Who Needs REAL CLEAR RELIGION?

I can go weeks without reading it and not miss a thing, kind of like this blog.

Radical? You Can't Handle The Radical

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And neither could they, which is why only a faint glimmer of the real man peeks out of the literary remains.

The New Testament is a box into which they stuffed the earnest Jewish boy who took himself a little too seriously and got himself killed. A nice neat little box where God can be kept and put safely on a shelf, where he no longer causes any embarrassment, or any trouble.

There are no authentic followers of Jesus today, just as there were none then.

Following, repentance, being a disciple, pick your favorite locution. They are all predicated on the imminent end of the world, without which there is no urgency:

to abandon customary human decency and let the dead bury the dead,

to subsume traditional family relationships under a wider set of mothers, sisters and brothers,

to say goodbye to everything that you own . . . without fanfare,

to risk making the members of your own household your enemies,


to preach so desperately quickly that Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

Even in the Passion Narrative, which retools him from the later perspective of a sacrifice for sins, the inadequacy of his followers "following" is yet remembered: They fall asleep while he is sweating bullets. More remarkably, the memory of the faith of the fanatic remains unshaken: You will see the son of man, he told his judges at his trial, coming on the clouds of glory.

Has anyone seen those clouds? Is life really different now?

Jesus died a singularity, he whose mighty criticism of his own religion managed to outlive his failed prediction of the consummation of everything. The moral force of that prophetic career, stretching back to Isaiah and the living God of the patriarchs, lives on still and inspires people everywhere, some of whom however wrongly imagine that it is a virtue to take themselves as seriously as he took himself.

Well, go right ahead. It's a free country . . . for a little while longer.

But while you do, consider that your hero, Paul, thought that one man dying for the sins of the people was quite enough, thank you very much. Instead, Paul would tell all you idealists out there something you don't want to hear. He'd tell you to live quietly, mind your own business, and maybe pick the weeds and mow the grass. Maybe lots of grass, just to keep you out of trouble.

You'll understand when you're older, with a little luck, if you should live so long.

Choices, Not Inevitabilities

Fornication

Idolatry

Adultery

Effeminacy

Homosexuality

Thievery

Greed

Drunkenness

Badmouthing

Swindling

1 Corinthians 6:9f.

I Guess I Can Cross That Church Off My List

Between her marriage vows and the reception, a Michigan woman was arrested Saturday afternoon on a felony identity theft warrant and booked at the county jail while wearing her wedding dress and veil.

Tammy Lee Hinton, 50, was busted at the City of Zion Ministries church after the conclusion of her wedding.

Full story and mug shots here.

The New Israel

"For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God."

-- Galatians 6:15 f.

I Got There Without Traveling: A Religion for Scanner Phobics

Without going outside, you may know the whole world.

Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.

The farther you go, the less you know.

Thus the sage knows without travelling;

He sees without looking;

He works without doing.

-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 47

Without going out of my door

I can know all things on earth

Without looking out of my window

I could know the ways of heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows

Without going out of your door

You can know all things on earth

Without looking out of your window

You can know the ways of heaven

The farther one travels

The less one knows

The less one really knows

Arrive without traveling

See all without looking

Do all without doing

-- George Harrison, The Inner Light, 1968

'Down in the River to Pray'

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown

Good Lord show me the way

O sisters let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O sisters let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the robe and crown

Good Lord show me the way

O brothers let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

Come on brothers, let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown

Good Lord show me the way

O fathers let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O fathers let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the robe and crown

Good Lord show me the way

O mothers let's go down

Come on down, don't you wanna go down?

Come on mothers, let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown

Good Lord show me the way

O sinners, let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O sinners, let's go down

Down in the river to pray

As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the robe and crown

Good Lord show me the way

-- From an old slave song, popularized by Alison Krauss 

Jesus, or Megan McArdle?

Jesus (Matthew 6:25):

"Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

Megan McArdle (here):

"Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset."

Reason 4,108 To Avoid A Church Today

 

 

 

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.

-- Samuel Johnson, Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1791

Another Voice Warning About Our Dangerous Atheocracy

From James D. Conley, Auxiliary Bishop of Denver:

Denying the divine origins of the human person, our government has withdrawn the law’s protection from unborn children in the womb—the most absolutely innocent and defenseless members of our human family.

The legal extermination of the unborn is only the most egregious offense against God’s law. In fact, there is apparently no area of life over which our atheocratic government does not feel omni-competent—that government knows best. 

This is dramatically clear in the movement to establish homosexual unions as an alternative kind of family. Under pressure from powerful special interests who manipulate the language of “rights” and “freedom” in ways that contradict “the laws of Nature’s God,” our atheocratic government now deems itself competent to rewrite the God-given definitions of marriage and the family.

Read the entire article here.