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Copyright © 2007 Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University

Lectionary Reading

1 John 3:16-24
3:16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
3:17 How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
3:18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
3:19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him
3:20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
3:21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God;
3:22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
3:23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
3:24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

New Revised Standard Version

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Copyright © 2007 Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University


When I was a young teenager or even a year younger, I used to think about the Bible and Christianity in ways that I did not have languages, arguments, and words to explain. I recall our father once in conversation with a professor from Atlanta Christian College who preached for some time at First Christian Church in Forest Park. I guess that time was between the Paul Gibson scandal and the coming of Aubrey Jackson. I don’t know how old I was. I do recall our father describing the Chicago School, which was the object of attack in fundamentalist and independent Christian Church circles at the time.

I did not know what that phrase meant at the time. It referred to the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, especially for the most part during the teens and twenties of the last century. Anyway, dad described what he took to be their outlook. I recall thinking that is exactly what I think and believe. I think that I was what was known as a modernist until I went to Georgia Tech. though I had the good sense never to shave my opinions with our father or anyone else for that matter.

In high school, from I guess about the tenth grade, I tried hard to reconcile our fundamentalist church outlook with modernism, Youth for Christ with Disciples CYF notions. Later at Tech, I became to read Neo-Orthodox theology and began a decades longs journey with naturalistic religion on one side of my brain and some form or other of Christian theology or religion on the other side.

I don’t hate fundamentalism. I think that I understand it pretty well from growing up as I did and where I did. I don’t think that our father ever really quite bought the fundamentalists ideology he taught. From time to time, he would say things that indicated he had counter opinions that he never fully explored at least with me or any other people I know.

Now in old age, I am letting go of a lot of stuff. I am a Christian, at least, in my mind I am, more a Christian than ever before, but there is a lot of stuff that I don’t need.

Rolling Night Thought

It seems that I dislike all presidential administration equally. I admit the need for government. I am not sufficiently an archaist to doubt that, but government is tainted (call it the Christian idea of "the fall"). I think that President George W. Bush did his best. I don't think of him as a bad man. I feel much the same about President Obama. I don't think he is a bad man. Both Bush and Obama seem charming people. Governments seem to support certain interest groups; by nature, they do this. So, it is not always about partisan politics with me. That is not to say I don't have political opinions or goals. I just find that what I consider important doesn't usually seem to find a place.

I think that both Obama and Bush think and thought of government in technocratic terms, though Bush perhaps a bit less so. You hire people can do the job. A lot of Bush's aim was to undo what earlier administrations had done. It was a kind of backlash. Obama seems to restore what we have done with government over the past few decades.



Whether any of this has to do with what most concerns me, I am not certain.

Reference:

http://reinventingthesacred.ning.com/profile/GordonDKaufman

I have not posted much

recently because I don't have the intellectual background to comment on much that is happening just now, but we are living in a fascinating moment. 

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He Is Risen

He is risen.

He is risen, indeed!

Look in the mirror.

Paula Cooey.