Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (Rob Bell)

Although this aims to be controversial in Evangelical Christian circles, there is nothing really offensive; it's a very carefully written book, but worth a read for the occasional gem or chuckle.

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Quotes:

Often times when I meet atheists and we talk about the god they don’t believe in, we quickly discover that I don’t believe in that god either.

The problem, however, is that the phrase “personal relationship” is found nowhere in the Bible. Nowhere in the Hebrew scriptures, nowhere in the New Testament. Jesus never used the phrase. Paul didn’t use it. Nor did John, Peter, James, or the woman who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. So if that’s it, if that’s the point of it all, if that’s the ticket, the center, the one unavoidable reality, the heart of the Christian faith, why is it that no one used the phrase until the last hundred years or so?

Really? Gandhi’s in hell? He is? We have confirmation of this? Somebody knows this? Without a doubt? And that somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know?

It’s as if Thomas Kinkade and Dante were at a party, and one turned to the other sometime after midnight and uttered that classic line “You know, we really should work together sometime . . .”

What we find in the scriptures is a more nuanced understanding that sees life and death as two ways of being alive. When Moses in Deuteronomy 30 calls the Hebrews to choose life over death, he’s not forcing them to decide whether they will be killed on the spot; he’s confronting them with their choice of the kind of life they’re going to keep on living.

I as well have a hard time believing that somewhere down below the earth’s crust is a really crafty figure in red tights holding a three-pointed spear, playing Pink Floyd records backward, and enjoying the hidden messages.

Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love? Thousands through the years have answered that question with the resounding response, “God’s love, of course.”

The Christian faith is big enough, wide enough, and generous enough to handle that vast a range of perspectives.

And so we arrive at the last chapter. The end is here.

May you experience this vast, expansive, infinite, indestructible love that has been yours all along. May you discover that this love is as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart no one else knows about. And may you know, deep in your bones, that loves wins.

Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (Harry Kemelman)

Kemelman is great at making the whole ethos of Judaism accessible and tangible even to Gentiles. Rabbi Small is also a great character.

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Quotes:

It is perhaps simplistic, but nevertheless indicative, that our equivalent of “Give us this day our daily bread” is “Blessed art thou, O Lord, for bringing forth bread from the earth.”

You would never know that this is the spiritual home of a people who for three thousand years or more considered themselves a nation of priests sworn to the service of God, because every bit of the energy of the congregation and the rabbi too will be bent on showing that this Jewish church is no different from any other church in the community.”

“I would not presume to suggest what a priest would or would not do, chief, but anything that a man might do a rabbi might do. We are no different from ordinary men. We are not even men of the cloth, as you call it. I have no duties or privileges that any member of my congregation does not have. I am only presumed to be learned in the Law by which we are enjoined to live.”

He knew it by a sudden realization that the great majority were all the same type: sleek, successful professional men and businessmen who belonged to the temple primarily as a social obligation, who were used to and expected the best of everything, who could be expected to have the same attitude toward a casual, unfashionable rabbi as they might toward an inefficient junior executive in their employ.

You have a hierarchy of saints who can intercede for the sinner, and finally you have a Purgatory, which is in the nature of a second chance. I might add that you have a Heaven and a Hell that help to right any wrongs in life on this earth. Our people have only the one chance. Our good deeds must be done on this earth in this life. And since there is no one to share the burden with them or to intercede for them they must do it on their own.”

“I know very little about these things,” said the rabbi, “but as a Talmudist I am not entirely without legal training. Your theory has a thousand loopholes.”

“Oh no, we stem from different traditions, all three of us. Monsignor O’Brien is a priest in the tradition of the priests of the Bible, the sons of Aaron. He has certain powers, magical powers, that he exercises in the celebration of the Mass, for example, where the bread and wine are magically changed to the body and blood of Christ. Dr. Skinner as a Protestant minister is in the tradition of the prophets. He has received a call to preach the word of God. I, a rabbi, am essentially a secular figure, having neither the mana of the priest nor the ‘call’ of the minister. If anything, I suppose we come closest to the judges of the Bible.”

John Wesley: A Theological Journey (Kenneth J. Collins)

A good introduction, though a little short.

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Quotes:

the queen crushed the Presbyterian movement in 1593.

Westminster Assembly of Divines.

during 1725, Wesley understood for the first time that holiness is the end or goal of religion.

method

Such a resolve was actually a prescription for a deep and longlasting malaise in Wesley's life, for it, in effect, made obedience to the moral law the basis of acceptance, a frustrating impossibility for any aspirant. Put another way, this approach made sanctification the ground of justification.

The term "Methodist" came later when John Bingham, of Christ Church, observed there was "a new set of Methodists" springing up among them.

Wesley's views on both the cruciality of holiness and the value of inward religion (a true circumcision of the heart) are emphases that will remain throughout his lengthy career.

The very first exercise of authority in the New World by John Wesley was to stave in the rum casks, which had been aboard the ship—an action that, though within the regulations of the trustees, was not only presumptuous, but also cost him the good will of some of the colonists.

And though the invitation to partake of the sacrament seemed to be open to all who were heartily sorry for their sins, those who had not been episcopally baptized were simply refused admittance to the Lord's Table.

Wesley's pastoral style and practices in Savannah, and later in Frederica, caused considerable resentment, even pain, among some of his flock.

Earlier, he had established small groups in Savannah for mutual accountability and care; and this practice constituted what Wesley himself later termed "the second rise of Methodism."

I felt my heart strangely warmed.

By July 4, Wesley had reached Marienborn, where he conversed with Count Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravians. Wesley's reception at this community was somewhat mixed, and he was even refused permission to partake of the Lord's Supper.

for Wesley, love is much more than simply a constellation of feelings or emotions, which is often fleeting. On the contrary, love is an ongoing, not easily swayed, disposition that characterizes a person over time, which is both disposing and empowering

affections, on the one hand, are simply "the will exerting itself [in] various ways."78 In other words, they are the expressions of the will, the particular actualizations of an undergirding, predisposing reality. Tempers, on the other hand, appear to be more foundational and may even inform the affections themselves

The stubborn sinner, for example, after years of debauchery, can yet enjoy the gift of prevenient grace and can be convicted, justified, and made holy by the presence of the Holy Spirit in a relatively short period of time due to the supernatural nature and efficaciousness of saving grace. Sadly, on the other hand, the entirely sanctified—those whose predisposing tempers have been restored to the image of God in all humility, patience, and love— may yet misuse their graciously restored freedom to choose evil and thereby become enslaved in unholy passions once more.

Judging from a careful reading of his journals and letters, one gets the sense that Wesley was actually uncomfortable among the

Methodism was obviously reaching a strata of society not well served by the Anglican Church.

Wesley strongly criticized American slavery,

Wesley reasons that a human or positive law cannot overturn natural law; it cannot, as he puts it, "change the nature of things."16 In other words, not only are matters that pertain to the basic rights of humans, as beings created in the image of God, not subject to the whims of the crowd or to the vagaries of their votes but also laws that express the popular will are valid only to the extent that they are in harmony with natural or moral law, with "the everlasting fitness of all things that are or ever were created."

A month before Mary left, Wesley had imprudently decided to draft a letter rehashing nearly all of his wife's faults from the time of their wedding some twenty-three years earlier to the present.

As a good pastor, Wesley, despite much criticism from the Calvinists, acknowledged every degree of grace, every glimmer of light; but he also urged people to go forward, to enjoy the liberties of grace for which Christ died, even the holiness without which no one will see the Lord which has its beginning, its instantiation, not in the spirit of bondage unto fear, but in the new birth.

As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church.

Exercising the role of a bishop at the 1784 Conference, Wesley set apart Thomas Coke as superintendent by the imposition of hands and by prayer. Wesley's diary referred to this event using the language of "ordained." The journal, however, stated that Dr. Coke was "appointed," though the actual certificate given to the new superintendent employed the words, "set apart." Once in America, Thomas Coke had instructions to consecrate Francis Asbury as General Superintendent, a ceremony that took place at the founding Christmas Conference of 1784.7 Beyond this, Wesley ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as elders in order to foster the work of the Methodists in America.

a letter to Barnabas Thomas in March 1785, Wesley made his case along the following lines: "I am now as firmly attached to the Church of England as I ever was since you knew me. But meantime I know myself to be as real a Christian bishop as the Archbishop of Canterbury."

had not only ordained for the American work, but also crafted The Sunday Service, an edited form of The Book of Common Prayer, that was brought over to the New World

Men may call me a knave or a fool, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am content; but they shall never by my consent call me Bishop!

at the Conference of 1784, Wesley promulgated the Deed of Declaration, which provided for the structure of Methodism beyond his death.

spiritual growth, for Wesley, was principally, though not exclusively, a matter of the will and the various tempers or dispositions that constitute it.

Indeed, the principal question for Wesley, from his earliest days at Oxford to the preaching of his final sermon, had always been, not "What can I know?" but "How can I love?"

the life of the soul, what Wesley often termed inward religion, must form, at least to some extent, the basis of the social axis in terms of both motivation and ultimate purpose.

In September 1790, Wesley had referred to Christian perfection as "the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists"; and he maintained, furthermore, that "for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up."

Wesley had cautioned that "the Methodists are to spread life among all denominations; which they will do till they form a separate sect."

Clearly, then, in Wesley's eyes, the ongoing practice of slavery was nothing less than a scandal, "not only to Christianity but [to] humanity [as well]."

"Time has shaken me by the hand," Wesley wrote to Freeborn Garrettson in February 1790, "and death is not far behind."

"I felt my heart strangely warmed."

For Wesley, then, the transitions from sinner to justified believer, as well as from being initially holy as a child of God to becoming entirely so were each, for want of better language, "threshold" changes, changes that were distinct and, therefore, in some sense set apart from earlier growth in grace.

Put another way, justification (broadly understood) and entire sanctification were the two principal foci of the Wesleyan way of salvation; and their integrity was held in place precisely by the language of sola gratia, sola fide.

But this "Protestant" side of Wesley that highlights the divine gracious activity at every step along the way must, of course, be seen in conjunction with his "Catholic" side (drawn in part from the Eastern Fathers mediated to him by his own Anglican tradition) that does indeed highlight divine/human cooperation as aspirants await the further instantiation of grace in works of piety, charity, and the like, and, of course, in the means of grace.

many of the evangelical Calvinists simply could not comprehend the imperative mood in Wesley's theology ("God works; therefore you can work; God works; therefore you must work") and how it could possibly be in harmony with sola gratia and sola fide.

Wesley, for his part, actually held these "Catholic" and "Protestant" emphases together in a large and intricate tension, in which the sheer gratuity of grace was not undermined by the importance of responding to divine initiatives and thereby growing in holiness.

Sport (Louise Fitzhugh)

Read with Laura. Didn't like it much. Hot as good as the 2 Harriet The Spy books.

Mere Christianity (C. S. Lewis)

A book of serenity and clarity, written in the middle of the darkest time in history, in the classic tradition of introspective philosophy. If Lewis' ideas are sometimes old-fashioned, his thought process is always refreshing and reveals plenty of unexpected surprises.

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Quotes:

They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion.

Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, ‘If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God.’ The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’* For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.

It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not.

And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly.

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us.

We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over.

If individuals live only seventy years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for a thousand years, is more important than an individual. But if Christianity is true, then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or a civilization, compared with his, is only a moment.

One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up.

The point is not that God will refuse you admission to His eternal world if you have not got certain qualities of character: the point is that if people have not got at least the beginnings of those qualities inside them, then no possible external conditions could make a ‘Heaven’ for them—that is, could make them happy with the deep, strong, unshakable kind of happiness God intends for us.

For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in our fear—fear of insecurity. This must often be recognized as a temptation.

We are looking for an ally where we are offered either a Master or—a Judge.

A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian.

Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature:

One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both.

For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did.

But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really can reach the rainbow’s end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed ‘common sense’ we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.

I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at the first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one’s eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people’s eyes can see further than mine.

BEYOND PERSONALITY: OR FIRST STEPS IN THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for.

In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognise one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of colour, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Fish Whistle: Little Short Essays by Daniel Pinkwater

Fine Pinkwater wisdom. The final essay, Talit, is one of the best things he wrote. As are all the parts that are about dogs.

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Quotes:

It doesn't matter who you are, or what you've done, or think you can do. There's a confrontation with destiny waiting for you. Somewhere, there is a chili you cannot eat.

"Ladies and gentlemen, get a load of this. There was a man, and he wanted to catch a train. So he said to his wife, 'Pack me a lunch!' And he went to the railway station, and he waited for his train, and he went to sleep, and he missed his train." Here Hassan would pause, his eyes sparkling, and then the punch line: "He was daft!"
"It's not just the joke, bosses. You have to know how to tell it."

The Chicken Man.

I didn't know movies were art. They were movies.

The traditional reason for sending a boy to military school was that he was an unmanageable, rotten little predelinquent. I never knew why my parents sent me.

Here's my policy regarding experts in creative writing: Ignore what they say. Ignore what they say when they tell you you're bad. Ignore what they say when they tell you you're good. It might be a good idea to ignore what I say too. May as well be thorough.

The people who have to do with books--picking them, publishing them, selling them and talking about them (and that includes me for today only)--have a way of treating everything like big A art and making sure it's small A art. They may mean well, but you can't trust them.

"This is your fault, you know." According to ancient tradition, the first person to get blamed is stuck with it.

See, what this guy was doing--even though it was his very own radio station--was trying to please the greatest number of people. Instead of getting the listeners used to what he knew was good, he was making sure they got what they liked already. He was losing that which made his station unique and intrinsically valuable.

It was your basic, Orthodox, bare-knuckles shul. All the congregants were from Poland, and most f them appeared to be ex-gangsters like my father. Guys with broken noses and gold teeth.

There were 360 opinions about the proper direction to face during prayer--and the Jews vied to be the first to finish reading a passage, after which they would slam the book shut and look around defiantly. Not one of them could understand Hebrew--just read it fast.

He sounded the way God would sound--if He'd had the lessons.

When we say we subscribe to the faith of our fathers, we usually mean the father we knew.