25.4.17 / this will all make sense someday

https://medium.com/the-mission/100-ways-to-be-more-creative-bbaa99643fe5

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=i+want+a+sunday+kind+of+love+lyrics

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/01/home/solz-gulag.html

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Jordan+peterson+why+there+are+two+political+parties

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37875695

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Tour

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/29/why-the-end-of-the-tour-isnt-really-about-my-friend-david-foster-wallace

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/07/the_end_of_the_tour_david_foster_wallace_and_church_how_dfw_tricked_david.html

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-tour-david-foster-wallace-20150726-story.html

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3008-homosexuality-is-biological-suggests-gay-sheep-study/

http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/?post_type=series&p=2811

https://www.bu.edu/arion/on-the-absolute-the-sublime-and-ecstatic-truth/

http://ecstatictruthpdx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/what-is-ecstatic-truth.html

https://morningsidereview.org/essay/the-unarticulated-identity/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/02/26/speaking-in-tongues-2/

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx3cml0MTAxc3ByMTV8Z3g6YjM0NjMzZmMyNzdiZjkw

https://soundcloud.com/nybooks/zadie-smith-speaking-in-tongues

http://ecstatictruthpdx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/smartest-human-ever.html

https://www.appi.org/Bad_Men_Do_What_Good_Men_Dream

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/403543

http://bigthink.com/Think-See-Feel/write-like-david-foster-wallace

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/may/25/a-brief-survey-of-the-short-story-david-foster-wallace

http://www.conjunctions.com/archives/c28-dfw.htm

http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/the-5-personality-types-and-why-you-care

http://biblehub.com/bsb/philippians/2.htm

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=this+will+all+make+perfect+sense+someday

Gift

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

 ---

Altar call as a journey - raising your hand doesn't mean I'M HOLY NOW. I'VE GOT NO SINFUL DESIRE. But maybe that'll happen, who knows? But it probably doesn't happen very often. It didn't happen to me anyway, or any of the other Christians I know. I think, one purpose it serves is as a symbol. It's a declaration of faith. A way to delineate your old life from the new, something that you can point to and say - my recovery began there. The prodigal son was at the pig trough but there was a specific point in time where he made that conscious decision to go back. To leave all that behind. That's the pivot, the turning point. That's what the altar call offers. It's not a 'poof I'm Christian now, case closed' kind of thing, it's the beginning of a journey. He still had to walk to get to his father's house. But what I love about it is that, it says - while he was still a long way off, his father went running to him and embraced him. We don't have to battle our way up mount olympus, or prove to God that we're worthy of His love. All we have to do is make that decision, and take the first few steps in the right direction. God will go the rest of the way. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, it's because of how much He loves us. Why else would a father abandon all decorum and the almighty I-told-you-so? He didn't have to run to his son. He had every right to stand there and watch smugly as the son is made to grovel and beg for a place among his servants. But instead he says, "Bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let us feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again! He was lost and is found!" He was simply overwhelmed by the joy of seeing his treacherous son again.

But I think the second reason is because He knows it's impossible for us to do it ourselves. The disciples spent months with Jesus Christ, witnessing miracles, walking, eating, sleeping, breathing next to the living Christ - and still right up till his death, they doubted he was the son of God. John 6:36 says: 'But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.' How then are we, who have never met him or even seen his face, supposed to believe? That's why Paul says faith isn't something you earn or achieve. It's a gift.

---

"I think the humility comes from accepting that, if i'm honest with myself, like brutally honest - I'm not that special. You know? I'm not an alright guy. I'm not as decent as I'd like everyone to believe - but then you remember, that if God loves me, the maker of heaven and earth, then maybe I'm not so bad after all. Maybe, you know, He knows something that I don't. Maybe there's something here worth loving."

 ---

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

hook, line and sinker

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 

- Matthew 4:18

---

"Do you think God minds if we use dirty tricks and gimmicks to get people to experience his presence?"

"What do you mean by dirty tricks?"

"Like, mood lighting, finger food, catchy songs to lure people to church. Comfy chairs. Jokes at the beginning of a sermon."

"I've never really thought about it... but there is a verse that goes: 'So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God'... And there's another one in Colossians that says, 'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.' So I think, what God is concerned about isn't the nuts and bolts of how we do church, but rather where our hearts are at. Why we're doing it, and how we go about it. Like if your heart's in the right place, whatever you do is no longer a dirty trick, but an offering. It becomes sanctified, consecrated by grace. Does that makes sense?" 


---

"That's a good question... I mean, to me the real proof has always been how scripture, applied to real life actually works -- in a very tangible, observable, practical way - faith changes things. People, relationships, lives. I think the spiritual world, and the intangible realm of interpersonal relationships has an internal logic to it, a lot like the physical world - and it holds up, it has a remarkable integrity and consistency to it. And if you test it rigorously, the data will corroborate the fact.

Let me explain. The bible lays out certain principles on how to live your life and how to treat people, and you find that if you put them into practice - it produces a noticeable, palpable, significant effect on the people and things around you (and most noticeably and importantly yourself!) And you may dismiss that as anecdotal or unscientific, but how did the early scientists test their theories? They didn't have as much fancy math back then, so they went out and made a statement... if blank is this, then blank will behave like this - and then put it to the test. They started with a hypothesis, and then tried it out for themselves to see if they could prove or disprove it. Take Newton and his cannonball experiment. Crude, primitive, simplistic, prone to inaccuracy - but repeatable, measurable. Or Archimedes and his bathtub. Pythagoras and his... I don't know... triangles. What I'm saying is, through such unsophisticated empirical trials we managed to derive and extrapolate the laws that govern the physical world - and the reason we accept them as true and reliable is because these laws have demonstrable concordance. They agree with each other.

Now there are parts of the bible that stand out as being seemingly contradictory to the rest of it, parts that seem explicitly to say the opposite of a statement or belief espoused elsewhere - but I humbly suggest maybe that's not a problem with the material but with our interpretation or understanding of it. Take quantum physics. It says that light behaves both as a particle and a wave - and we don't know why or how or when it chooses to be it. You go 'whaaaaat... how on earth is that possible.' But then you come up with theories to explain it, some more outlandish than others. You find a way to reconcile our current understanding with this thing that seemingly refutes it. But you don't throw away the laws of physics we already have. You know, you wrestle with it - concede that we don't have all the facts and that our understanding of the physical world is incomplete. And we use this data to refine our understanding, to get a fuller picture of the reality we're sketching out with our clumsy methods. I think it's good to adopt this beginner mindset when it comes to the spiritual, or to the bible. The laws we have aren't wrong - our understanding and definitions of them are simply not complete. Which is not to say they are useless, you know. We've sent people to the moon with what we have."

- Dr. Tsion Ben Judah, Taste and See


---

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

- 1 Corinthians 13:9-11

---


"Paul puts it another way when he says, 'If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.' You know that verse?"

"Yeah, it goes: 'If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.'           ...."So what you're saying is that - mood lighting that's not motivated by love is a waste of time."

"You got it."