True Evangelical Faith

“True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant.
It clothes the naked.
It feeds the hungry.
It comforts the sorrowful.
It shelters the destitute.
It serves those that harm it.
It binds up that which is wounded.
It has become all things to all people.”
- Menno Simons

Rewind…

Great post over at shauninmann.com in regards to a passage from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five:

It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

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We Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers

This made me chuckle and then feel quite challenged…..

“The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Nothing is more precious than peace

Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110)
Epistle (110)

“And pray ye without ceasing in behalf of other men. For there is in them hope of repentance that they may attain to God. See, then, that they be instructed by your works, if in no other way. Be ye meek in response to their wrath, humble in opposition to their boasting: to their blasphemies return your prayers; in contrast to their error, be ye steadfast in the faith; and for their cruelty, manifest your gentleness. While we take care not to imitate their conduct, let us be found their brethren in all true kindness; and let us seek to be followers of the Lord (who ever more unjustly treated, more destitute, more condemned?), that so no plant of the devil may be found in you, but ye may remain in all holiness and sobriety in Jesus Christ, both with respect to the flesh and spirit. (Epistle to the Ephesians 10) Nothing is more precious than peace, by which all war, both in heaven and earth, is brought to an end. (13.2) 1 therefore have need of meekness, by which the prince of this world is brought to nought. (Epistle to the Trallians 4)

From Syria even unto Rome I fight with beasts, both by land and sea, both by night and day, being bound to ten leopards, I mean a band of soldiers, who, even when they receive benefits, show themselves all the worse. But I am the more instructed by their injuries [to act as a disciple of Christ]; “yet am I not thereby justified.” May I enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray that they may be found eager to rush upon me, which also I will entice to devour me speedily, and not deal with me as with some, whom, out of fear, they have not touched. But if they be unwilling to assail me, I will compel them to do so. Pardon me [in this] I know what is for my benefit. Now I begin to be a disciple. And let no one, of things visible or invisible, envy me that I should attain to Jesus Christ. Let fire and the cross; let the crowds of wild beasts; let tearings, breakings, and dislocations of bones; let cutting off of members; let shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me: only let me attain to Jesus Christ.(Epistle to the Romans 5, Military persecuted Christians)”

A step along the way

‘We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that this enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master-builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders. We are ministers and not messiahs. We are the prophets of a future not our own’.

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Power concedes nothing

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

- Frederick Douglass

Practicing Mindfulness

To me, practicing mindfulness in the act of consuming is the basic act of social justice.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Interview by Catherine Ingram, In the Footsteps of Ghandi.

Joy of living

We have all known persons who have lost everything and have not lost the joy of living; persons who are imprisoned unjustly and do not lose their peace and tranquility; persons who live in misery and take in orphans; persons who have suffered injustices and seek to reestablish justice with no desire to revenge.

- Segundo Galilea

Independence Day Quote

But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

- Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776.

Pursuit of Justice

“The pursuit of justice must therefore be a primary obligation of the people of God. It is so critical, say the biblical prophets, that without a commitment to justice, all other means of worshipping God, even those commanded by Gods law, are bankrupt. In the absence of Justice, Amos declares, religious performances to merely nauseate God”

Chris Marshall

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