Dan Gilbert cleverly and comically argues that we spend much time trying to provide for our future selves the things that we think they will want, only to find our future selves ungrateful and disappointed…
Identity in communion
The only way we can find ourselves is to deny ourselves. That’s Christ’s teaching. If you cling to yourself, you lose yourself. The unwillingness to forgive is the ultimate act of not wanting to let yourself go. You want to defend yourself, assert yourself, protect yourself. There is a consistent line through the Gospel — if you want to be the first you must will to be the last…
Justice and forgiveness
If a person is inspired by the spirit of God, he or she can forgive. But I’m not sure you can say that in general there is the feeling that forgiveness is of value. I have met people who would say, “I don’t care. I can go on and live my life; it really doesn’t matter to me. If I’m not bothering you and you aren’t bothering me, why be reconciled?” This is plain indifference…
Genuine love
Genuine Christian love is forged against the anvil of our selfishness and possessiveness… It is important to remember that love is more than a feeling. It is active and transitive. The real test of my loving is not that I feel loving, but that the other person feels loved by me. Love is what I do to create this sense of feeling cared for.
The American Psyche: Tipping Toward Solitude?
Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice? If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands – and that you aren’t caring for him properly.
God and Guinness
The company’s 250-year legacy of God-inspired good provides myriad lessons for today. Among them: A benevolent corporate vision is good for business, for its employees and for the world. Interwoven throughout these 2 and a half centuries of brewing success is a legacy of benevolence that we ought to know and that is perhaps an antidote to one of the great crises of our age.
Monastics: God’s radiomen
The monk departs far from the world not because he hates it, but because he loves it. In this way he will, through his prayer, help the world more in those matters that are, being humanly impossible, only possible by God’s intervention. This is how God saves the world…
Elder Paisios’ Machine
We should never, even under the worst circumstances, allow a negative thought to penetrate our soul. The person, who, under all circumstances, is inclined to positive thoughts, his life will be a constant festivity, since it is constantly based on his positive thinking. Our acts depend on and are determined by the “machine” we have inside us, and not by the “material” we digest, or the environment we live in. I will give you an example…
How about some Advent?
Maria von Trapp writes: Who can describe our astonishment, however, when a few days after our first Thanksgiving Day we heard from a loudspeaker in a large department store the unmistakable melody of “Silent Night”! Upon our excited inquiry, someone said, rather surprised: “What is the matter? Nothing is the matter. Time for Christmas shopping!” …
Radical economics – a mandate for the new church?
College students graduate with 10’s of thousands of dollars of debt, home ownership is a myth since few people stay long enough in the same home to own it, car leases, credit cards, etc. The US economy needs debt in order to be prosperous and that means it needs the public to hold that private corporate debt…
The Man Who Put the Rainbow in “The Wizard of Oz”
While academic debate persists over whether Baum intended the story as a political allegory about the rise of industrial monopolists like John D. Rockefeller and the subsequent populist backlash, there is no doubt that Harburg’s influence made the 1939 film version more political. The film, says Ernie Harburg, is about common people confronting and defeating seemingly insurmountable and violent oppression…
The Enlightenment and Evangelicals
One of the common complaints against traditional evangelicalism is that it has been held captive by a distinctly Western approach to rationality. The central target of this complaint is the “Enlightenment,” with its emphasis on reason to the detriment of revelation.
John 1 should blow your mind
This passage is often called the “prologue of John.” Some scholars once theorized that this section was a Hymn inserted based on the uniqueness of certain terms (logos and grace in the prologue that appear nowhere else in the Book). This idea doesn’t take into account much of the significance of this passage to the whole. The prologue in John sets the stage for the rest of the book. It shows the areas of focus John takes in Gospel…
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