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For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an ecentric manner of life. This doctrine of theirs has not been discovered by the ingenuity or deep thought of inquisitive men, nor do they put forward a merely human teachings, as some people do. Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike, as each [one's] lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of the remarkable and admittedly extraordinary constitution of their own commonwealth. They live in their own countries but only as aliens. They have have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their fatherland and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land… They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven.
— Letter to Diognetus, Early Christian Father
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A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
- From bondage to spiritual faith;
- From spiritual faith to great courage;
- From courage to liberty;
- From liberty to abundance;
- From abundance to complacency;
- From complacency to apathy;
- From apathy to dependence;
- From dependence back into bondage.
—Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, ~1770
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The unspoken assumption in nearly every Christian use of that phrase is that our cultural activity will change the world for the better. But why do we asume this? Changing the world sounds grand, until you consider how poorly we do even at changing our own little lives. On a daily basis we break our promises, indulge our addictions and rehearse old fantasies and grudges that even we know we’d be better off without. We have changed less about ourselves than we would like to admit. Who are we to charge off to change the world? …
If our excitement about changing the world leads us into the grand illusion that we stand somehow outside the world, knowing what’s best for it, tools and goodwill and gusto at the ready, we have not yet come to terms with the reality that the world has changed us far more than we will ever change it. Beware of world changers—they have not yet learned the true meaning of sin.
— Andy Crouch, Culture Making, pages 199-200
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Former Republican Presidential candidate weighs in on the Jeremiah Wright “noncontroversy.”
As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, “That’s a terrible statement,” I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I’m going to be probably the only conservative in America who’s going to say something like this, but I’m just telling you: We’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, “You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus.” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had … more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
- Mike Huckabee, offering his perspective on the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Source: MSNBC)
(HT: Brian McLaren)
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More often than not, we do too much because we are afraid of being judged as failures, we do not trust others to do their share, we wish to exclude alternative approaches, or we want to ensure that we remain unchallenged in the driver’s seat.
— Michael Casey, Strangers to the City, page 34.
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The primary engine of MySpace’s stupendous growth isn’t the Internet, but the fathomless narcissism of the young.
— Caitlin Flanagan, critic for “The Atlantic Monthly” in the July/August 2007 issue, critiquing Generation MySpace by Candice M Kelsey.
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“What is REAL?” asked the [Velveteen] Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”"Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
— From [tag]The Velveteen Rabbit[/tag] by [tag]Margery Williams[/tag]
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We should note that when [tag]Jesus prays[/tag] that we may all be one, he is not praying for some kind of sociological or theological or ecclesiological or liturgical [tag]unity[/tag]. He is not asking for a homogeneity that levels all diversity and brings plurality into a single “authorized†manifestation of the Christian life or community… Jesus is praying that you and I would live in a similar kind of relationship with God that he has as the revelation of true humanness in the image of God
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