God Isn't Big Enough

SOURCE:  "God isn't Big Enough for Some People" by Umberto Eco.  http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/about-god-and-dan-brown.html
KEYWORDS:

"Human beings are religious animals. It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. You can see this in the positivist scientists of the 19th century."

...

"It is the role of religion to provide that justification. Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death. We in Europe have faced a fading of organised religion in recent years. Faith in the Christian churches has been declining.

The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we're all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code"

...

"The pianist Arthur Rubinstein was once asked if he believed in God. He said: "No. I don't believe in God. I believe in something greater." Our culture suffers from the same inflationary tendency. The existing religions just aren't big enough: we demand something more from God than the existing depictions in the Christian faith can provide. So we revert to the occult. The so-called occult sciences do not ever reveal any genuine secret: they only promise that there is something secret that explains and justifies everything. The great advantage of this is that it allows each person to fill up the empty secret "container" with his or her own fears and hopes" 

Self-righteousness of Political Violence

SOURCE:  "An ex-Weather Underground Radical on the Tucson Shootings and Political Violence" by Mark Rudd.  Washington Post. January 16, 2011.
KEYWORD:  Kingdom of Man, self-righteousness,

My willingness to endorse and engage in violence had something to do with an exaggerated sense of my own importance. I wanted to prove myself as a man - a motive exploited by all armies and terrorist groups. I wanted to be a true revolutionary like my guerrilla hero, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. I wanted the chant we used at demonstrations defending the Black Panthers to be more than just words: "The revolution has come/Time to pick up the gun!"

...Violent actors in this country - whether James Earl Ray, Timothy McVeigh or Scott Roeder, who in 2009 killed a Kansas abortion provider - are always armed not just with weapons, but with the conviction that their grievances demand satisfaction and their violence is righteous.

Wendy's Founder's Ingredients for Success

SOURCE:  "What Makes for Success" by Dave Thomas, Founder of Wendy's in Impiris, Vol 25, No 7. July 1996.
KEYWORDS:

Dave Thomas' ingredients for success are divided into four basic groups:

• Inward - these have to do with getting your own act together successfully.
• Honesty - "It means stepping out and telling the whole truth.  Honesty means being sincere."
• Faith - "Live your faith. Don't wear it on your sleeve; roll up both sleeves and do something about it."
• Discipline - "Routine lies at the heart of discipline.  Routine is what keeps us focused on the main things in life...Discipline means keeping things and people in their proper places."
• Outward - these are all about treating people right.
• Caring - "Caring is feeling what another person feels.  Some people call it 'empathy'. Genuinely caring about people usually leads to success."
• Teamwork - "Teamwork is the starting point for treating people right. Most people think that teamwork is only important when competing against other teams.  But competition is only part of the picture.  In most things we do in life, people have to work with rather than against each other to get something done.  Win-win situations and partnerships are the most important results of teamwork.  The best teams in the world are the ones that help people become better and achieve more than they ever thought they could on their own."
• Upward - these are skills you need to know if you want to go beyond just doing an okay job and truly excel.
• Motivation - "Know what motivates you, and prove to yourself that this motivation is honest and worthwhile.  But don't let too many different things motivate you, or you'll be tangled up in a maze of all kinds of conflicts.  Stay focused."
• Creativity - "Creativity means change, but if you don't use common sense when you change things around, you are likely to end up farther behind than when you started.  Not everyone can be creative.  Accept it as a fact of life that if you aren't creative yourself your challenge is to learn how to work with people who are...What make people creative?  Sometimes, it's having your life shaken up."
• Leadership - "What knocks off more leaders than anything else is failing to practice what they preach.  Of all the things leaders are supposed to do, nothing is more important than setting a good example."
• Onward - these are attitudes you need to have in order to put yourself second and other people first.
• Responsibility - "Mature leadership means realizing that no single person can be responsible for everything.  You can't be successful if you are stumbling around trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders.  Responsible people refuse to take shortcuts, even though they are almost always available.  They make sure that others with duties act responsibly, too.  And they use whatever recognition or honor they may have earned not to further their own ends but on behalf of good causes.  Instead of stealing the limelight, they allow it to shine on a good cause."
  
• Courage - "We tend to make courage too dramatic.  Courage is often doing something simple, unpleasant, or boring again and again until we get it down pat."
• Generosity -"You have to give of yourself, not just of your wallet."

Blessed to be a Blessing

SOURCE:  "Ted Williams: My Time With the Homeless Man With the Golden Voice" by Mansfield Frazier.  Daily Beast, January 7, 2011.
KEYWORDS:  redemption, blessed, blessing, calling, freedom

I met Ted Williams, the homeless man with the golden voice who became a viral sensation, in a high-class dope den just before his descent into the world of addiction...

I was already deeply embedded in the "street life" at the time, and his presence at the after-hours joint we met at portended bad things to come for him. This was not his environs. The place was a high-class dope den and crack was in its heyday. Few people had seriously attempted to stop abusing it at this point, so even fewer were aware of its ironclad addictive powers—how hard it was for some to quit...

However, for this tale to have a happy ending Williams has to stay straight once he's got two dollars above bus fare jingling in his jeans pockets—no mean feat once someone has been bitten as hard as he. What's the old joke, "I can quit [insert whatever your drug of choice in here] anytime I want. I've done it dozens of times." I certainly don't wish the brother ill, but (for his own good) he bears close watching for awhile. Believe me, nothing on God's green earth is as empty as a junkie's promise...

[One lawyer that I knew] had been clean for close to a decade, living in an upscale community, with a beautiful wife and two adopted kids. "One day I was driving home after leaving court and the car just started driving itself," he now laughs. "It went straight to the dope house." Within six months he was flat broke and on the verge of being disbarred. After two years he again has it back together, but he now knows where he made his mistake. 

"I didn't give anything back when I got my own life together … I didn't go into the jails, into prisons and halfway houses and try to take someone under my wing. I didn't join Narcotics Anonymous, I didn't try to mentor anyone."

...He might not know this yet—but I, along with many others who have been lost souls do know it—his success ultimately depends on his willingness to give something back; to use this second chance to not only get his own life together, but to unselfishly reach back and help others, to try to assist them in climbing out of their lives despondency, degradation, and despair.

This is what we—ex-junkies, whoremongers, lawbreakers and hopeless reprobates—do … this is how we stay straight...

Christianity with a Criminal Mindset

SOURCE:  "My Criminal Mindset" by Julie Clawson.  http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2010-12/my-criminal-mindset
KEYWORDS:

A friend at church asked me to help with her son's project for a college psychology class. He was studying the criminal mindset of women inmates and needed a control group to compare them with. So his mom handed out the survey to adult women at our church.

I answered the questions as honestly as I could. Yes, I believe there are systemic issues that keep people in poverty. Yes, I believe people of color are sometimes treated unfairly by our judicial system.

A few weeks later my friend mentioned that her son was surprised by the results from our control group: we scored extremely high on having a criminal mindset. Now, I don't know much about the methodology. The test is apparently a standard survey developed and approved by boards to judge "criminal thinking." But I was offended by the results.

I tried to answer the questions from a Christian perspective. I care about things like liberation of the oppressed, fairness for the poor and acceptance of the ethnic other. I try to be educated about places  where injustice is present so that I can work for justice, encompassing righteousness, mercy and reconciliation.
But by following our church's biblical emphasis on breaking the chains of injustice, we church ladies were pegged as thinking like criminals. 

It's unsettling until I remember that Jesus was arrested, tried and executed by a society that saw his message of economic reversal and love for the poor and the oppressed as criminal too. Then I realize how countercultural Christianity really is.

Love Came Down at Christmas

SOURCE:  posted on Diana Butler Bass on her Facebook page.
KEYWORDS:

Christmas poem, Christina Rossetti c.1865

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
...Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

The Glory

SOURCE:  Posted by Diana Butler Bass on her Facebook page.
KEYWORDS: Christmas, incarnation,

The Glory
by Madeleine L’Engle

Without any rhyme
without any reason
...my heart lifts to light
in this bleak season

Believer and wanderer
caught by salvation
stumbler and blunderer
into Creation

In this cold blight
where marrow is frozen
it is God’s time
my heart has chosen

In paradox and story
parable and laughter
find I the glory
here in hereafter

Is There a Santa Claus

SOURCE:  floating around the internet.

KEYWORDS: generosity, giving, charity, gift

I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her. 

On the way, my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"

My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been  I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so.  It had to be true. Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me.

"No Santa Claus?" she snorted. "Ridiculous! Don't you believe it! That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!!"

Now, put on your coat, and let's go." "Go? Go where Grandma?", I asked. I hadn't even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun.
 
"Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything.

As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. 
"Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car."

Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.
 
I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself.
 
The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping.
 
For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for.
 
I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church.
 
I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker.
 
He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class.
 
Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter.
 
His mother always wrote a note telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he didn't have a good coat.
 
I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat! I settled on a red  corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.
 
"Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down.

"Yes ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby."
 
The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat.
 
I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.
 
That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it. Then she tucked the tag from the coat in her Bible.
 
Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa's helpers.
 
Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk.
 
Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going."
 
I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma.
 
Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.
 
Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker's bushes.
 
That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were: ridiculous.
 
Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team. I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95.
 
May you always have LOVE to share, HEALTH to spare and FRIENDS that care... And may you always believe in the magic of Santa Claus!

The Great O's

SOURCE:  ...shared by a friend.
KEYWORDS: Christmas, advent

The Great O's
O Wisdom, which earnest out of the mouth of the Most High, and reachest
from end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and
teach us the way of prudence.

O Adonai, the leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the bush
to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the law in Sinai: Come and
deliver us with an outstretched arm.

O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom
kings shall shut their mouths, and to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come
and deliver us, and tarry not,

O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel; that openest, and no
man shutteth, and shuttest, and no man openeth: Come and bring the
prisoner out of the prison-house, and him that sitteth in darkness, and the
shadow of death.

O Dayspring, Brightness of Light everlasting, and Sun of Righteousness:
Come and enlighten him that sitteth in darkness, and the shadow of
death.

O King of the nations, and their Desire, the Cornerstone, who makest
both ·one: Come and save mankind, whom thou formedst of clay.

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations, and
their Salvation: Come and save us, O Lord our God.

O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any
like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at
me? The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.

Idiots and Church Membership

SOURCE:  “20 Centuries in 20 Minutes” in The Word Today  by Dr. James C. Denison, January 14, 2005.
KEYWORDS:  church membership, identity

A Baptist pastor was inviting people in his neighborhood to visit his church. An elderly lady said, "No thank you, young man, I'm a Methodist." "If you don't mind telling me," he asked, "why are you a Methodist?" "Well," she replied, "you see, my parents were Methodist, my grandparents were Methodist, and my great-grandparents were Methodist." The frustrated young pastor responded, "That's no reason, just because all your relatives are Methodists. What would you do if all your relatives were idiots?" "In that case," she smiled, "I'd probably be a member of your church."

Dr. James C. Denison
Senior Pastor, Park Cities Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas