Quotes: Augustine on the Gospel

via Randall Friesen

"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

- Augustine of Hippo, doctor of the early church

Obama Captures Oregon

The Oregonian is reporting Obama is leading 60 percent to 40 percent in partial returns.

"The numbers keep him on course toward what many political analysts say is an inevitable win and a matchup against Republican Sen. John McCain in November.

Oregon's vote count capped what has been the most closely watched primary in 40 years. As one of the last primary states in the nation, Oregon became a crucial battleground this spring, and voters from Medford to Pendleton got numerous up-close opportunities to see the contenders and their families.

Intense interest in the Obama-Clinton battle sparked the highest voter turnout in 32 years among Democrats. Election officials reported 63 percent of Democrats cast their ballots. Overall turnout, including Republicans, stood at 48 percent late Tuesday, with more than 1 million voters casting primary ballots."

The Shyness of God

this is via the Gauthiers....

The 'Shyness' of God

When the Son of God was on earth, one argument that broke out often among his followers was "Who's the greatest?" In our day, this line is most closely associated with Muhammad Ali, who once told a flight attendant that he refused to wear a seat belt because he was Superman and "Superman don't need no seat belt." Her response: "Superman don't need no airplane."

This is the original temptation ("You shall be as God"), and it continues to infect both families and small groups, congregations and denominations. Whenever we insist on our own way, take credit for a group's accomplishment, or walk away hurt because we weren't consulted, we're struggling with this form of self-centeredness and self-glorification.

By way of contrast, think about life within the Trinity. How do Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to each other? Are there lots of arguments over who's the most omniscient, the most omnipresent, or the oldest? In that absence there is a lesson.

Dale Bruner, in an essay on the Trinity, begins with the person of the Holy Spirit:

"One of the most surprising discoveries in my own study of the doctrine and experience of the Spirit in the New Testament is what I can only call the shyness of the Spirit …

What I mean here is not the shyness of timidity (cf. 2 Tim. 1:7) but the shyness of deference, the shyness of a concentrated attention on another; it is not the shyness (which we often experience) of self-centeredness, but the shyness of an other-centeredness.

It is, in short, the shyness of love. Bruner points out the ministry of the Spirit in the Gospel of John, a ministry constantly to draw attention not to himself but to the Son—the Spirit comes in the Son's name, bears witness to the Son, glorifies the Son (cf. John 14:26; 16:13)."

The ministry of the Spirit could be pictured, Bruner says, by my drawing a stick figure (representing Jesus) on a blackboard. Then, to express what the Spirit does, I stand behind the blackboard, reach around with one hand, and point with a single finger to the image of Jesus: "Look at him, listen to him, learn from him, follow him, worship him, be devoted to him, serve him, love him, be preoccupied with him." This is what Bruner calls the shyness of the Holy Spirit.

But when we look at the Son, oddly enough we see that he didn't walk around saying, "I am the greatest." He said, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing" (John 8:54). He said he came not to be served but to serve. He submitted to the Spirit, who Mark tells us "drove him into the wilderness." He told the Father in his climactic struggle, "not my will, but yours be done." Jesus, too, has this same "shyness."

Then there is the Father. Twice in the synoptic Gospels we hear the voice of the Father: once at baptism and again at the Transfiguration. Both times his words are a variation of this message: This is my priceless Son. I am deeply pleased with him. Listen to him! It is worth noticing, Bruner writes, that this voice does not say, "Listen to me too, after listening to him; don't forget that I'm here too; don't be taken up with my Son." Because "God the Father is shy, too. The whole blessed Trinity is shy. Each member of the Trinity points faithfully and selflessly to the other in a gracious circle."

I was raised in some ways to think of God as a proud, almost arrogant being who could get away with his pride because he was God. The doctrine of the Trinity tells me it is not so. God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit in a community of greater humility, servanthood, mutual submission, and delight than you and I can imagine. Three and yet One. Oneness is God's signature. The whole blessed Trinity is "shy."


It's not just in relation to one another but in relation to us that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—shows forth a stunning humility. For example, what cost does God pay for us to have fellowship with him?

The Son says, "I will leave heaven to come to earth." This is something more than leaving a really nice location (like southern California) for a less desirable one (Chicago). In some way we don't fully understand, the Son freely chooses to leave the perfect oneness he has known for all eternity, to become like human beings in their brokenness and aloneness, to die on a cross, and to experience what Luther called "godforsakenness": "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But it's not just the Son who pays a price. The Father says, "I will offer my Son whom I love beyond words. I will see him be broken and rejected and killed. I, who have known only perfect oneness with him through eternity, will take on the anguish of estrangement. I will know the broken heart of a father."

And the Holy Spirit pays a price as well. The Spirit says, "I will be poured out on earth, and in mostly silent, invisible ways I will offer to lead and guide; never exalting myself, always pointing to the Son." To a large extent, the Spirit's promptings will be ignored or even denied. The Spirit will be quenched on Earth. The Spirit, to use New Testament language, will be grieved. The Spirit had never known grief through all eternity, but he will be grieved now, day after day, century after century. The Spirit says, "This price I will pay so that any who will might enter our fellowship."

Of course, comprehensive information about the inner life of the Trinity is beyond our grasp. Attributing to Trinity human kinds of emotions—like all our language for God—involves analogies at best. Still, there is a biblical sense in which God is anguished by the unbelief of his people, such as the wonderful reversal in Hosea 11: After a wrenching description of Israel's faithlessness and deserved judgment, the Lord says, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?"

Occasionally Christians—even those who have been in the faith for many years—wonder why the doctrine of the Trinity matters all that much. Dallas Willard writes,

"The advantage of believing in the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for giving the right answer. Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so. To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many apples or dollars are in the house. The advantage of believing it is not that we can pass tests in arithmetic; it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality.

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that at the core of reality lies not an isolated self but a community of humble love. So self-serving and disunity are not just wrong but doomed. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, this reality is like the law of gravity—we can never break it, we can only break ourselves against it."

---John Ortberg


Concluding Prayer

O God and Father, by sending the Word of truth
and the Spirit of holiness into the world
you revealed to mankind the great mystery of your being.
Grant that we may profess the true faith,
acknowledge the eternal glory of the Trinity,
and worship your Unity of majestic power.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever.
Amen.

Meditation for Worship: Trinity Sunday, 2008

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...I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I bind unto myself this day
the strong name of the Trinity.
The Creator’s gifts of earth and sky,
the flowing creeks and fertile land,
the winter sun and summer moon,
the roaring sea and golden sand.

I bind unto myself this day
the Christ who wears our human clay.
The Baby sleeping in a stall,
the Healer touching our disease,
the Man of love upon the Cross,
the risen Friend who hears our pleas.

I bind unto myself this day
the Spirit who is here to stay.
The Breath that makes the broken whole,
the Truth that flows like liquid light,
the Wind that sweeps my dusty soul,
the Fire that warms the darkest night.

I bind unto myself this day
the Fellowship that’s our mainstay.
The Grace that holds us all in thrall,
the Love than links us one and all,
the Peace that sweeps away our fears,
the Joy that wipes away all tears.

From now unto infinity,
The strong name of the Trinity.
( B D Prewer. Inspired by St Patrick)

Laminin and Colossians 1:15-17

My uncle just passed this on to me from a friend of his:

A couple of days ago I was watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio...and I was BLOWN AWAY! I want to share what I learned....but I fear not being able to convey it as well as I want. I will share anyway.

He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is...how He spoke the universe into being...how He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire...etc. etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinating from a medical standpoint, you know.) .....and I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God's handiwork. I remember so many times thinking....'How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this???'

Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart...how our loving Creator is also our sustainer.

And then I lost my breath.
And it wasn't because I was running my treadmill, either!!!
It was because he started talking about laminin.
I knew about laminin. Here is how wikipedia describes them :'Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue.' You see....laminins are what hold us together....LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what laminin LOOKED LIKE.

But now I do.
And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)....
Here is what the structure of laminin looks like...AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it....if you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see...




Now tell me that our God is not the coolest!!!
Amazing.
The glue that holds us together....ALL of us....is in the shape of the cross.
Immediately Colossians 1:15-17 comes to mind.

'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth , visible and invisible,
whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things,
and in him all things HOLD TOGETHER. '

Colossians 1:15-17


Call me crazy. I just think that is very, very, very cool.
Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin, Paul penned those words. And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint, we are held together...one cell to another....by the cross.

You would never in a quadrillion years convince me that is anything other than the mark of a Creator who knew EXACTLY what laminin 'glue' would look like long before Adam even breathed his first breath!!

We praise YOU, Lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JoVeta Wescott
Ex. Dir. Kansas Parish Nurse Ministry, Inc.
www.KansasParishNurseMinistry.org

Now, like Thomas, I am not one to accept things without a bit more evidence. So I did a brief google search, and found corroboration
here, here, here

and most incredibly, here.

May those who have eyes to see praise Him.

Do What Now

"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine..." yeah, I know I'm dating myself; but in those days we memorized everything in AV.
Anyway, I chanced upon this blog, and chuckled all the way down memory lane.

DO WHAT NOW
In which retro-obsessed nerd Jim Dunn indulges his taste for musty old magazines, horrid cookbooks and truly frightening design books. Click on pictures to embiggenate. Click the author link to tell me how lame I am. Enjoy.

People of the Lie

Years ago I read a book by M. Scott Peck called People of the Lie. In it Peck, a psychiatrist, "describes the stories of several people who came to him whom he found particularly resistant to any form of help. He came to think of them as evil goes on to describe to describe the characteristics of evil in psychological terms, proposing that it could become a psychiatric diagnosis."

Peck tells the haunting story of a troubled boy, brought to him by his parents for evaluation. Horrible enough to read that his brother committed suicide, but incredibly, Peck goes on to reveal that for the boy's birthday, his parents gave him, as a gift, the same gun his brother used to kill himself. It is this sort of evil that defies natural explanation.

Here is Michael Covel's summary:

The central defect of 'the evil' is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it. More often than not these people will be looked at as solid citizens. How can that be? How can they be evil and not designated as criminals? The key word is designated. They are criminals in that they commit crimes against life and liveliness...their crimes are so subtle and covert that they cannot clearly be designated as crimes. The theme of hiding and covertness will occur again and again throughout the rest of this book. It is the basis for the title People of the Lie.

Evil deeds do not make an evil person. Otherwise we would all be evil. If evil people cannot be defined by the illegality of their deeds or the magnitude of their sins, then how are we to define them? The answer is by the consistency of their sins. While usually subtle, their destructiveness is remarkably consistent. This is because those who have crossed over the line are characterized by their absolute refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness.

The poor in spirit do not commit evil. Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their own motives, who worry about betraying themselves. The evil of this world is committed by the spiritual fat cats, by the Pharisee's of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of significant self-examination. It is out of their failure to put themselves on trial that their evil arises. They are, in my experience remarkably greedy people.

A predominant characteristic of the behavior that I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach them. They sacrifice others to preserve their self-image of perfection
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Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words image, appearance and outwardly are crucial to understanding the morality of 'the evil'. While they lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is in effect a lie. Actually the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. At one and the same time 'the evil' are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness. We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves. The wickedness of 'the evil' is not committed directly, but indirectly as a part of this cover-up process.

Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it.

It often happens then that 'the evil' may be recognized by its very disguise. Because they are such experts at disguise, it is seldom possible to pinpoint the maliciousness of 'the evil'. The disguise is usually impenetrable.

They are not pain avoiders or lazy people in general. To the contrary, they are likely to exert themselves more than most in their continuing effort to obtain and maintain an image of respectability. They may willingly, even eagerly, undergo great hardships in their search for status. It is only one particular pain they cannot tolerate: the pain of their own conscience, the pain of realization of their own sinfulness and imperfection.

They are men and women of obviously strong will, determined to have their own way. There is a remarkable power in the manner in which they attempt to control others.

Those who are evil are masters of disguise; they are not apt to wittingly disclose their true colors - either to others or to themselves. It is not without reason that the serpent is renowned for his subtlety. We therefore cannot pass judgment on a person for a single act. Instead judgment must be made on the basis of a whole pattern of acts as well as their manner and style.

Think of the psychic energy required for the continued maintenance of the pretense so characteristic of 'the evil'! They perhaps direct at least as much energy into their devious rationalizations and destructive compensations as the healthies do into loving behavior. Why? What possesses them, drives them? Basically, it is fear. They are terrified that the pretense will break down and they will be exposed to the world and to themselves.

Evil people would be distinguished by these traits:
1.) Consistent destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle.
2.) Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury.

3.) Pronounced concern with a public image and self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of lifestyle but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives.

4.) Intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophrenic-like disturbance of thinking at times of stress.

If Peck's description of "evil" is accurate, I think I might have come upon one of the first truly evil people I have ever known. Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison; Kyrie eleison.

The SLU Center for Liturgy

here is a wonderful resource courtesy of our brothers and sisters at St. Louis University.

I only spent one semester at SLU but it was fantastic.