Quotes

“They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide. ” The Moviegoer, Walker Percy 

Quote

“In the Christian context, we do not mean by a "mystery" merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed—but they are also opened.”

Kallistos Ware 

On Law and Gospel

Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was...

The Law had a temporary glory, one which passed away into a newer, more full one. The language we use to discuss this is that of law vs. gospel. While accurate it isn't quite as blunt as the language of the bible. 

...For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 

What are these letters? ...The ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone... 

The letters that kill(ed) are/have passing/passed away, and are now gone/going. 

...The same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.

In Jesus there is freedom, a radical freedom, from these letters, this Law. It's not about a bunch of laws and some euangelion but about death and life. The Law brought death, but no longer because it is taken away. In its stead there is the Spirit which brings life to all. 

Quotes

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.” -Rilke

Vere Tu Es Deus Absconditus

  I am a Christian. I pray like crazy. And I grew up being told to listen in prayer. I've tried listening but nada. Exactly what is entailed in listening to/for God? The still, small voice? How does God speak? Through his word? Sure, but that's its own dilemma right there. So, I prayed and tried to listen and God was silent. What now? Silence, just silence.

 -"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"-

   I use apologetics to give reasons, primarily to myself now, for my faith. Yet, God escapes me. "Jonas, you need to have heart knowledge, too!" Well, how? Like stated above the silence is frightening and overwhelming. Apologetics is all well and good till it isn't.

 -"Pointless, because it seems to me like an attempt to put a grown-up man back into adolescence, i.e. to make him more dependent on things on which he is, in fact, no longer dependent, and thrusting him into problems that are, in fact, no longer problems to him."-

   I accept unknowing, the lack of certainty. Or, rather, I try to. I think hard and think well, attempting to use my mind to get somewhere with the unknowing and lack of certainty. But it's very obvious what I am doing. I'm finding certainty in the use of my mind to be uncertain. Oxymoron much?

 -"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."-

 

God Bless America and Other Grumpy Anecdotes

#1

The Fourth of July, more than anything else, is simply a holiday for the religion of America. Americanism is its own religion and the Fourth of July is its Christmas.

#2

Just having faith is a wonderful sentiment but, honestly, means nothing.

#3

All this is my self-aware attempt to seem intelligent.

#4

The Church is not to go to bed with the State and have the love child we see embodied in America today.

#5

As far as I'm concerned the reaction people have to gay marriage is reflective of their true heart; they can say they love gays but when they take bible passages to dehumanize them, their words mean nothing.

#6

Jesus as the center, not religion.

#7

"I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by
living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any
attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a
churchman (a so-called priestly type!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a
healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes
and failures, experiences and perplexities." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#8

Belief in a God is, in some sense, a crutch.

Quotes

"“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.” 
― Peter Rollins

Quotes

The first quote from a series of random posts with quotes I will have.

"The Church has no alternative to war. The Church is the alternative to war." - Stanley Hauerwas