July 2010
21 posts
“Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn...”
– Richard P. Feynman, in the wonderful “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
“I thanked him for the explanation; now I understood it. I have to understand...”
– Richard Feynman, in “Surely you’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
6 tags
The Inconvenience of Love
A discussion recently (with someone I’ll leave anonymous) touched on my idealism and young naïveté, and how when I get a job and live in the real world, my attitudes will change. A particular exchange made me stop and think. And I want to be clear: I’m not criticizing this position or this person, and this is hardly meant to be completely representative of either. The exchange just...
Beck V. Cone: A Case for Reading Theologians... →
azspot:
I watched the Glenn Beck episode last week on Liberation Theology; I probably watch the Beck show three times a week at least (probably about the same for The Ed Show on MSNBC). Both of their bully pulpits are just fascinating to me for some reason. So Beck picked out the best quotes that he could from Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power and made it seem like it was just the worst...
“The church’s tendency to define and highlight gender distinctions between men...”
– Lisa Baumert (via azspot) (via zurik)
Man, I’m so glad Mark Driscoll is in my backyard. Ugh. Fuller (and worse) quote from the 2008 Church Leadership booklet is here, and the broken source link there should go here. Best part not above? Because Cosmo and its ilk exists, it’s obvious...
To Zurik's Anonymous Asker
Or anyone, really. I’m always up for a chat about such things.
I’ve done a lot of processing and struggling and thinking in dealing with the conservative literalism that I grew up in, am a huge fan of Zurik as well, and am always glad to talk to others dealing with the same thing. If you’d like to chat or e-mail, you can ask at the link above, or on this post. I’ve also...
2 tags
“I don’t have a problem with the Church taking a tougher line against those...”
– Damian Thompson, in The Daily Telegraph (via The Week)
“But the disturbing consequence of making Christianity all about MY personal...”
– Julie Clawson (via azspot)
Past is Prologue: Glenn Beck's "Rally for America"... →
azspot:
Had Beck been a public figure at the time of King’s famous speech, there is little doubt on “which side of history” he would have stood: the same side as every other far-rightwing Mormon. Had they been contemporaries, Beck would have condemned King as a “progressive cockroach” surrounded by communists, or as an outright communist himself. We know this not only because he has imported...
4 tags
One-word Theology
I’ve been thinking: it would be an interesting experiment to express your theology, in one, two, three, words. Maybe keep going for a bit, adding a word at a time. But start with one. I’ve started mine, but the later ones will probably change as I think about them more. But before you read my post, if you want to venture into it, what would yours look like? What is your theology,...
One Thing You Can Do Today to Help The Homeless →
azspot:
But today, I have one simple thing you can do. It will cost you less than $5 and it has two parts:
Buy a case of bottled water and put it in your car.
Give a bottle of water to people you see outside holding signs.
Thanks for the reminder - I’ll pick some up on the way back from work tomorrow. Especially with summer rolling around.
Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church
I believe that there simply isn’t definitive enough Biblical mandate against committed homosexual relationships to justify anything less than embracing our homosexual brothers and sisters as God created them, and loving them for who they are, and that there certainly isn’t enough to justify excluding or condemning them. I don’t see sexuality as any different at the core than the...
“When we refer to “the biblical approach to economics” or “the biblical approach...”
– Rachel Held Evans (via azspot)
Wow. “We’re using the Bible as a weapon disguised as an adjective.”
“Hell is negotiable, Heaven is abstract, but death we know all too much about.”
– Graham Isaac, in his poem at the Poetry Slam last night at Re-bar.
“It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy...”
– Martin Luther King Jr. (via irresistiblerevolution)
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
– J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, after the same nuclear test.
(I couldn’t just leave Feynman’s quote alone, especially when this was tugging at my mind.)
“After the thing went off, there was tremendous excitement at Los Alamos....”
– Richard Feynman, on the first detonation of an atomic bomb, in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
“America is currently fighting two wars, and very strange wars they are....”
– Eleanor Stevens (via azspot) 