Volume 5 Issue 4 ~~April 12, 2000
Food for Thought
From the beginning of recorded history, religious institutions and the priesthood in nurturing and ministering to this basic human need have all to frequently preyed upon, perverted, prostituted, and misled this impulse in [people]. It is not insignificant that, with all their betrayals, this longing in [people] to praise and adore has persisted. And again and again it has purified itself. - D. V. Steere, Prayer and Worship p. 45
Decency is veiled from sight; indecency exposed to view. Scenes of evil attract packed audiences; good works scarcely find and listeners. -St. Augustine, City Of God, Bk2 Ch26
Discipleship...requires not just good deeds. It requires integrity and purity of heart such as one sees in Jesus himself. --New Interpreter's Bible Volume IX, p. 151
Justice being taken away, then, what are
kingdoms but gangs of criminals? For
what are criminals gangs themselves, but petty kingdoms? A gang
itself is made
up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a leader, it is knit
together by a
compact of association in which the plunder is divided according
to an agreed on convention. -St. Augustine,
City Of God, Bk4 Ch4
[I]n [Meister] Echart's day, in the fourteenth century, we hear of an old woman who was seen coming along the streets of Strasbourg carrying a pail of water in one hand and a touch in the other? When asked what she was about, she answered that with the pail of water she was going to put out the flames of hell and with the torch she was going to burn up heaven, so that in the future [people] could love God for [God]self alone and not out of fear of hell or out of craving for reward. -D. V. Steere, Prayer and Worship p.11
Truth to one's own nature is the most important secret of all. Honesty starts within yourself. Examine yourself and what you have done, what you believe in, what you desire to do. Put aside a small part of the day for such thoughts. If you are unhappy, work out the true cause of your unhappiness, because in knowing the cause we can generally correct the fault. -Collin Spenser, The Gay Kama Sutra, p.31-33
God knows all things before they come to
pass, and that we do
by our own free will everything that we feel we know would not
happen without our volition. We do not say that all things come
to pass by fate;
in fact we affirm that nothing comes to pass by fate. -St. Augustine, City Of God, Bk5 Ch9
"Nature," as we often call it today, is not divine, but it is sacred. It does not and cannot exist apart from god and God's renewing breath.... Ecology and theology are inseparable... [C]concern for the environment begins with praising God.... But such a starting point- and it's underlying conviction that the world belongs to God- is the only thing that will dislodge our arrogant assumption the we can save the world, as if it were ours to save!...[T]o serve God will mean ultimately to serve God's creation. -J. Clinton McCann Jr., New Interpreter's Bible Volume IV, p. 1099-1100
Wherefore even the praises of Cato are only
applicable to a
few; for only a few were possessed of that virtue which leads
men to
pursue after glory, honor, and power by the true way, - that is,
by virtue
itself. This industry at home, of which Cato speaks, was the consequence
of a desire to enrich the public treasury, even though the result
should be
private fortunes remaining strained; and therefore, when he speaks
of the evil arising out of the corruption of morals, he reverses
the expression, and says, "The public purse is empty, while
the private pockets well lined." -St.
Augustine, City Of God, Bk5 Ch12
"Certainly, the practices preformed in secret by [them] is their affair." St. Augustine, City Of God, Bk6 Ch7 speaking about 'those castrated pervets' of the stage.
Truly in the day of judgment, we shall not be examined as to what we have read but as to what we have done...Yet I am bold to suggest that they will discover in the end that they cannot afford to despense with it... It is not going to far to suggest that every individual who pursues [one's] search for spiritual illumination with sufficient persistence finally finds [one]self obliged to leave secular literature behind [them]. - D. V. Steere, Prayer and Worship p.52f
When it comes to the maintenance of a cosmic order, God requires no [hu]man's assistance; but when it comes to the achievement of a historic justice and peace, [God] is necessarily dependent, to some extent, upon human co-operation. Hence this view of God's activity in history leaves the Christian with a goading conviction that, confronted with a situation that is plunging millions of [one's] fellows into a black abyss of misery and despair, [one] simply cannot look on and do nothing, unless [one] is capable of deserting and betraying God. -E. F. Tittle, Christian in an Unchristian Society p.9-10
Love Explains
-Life Applicatiaon Bible
No generation of Christians-not even our own!-may hope to devise plans for the construction of society that will be valid for all time. There is and can be no political state, no economic system that may claim to represent the only pattern that is compatible with the mind of Christ. -E. F. Tittle, Christian in an Unchristian Society p.18
Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. - Saint Jerome
Human attitude towards material possessions is, of course, not wholly determined by the economic order in which people live. In any "order" or "system" [people] may develop that love of money that has been declared to be the root of all evil. It may, however, be said that modern society, to an extraordinary degree, has fostered the belief that material possessions are "the supreme object of human endeavor and final criterion of human success"-a belief that must be repugnet to God. -E. F. Tittle, Christian in an Unchristian Society p.23
Great [people] are they who see that spiritual
is stronger than any material
force; that thoughts rule the world.
-R. W. Emerson.
The means of violence are inherently unsuited to achievement of any good end... The use of violence involves two assumptions. One that I am rational but you are not. The other is that you are a sinner but I am not.... The means of violence are tragically incompatible with the nature and purpose of God. For the nature of God is love and the purpose of God calls for the development of human beings who will freely choose what is true, right, and good....It may, however, be doubted that this is a tenable position. Christians, of course, have no moral right to acquiesce in injustice; they are morally bound to condemn it and to do all they can to correct it. But surely they are not bound, in their attempt to correct it, to use methods that seem to them to be unwise, unchristian, and ultimately ineffectual. -E. F. Tittle, Christian in an Unchristian Society p.35f
Whether one likes it or not, what one produces is finally the product of what one is. -John Nolland, WBC 39A, p.309
Christendom, judged by the mind of Christ, has never been Christian. -E. F. Tittle, Christian in an Unchristian Society p.42
Salvation and justice are not to be found in revolution, but in evolution through concord. Violence has always achieved only destruction, not construction; the kindling of passions, not their pacification of the contending parties. And it has reduced [people] and parties to the difficult task of rebuilding, after sad experience, on the ruins of discord. -- Pope Pius XII, June 13th, 1943
Theocracy is of all dictatorships the most
terrible. Never is absolute power so ruthlessly exercised as in
the hands of a [person] who honestly believes that [they are]
giving voice to the will of god, as John Calvin and Adolph Hitler
have made abundantly clear. -E. F.
Tittle, Christian in an Unchristian Society p.58
Shy people don't need to become extroverts in order to love others. John isn't telling us how many people to love, but how much to love the people we already know. Our job is to love faithfully the people God has given us to love, whether there are two or two hundred of them. If God sees that we are ready to love others, he will bring them to us. No matter how shy we are, we don't need to be afraid of the love commandment. God provides us the strength to do what he asks. -Life Applicatiaon Bible, on 1John 4
By meditation we preach to ourselves, and
so we come to understand more than our
teachers, for we come to understand our own hearts, which they
cannot. -Matthew Henry, on Psalm 119:99
To love one another is the only authentication that we know God! -New Oxford Annotated Bible
But the just person, even one who dies an untimely death, will be at rest. Being perfected in a short time, they fulfilled long years; for their souls were pleasing to the Lord, therefore he took them quickly from the midst of wickedness. Yet the peoples saw and did not understand, or take such a thing to heart, that God's grace and mercy are with his elect, and that he watches over his holy ones. -Wisdom 4:7, 13-15
Always live in awareness of God's existence... I do not propose that we return to [the laws of the Old Testament]-reminders to the Jewish people that this world revolves around God, not us. Nevertheless, I do believe we have much to learn from a people whose daily lives centered on God. -Philip Yancey, THE BIBLE JESUS READ
[H]uman beings "are to love God for sure," writes Norman Pittenger, "but their loving God is expressed practically and immediately in a loving relationship with other human beings." For Pittenger, this relationship maybe a homosexual as well as heterosexual one. What is really important is the quality of the relationship, not its method of expression. -Tom Horner Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Biblical Times, p. 107
Hear the words of one possessed by the Spirit
'Peace be with you, peace be with you; peace be with those who
help you! For your God has helped you!'(1Ch 12:19) Now this words
of old were spoke to King David but how much more to us children
of God who like David, live in a time of uncertainty, not always
sure who is on our side. It is time such as these we remember
the great hymn of St. Paul in Romans (8:31-39) : ' After saying
this, what can we add? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Since he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for the sake
of all of us, then can we not expect that with him he will freely
give us all his gifts? Who can bring any accusation against those
that God has chosen? When God grants saving justice who can condemn?
Are we not sure that it is Christ Jesus, who died - yes and more,
who was raised from the dead and is at God's right hand - and
who is adding his plea for us? Can anything cut us off from the
love of Christ - can hardships or distress, or persecution, or
lack of food and clothing, or threats or violence; as scripture
says: For your sake we are being massacred all day long, treated
as sheep to be slaughtered?
No; we come through all these things triumphantly victorious,
by the power of him who loved us. For I am certain of this: neither
death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already
in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, nor the
heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be
able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ
Jesus our Lord. ' We are marked and sealed in Christ, no one can
condemn us and no one or thing can separate us from God's love.
We know that many condemn others for worshiping wrong, for loving
wrong, and for numerous heresies (literally foolish questions).
But let us receive that peace, because God will allow nothing
to separate us from God's great love.
Don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them; I never did anything at school, I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theater yesterday, talking to you now-- I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it--and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die--I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which--thank God, and thank you--is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before." -E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
Love is blind, but marriage restores one's vision. -- Italian proverb
There is no greater intimacy with another
than that which is built up through holding [one] up in prayer.
-D. V. Steere, Prayer and Worship p.31
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