“The ceiling of the room where the cocktail party was held was thickly covered with numerous chandeliers, the hotel ballroom kind of chandelier, and with all of them putting out the kind of light you might see at the lower wattage end of a brown out. The lights, however, were not flickering, which made you realize that somebody was doing it all on purpose. Despite the lighting, and perhaps because of it, the room was filled with major media figures, television personalities, editors and other detritus from the publishing world, a handful of decrepit rock stars, and throbbing electropop. Oom cha oom cha oom cha. Oh, and money. The room was full of money in very adult amounts, Manhattan scale, while the crackling envy and flirtation levels were all still stuck in junior high, Hoboken scale. The ‘atrocious lighting,’ as Dr. Tom summed it up, made it look like one of Dante’s circles done up in sepia tones.”
All the Time
“I am not an American for six days and a Christian for one. Rather, I am a baptized Christian all the time, a husband all the time, a father all the time, a neighbor all the time, and a citizen all the time. And I have to figure out the hierarchical layers of these responsibilities, …
Decorating Camels
[Speaking of Greg Boyd’s view of cultural engagement] “In other words, the kingdoms of this world are an ugly camel, and will always be an ugly camel. Moreover, this dichotomy flattens the world outside the Church, meaning that all camels are more or less camels, and are more or less equally ugly. But Boyd allows …
More Than Good Intentions
“Many who claim to love Jesus with their theology hate the poor with their economics, and I think we should stop being okay with that” (Rules, p. 242).
Just One Battle
“Conservatives discourage easily because without a robust eschatology every battle is the entire war” (Rules, p. 205).
A Crown in Mind
“Our faith is tried because God is a goldsmith. When the goldsmith plunges gold into the fire, it is not because he hates the gold, but because he loves the gold enough to want to purify it of its dross. When the goldsmith beats the gold, it is not because he has contempt for the …
A Tool Chest Full of Excuses
“Failure to look these facts straight in the eye will tend, inexorably, to transform the claims of theocracy into ecclesiocracy, and from that into a separated ecclesiocracy. And when our separated ecclesial community gets out to the woods of Montana, we will not practice homosexual marriage among ourselves out there. But we will have absolutely …