Happy Birthday, Mother Teresa

Today, in 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born. We know her better as Mother Teresa. Here is one of my favorite quotes: ""It is a great poverty to decide that a child must die so that you might live as you wish."

GKC wrote, "It is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most." Mother Teresa would certainly be a contender for such a saint. Her compassion and sacrifice stand as a testimony to Christ against the world's self-absorption and greed.

QUOTES: Freeman Dyson's response to Steven Weinberg

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion." --Steven Weinberg

"Weinberg's statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add an additional clause: 'And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion.' The main point of Christianity is that it is a religion for sinners. Jesus made that very clear. When the Pharisees asked his disciples, 'Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?' he said, 'I come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.' Only a small fraction of sinners repent and do good things but only a small fraction of good people are led by their religion to do bad things." --Freeman Dyson

QUOTE: On the National Debt

"My advice to Congress. If your car is spinning on the ice don't slam on the brakes or you'll flip it. Steer into it to get control of the vehicle." --Brad B.

QUOTE: My name is Kevin and I'm a Kataphatic

There are spiritual personalities, just like there are psychological personalities. Barbara Mujica of Georgetown University writes, "Apophatic or 'negative' spirituality stresses interiority, 'imageless-ness,' and 'wordlessness.' Kataphatic, or 'postive' spirituality is image-driven and uses analogies to speak of God."  Postmodernists tend to be apophatic; stressing difference, how God is "not like" things. This has caused great alarm from Reformed quarters. I think there is a place for both: it's not an either/or.  However,  my natural temperment is kataphatic. Kevin, I think you've got a point there!

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes; we do see through a glass dimly; we do not fully understand; we don't know God as God knows Himself; our words can't capture the essence of God. God is greater than we can conceive- but what about the 1,189 chapters in the Bible? Don't they tell us lots of things about God that we are supposed to do more with than doubt and not understand? Aren't the Scriptures written so that we might believe and be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see and even proclaim this faith to others?"


 -- Kevin DeYoung,  Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be  (p. 123-124)

 

QUOTE: Jonathan Wilson, 11-5-09

At bottom, I would rather be the last liturgist to blow out the candle than the first evangelist to lead a cat in prayer. But that's just me.

--Jonathan Wilson, on Abet

QUOTE: Oswald Chambers on knowing God

Ann posted this on Facebook:

My vision of God is dependent upon the condition of my character. My character determines whether or not truth can even be revealed to me." (ouch!) - O. Chambers

Sogn wrote:
Is one's decision to believe in Christ dependent upon the condition of one's character? I guess that's Arminianism, but some would say it at least borders on Pelagianism.

I wrote:

Isn't this the case for all knowing, and not just religious truth? Ask any counselor!

If I have a character that is obstinate and self-centered, I may not be able to receive some truths about my relationship with my spouse. If I am a notorious gossiper, or prone to be jealous, I may not be entrusted with some information that I otherwise might be given.

Similarly, if I have a character which is humble, trustworthy, generous and forgiving,, others may tend to reveal all manner of things to me, knowing that I will not betray them, or use their words against them.

Why, then, shouldn't it be the same regarding truth about God, who as Trinity is super- personal?

Mulling on this further, perhaps that is also part of what Jesus meant in Luke 18:15-17

People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

We consider infants to be innocent, because they have no developed intellectual and moral virtues and vices. They certainly have personalities, but their character is yet to be formed. Babies are not so much blank slates as empty cups. Perhaps that is what makes them better able to receive the Lord and perhaps that is also what it means for us to be "born again:" to have a new start, a new foundation, a new openness to receive the Truth, Who is Good and Beautiful, the One who IS, and to grow in Him.

Check out the Society of Christian Philosophers website. Some great quotes on the masthead. I especially am fond of the ones by these women: St.Teresa of Avila, Eleanore Stump, and Marilyn McCord Adams.

QUOTES: Tolkien on faith

"Faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act."

--quoted by Bradley Bizer in Christianity Today, 12/01/02

QUOTES: Chesterton on love, forgiveness, faith and hope

“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”

--G. K. Chesterton (English Critic, Essayist, Novelist and Poet, 1874-1936)

QUOTES: Ghandi on the roots of violence

via Ann on Facebook:
It's cool when my daughter sends me this link: sixty years ago Gandhi said the roots of all forms of violence are:

"Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice."

Here's another favorite Ghandi quote of mine:

“You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of good literature.”

QUOTE: Barack Obama, 2-24-09

"...In a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job — our job — is to solve the problem. Our job is to govern with a sense of responsibility."

--Barack Obama, in his first address to Congress

With a few changes, couldn't this be spoken to the church? "...we cannot afford to minister out of anger, or yield to the outlook of the moment."

What do you think?

QUOTES: from John Maynard Keynes

Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests which are dangerous for good or evil.


--John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

(Thanks to Joanna for bringing this quote to my attention.)

40ft stack of books sculpture at the Berlin Walk of Ideas. The Walk of Ideas is a set of six sculptures made for the 2006 FIFA World Cup football event at Berlin in Germany. The set of sculptures was unveiled on 21 April 2006 at Bebelplatz, a square near the Unter den Linden, at the entrance to Humboldt University. The exhibition was part of the event entitled, Welcome to Germany, the land of ideas and the opening of the exhibition was covered by reporters for the international mass media. The sculptures were displayed until September 2006. (via Wikipedia

QUOTES: Avery Dulles on Faith and Reason

A friend recently asked me what I thought of Barth. I confessed that most of what I knew of him was secondhand, but that he was against natural theology. That is, he upheld a strict division between nature and grace, and therefore a radical division between faith and reason. I ought to read Barth, as he is such an important theologian, but I must admit that doing so feels like a chore. Perhaps I suffer from a "commitment to rationality?" ; )

"A sympathetic Protestant critic of Catholicism, Langdon Gilkey, holds that the drive towards rationality has been one of the distinctive strengths of Catholic Christianity. While making certain reservations, he praises Roman Catholicism for its insistence that the revealed mysteries must be as far as possible ‘penetrated, defended, and explicated by the most acute rational reflection.’ This commitment to rationality has prevented Catholicism, generally speaking, from falling into ‘revelational positivism’ (the fault of which Dietrich Bonhoeffer accused Karl Barth) and the kind of anti-intellectual fundamentalism so prevalent in some sectors of the United States today. Catholic Christianity, valuing both faith and reason, accepts the necessary tensions involved in working out a synthesis that does justice to both."–Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987),53.

“Faith and reason are like the shoes on your feet – you can go further with both than with either by itself.”(--J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5 episode, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars")

QUOTES: More great Chesterton quotes

"To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once."

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."

"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist."

"There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people."

"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. "

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

"Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind."

QUOTES: On music and opera

St. Cecelia, by J. W. Waterhouse. 1895.

"A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become."
-W. H. Auden

"I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts."
-Franco Zeffirelli

"Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process."
-Lord Kenneth Clark

more here

QUOTES: "God hates visionary dreaming."

Guess who wrote this? Hint: he died for what he believed.

"Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.

A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of
Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves this dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians which his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Living Together

What do you think of this? It certainly challenges the prevailing evangelical and philosophical winds. I found the comments on this blog helpful in appreciating Bonhoeffer's text.

QUOTES: On holding on to things

Once we wrap our hands around something to hold onto it, our hearts become as small as the thing we are clutching.

--Anthony Bloom



Mir ist zumut,
dass ich die Schwache von allem Zeitlichen recht spiiren muss,
bis in mein Herz hinein, wie man nichts halten soli,
wie man nichts packen kann,
wie alles zerlauft zwischen den Fingern,
alles sich auflost,
wonach wir greifen,
alles zergeht wie Dunst und Traum...

...Leicht muss man sein,
mit leichtem Herz und leichten Händen halten und nehmen,
halten und lassen . . .
Die nicht so sind, die straft das Leben, und Gott erbarmt sich ihrer nicht.

--the Marschellin, Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, Act I

Prophetic Distance

"You cannot speak powerfully and objectively to a man if you desperately need something from him. You will bend your message to please him in order to obtain whatever you need from him—praise, money, acceptance, or access for example. To speak truth, particularly the truth of God, you must maintain prophetic distance."

--Stephen Mansfield, http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK1SDJ2X1NHT0RV

QUOTES: Augustine on Luke 12:12-21

Image by Hugh Dyer

Greed wants to divide, just as love desires to gather.

--St. Augustine, Sermon 265.9

My default image of greed is that of a miser surrounded by as many coins and dollar bills as he can get. But Augustine forces me to refine my image and my speech. Misers do not gather, they hoard. On the other hand, hens do not hoard, they gather their chicks under their wings.

Lord, teach me the difference between hoarding and gathering, and help me to a person who unites, rather than separates or scatters.

Quotes: Private profits, socialized losses

Overheard: Tom's comment on Eugene Cho's blog...

In our current capitalist systems, the profits of big business are privatized, while their losses are socialized."

--Brazilian president Lula da Silva