Avoidance Bible Quotes

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

People do not avoid the Bible because it is difficult to understand as much as because what they understand condemns their conscience and throws light on dark corners in their lives which they prefer to keep dark.

In trying to avoid one sin I've committed another.

We encounter God in the face of a stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible’s single greatest and most counterintuitive contribution to ethics. God creates difference; therefore it is in one-who-is-different that we meet god. Abraham encounters God when he invites three strangers into his tent.

Every relationship has problems, because every person has problems, and the place that our problems appear most glaringly is in our close relationships. The key is whether or not we can hear from others where we are wrong, and accept their feedback without getting defensive. Time and again, the Bible says that someone who listens to feedback from others is wise, but someone who does not is a fool.

If I’m only willing to love the people who are nice to me, the ones who see things the way I do, and avoid all the rest, it’s like reading every other page of the Bible and thinking I know what it says.

Satanists are encouraged to indulge in the seven deadly sins, as they need hurt no one; they were only invented by the Christian Church to insure guilt on the part of its followers. The Christian Church knows that it is impossible for anyone to avoid committing these sins, as they are all things which we, being human, most naturally do. After inevitably committing these sins financial offerings to the church in order to "pay off" God are employed as a sop to the parishioner's conscience!

Thomas Merton said it was actually dangerous to put the Scriptures in the hands of people whose inner self is not yet sufficiently awakened to encounter the Spirit, because they will try to use God for their own egocentric purposes. (This is why religion is so subject to corruption!) Now, if we are going to talk about conversion and penance, let me apply that to the two major groups that have occupied Western Christianity—Catholics and Protestants. Neither one has really let the Word of God guide their lives. Catholics need to be converted to giving the Scriptures some actual authority in their lives. Luther wasn’t wrong when he said that most Catholics did not read the Bible. Most Catholics are still not that interested in the Bible. (Historically they did not have the printing press, nor could most people read, so you can’t blame them entirely.) I have been a priest for 42 years now, and I would sadly say that most Catholics would rather hear quotes from saints, Popes, and bishops, the current news, or funny stories, if they are to pay attention. If I quote strongly from the Sermon on the Mount, they are almost throwaway lines. I can see Catholics glaze over because they have never read the New Testament, much less studied it, or been guided by it. I am very sad to have to admit this. It is the Achilles heel of much of the Catholic world, priests included. (The only good thing about it is that they never fight you like Protestants do about Scripture. They are easily duped, and the hierarchy has been able to take advantage of this.) If Catholics need to be converted, Protestants need to do penance. Their shout of “sola Scriptura” (only Scripture) has left them at the mercy of their own cultures, their own limited education, their own prejudices, and their own selective reading of some texts while avoiding others. Partly as a result, slavery, racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and homophobia have lasted authoritatively into our time—by people who claim to love Jesus! I think they need to do penance for what they have often done with the Bible! They largely interpreted the Bible in a very individualistic and otherworldly way. It was “an evacuation plan for the next world” to use Brian McLaren’s phrase—and just for their group. Most of Evangelical Protestantism has no cosmic message, no social message, and little sense of social justice or care for the outsider. Both Catholics and Protestants (Orthodox too!) found a way to do our own thing while posturing friendship with Jesus.

Good leaders motivate others by their listening skills. We are to: avoid prejudicial first impressions; become less self-centered; withhold initial criticism; stay calm; listen with empathy; be active listeners; clarify what we hear; and recognize the healing power of listening. Then we are to act on what we hear

It would upset us, but would we think it unloving if a doctor told us we had a potentially fatal cancer? And would the doctor not tell us if the cancer could be eradicated? Why then do we not tell unsaved people about the cancer of sin and evil and how the inevitable penalty of eternal destruction can be avoided by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ?

It's the treasure in the empty field; it's worth selling everything to own--your entertainment, your 401(k) or your registered retirement savings plan, your home, your comfort, the sand where you stick your head, your last word, your right answers, your safe and predictable nice little life centered on avoiding heartbreak or inconvenience to your schedule.

success is largely a matter of Avoiding the Most Likely Ways to Fail[d. ], and since every Bug advances us significantly along that path, we may hearken back to the advice given in the Preface and urge the following Policy: CHERISH YOUR BUGS. STUDY THEM But

any departure from reality that could easily be avoided ought to be avoided.

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can—and should—also be people who confront. What is not confessed can’t be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: “I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols” (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn’t discount someone who “has something against you,” labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do.

First, if you are a homosexual or feel that inclination, keep yourself pure. If you are unmarried, you should practice abstinence from all sexual activity. I know this is difficult, but really what God is asking you to do is pretty much the same thing that he requires of all single people. That means not only keeping your body pure, but especially your mind. Just as heterosexual men should avoid pornography and fantasizing, you, too, need to keep your thought-life clean. Resist the temptation to rationalize sin by saying, “God made me this way.” God has made it very clear that He does not want you to indulge your desires, but to honor Him by keeping your mind and body pure. Finally, seek professional Christian counseling. With time and effort, you can come to enjoy normal, heterosexual relations with your spouse. There is hope.

Because this is an urban church in a downtown neighborhood, it is not so easy to avoid the presence of the poor. We see them. I wonder if that is not part of our vocation, to see the poor, to be the Lord's eyes - because the Lord sees the poor, and he loves the poor, and he sends his people to serve the poor. That is a message that pervades the Scriptures from end to end. There is something seriously out of balance in American Christianity. I am personally opposed to abortion, but there is nothing explicit in the Bible about abortion. There is nothing explicit in the Bible about prayer in the public schools; there is nothing explicit in the Bible about the American flag or the right to have a gun. There are, however, thousands of explicit words in the Bible about justice and compassion for the poor. There are thousands of words in the Bible about defending those who are defenseless.

It is VITAL that they avoid anything which causes their mind to shift into neutral for any length of time. The best thing they can do is memorize scripture from the King James Bible. Mathematical tables can also be helpful — anything that forces their mind to exercise itself. When they find their mind drifting off, they should ask the Lord to help them claim the scriptural promises that we all have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16, Phil. 2:5, Rom. 12:2, Eph. 4:23, 2 Tim. 1:7, 1 Pet. 1:13). Beyond

But if we are to call ourselves Christians, we had better avoid intellectual and moral blindness. Throughout the New Testament we are reminded of the need for enlightenment. We are commanded to love God, not only with our hearts and souls, but also with our minds. When the Apostle Paul noticed the blindness of many of his opponents, he said, “I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” Over and again the Bible reminds us of the danger of zeal without knowledge and sincerity without intelligence.

The worst thing that I can do is humanize God. The second worst thing that I can do is deify myself. And the best thing that I can do is to avoid both.

Some things that religious people make a big deal of are rather pointless. Avoid the insanity.

for those that would be kept from any sin must be careful to avoid all temptations to it, and every thing that looks towards it or leads to it.

It is to one’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel.

They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders.

The book in my hands became my trusted companion. What was written there had so much power that it forced me to stop avoiding myself, to make my own choices as well. And through some sort of vital intuition, I understood that I had a long way to go, that it would bring about a profound transformation within me, even though I could not determine it's essence, or its scope. In that book there was a voice, and behind that voice threw was an intelligence that sought to establish contact with me. It was not merely the company of written words that distiller my boredom. It was a living voice, speaking. To me.

Guess you could say we clung to a form of Christianity, by believing bits and pieces of the Bible and avoiding all parts we disagreed with in the older translations, especially the parts that exposed our sin.

The explicit royal stipulation that all forms of annotation would be excluded ensured that the difficulties created for the establishment by the Geneva Bible would be avoided—or so, at any rate, it was thought.

Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted do not bother coming to our churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.2

All pantheists feel the same profound reverence for the Universe/Nature, but different pantheists use different forms of language to express this reverence. Traditionally, Pantheism has made use of theistic-sounding words like “God,” but in basically non-theistic ways - pantheists do not believe in a supernatural creator personal God who will judge us all after death. Modern pantheists fall into two distinct groups in relation to language: some avoid words such as God or divine, because this makes listeners think in terms of traditional concepts of God that can be very misleading. Others are quite comfortable using these words, but when they use them they don’t mean the same thing that conventional theists mean. If they say "the Universe is God," they don’t mean that the Universe is identical with the deity in the Bible or the Koran.

There are indeed moral universals — the Hebrew Bible calls them ‘the covenant with Noah’ and they form the basis of modern codes of human rights. But they exist to create space for cultural and religious difference…

Tensions around issues of injustice must not be avoided in the name of an easy peace and cheap grace, but rather passionately engaged, until justice rolls down like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.

To demand that the Bible meet our demands is to put ourselves and our own interests at the center of the story, which is one of the first traps we must learn to avoid if we are to engage the Bible with integrity or care.

It was better to avoid ostentatious piety and pray in the privacy of one’s cell because ‘if we pray when others are present, their approbation may rob our prayer of . . . its effect’.25 There would be no sudden illumination;

The Bible warns [parents] against extremes in dealing with our adult children. It tells us to avoid trying to control [them] once they become adults. When children become independent, a major transition takes place: They are no longer under our authority.

Human wisdom tells us to get as much as we can, believe only what we can see, enjoy pleasure, and avoid pain. God’s wisdom tells us to give all we can, believe what we can’t see, enjoy service, and expect persecution. See that your life reflects the difference.

The key is whether or not we can hear from others where we are wrong, and accept their feedback without getting defensive. Time and again, the Bible says that someone who listens to feedback from others is wise, but someone who does not is a fool. As Proverbs 9:7–9 says: “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.

God is the message owner; prophets and pastors are messengers. It's happens on no account when the messenger becomes greater than the message owner! Let's us avoid these "human worships", confining our source of hope in prophets, kings, presidents, lawyers, etc. God deserves the greatest honour!

The Bible isn’t just a book about religion; it’s a book about relationships, and it’s filled with practical suggestions for making our own relationships work. Here are some examples: Don’t bring up issues that have already been dealt with in the past. (Prov. 17:9) Don’t stretch the truth, but be honest in your conversation. (Eph. 4:25) If someone gets upset, don’t respond with anger. (Prov. 15:1; 25:15; 29:11) Listen carefully, and don’t interrupt until you’ve really heard the other person. (Prov. 18:13) Look for ways to encourage the other person. (1 Thess. 5:11) Pick your battles; avoid arguing whenever possible. (Prov. 17:14) Put energy into seeing things from the other person’s point of view. (Phil. 2:4) Spend a lot more time listening than talking. (James 1:19; Prov. 10:19) Think before you respond to someone. (Prov. 15:28) Watch carefully what you say so you don’t get yourself in trouble. (Prov. 21:23)

All the great biographies of the Bible involve suffering. The great souls grown in the Lord’s vineyard all know what it is to suffer. American Christianity, on the other hand, is conditioned to avoid suffering at all cost. But what a cost it is! Grape juice Christianity is what is produced by the purveyors of the motivational-seminar, you-can-have-it-all, success-in-life, pop-psychology Christianity. It’s a children’s drink. It comes with a straw and is served in a little cardboard box. I don’t want to drink that anymore. I don’t want to serve that anymore. I want the vintage wine. The kind of faith marked by mystery, grace, and authenticity.

To unlock your Bible so that you can understand its meaning and application to your own life, it is necessary to avoid reading the whole Bible through old covenant eyes that see rules to be obeyed. That’s not what the Bible is about, and you will miss the point of Scripture altogether if you read it like an Old Covenant Jew who is still under the Law.

Since we had religion in the classroom, my Sunday-school caper was an add-on. As usual, I was propelled by curiosity: wouldn’t I find out more about religious knowledge in a Sunday school than I could in an ordinary school? Not likely, as it turned out the most interesting parts of the Bible, those dealing with sex, rape, child sacrifice, mutilations, massacres, the gathering up in baskets of the lopped-off heads of your enemy’s kids, and the cutting up of concubines’ bodies and sending them around as invitations-to-a-war were studiously avoided, though I did spend a lot of time colouring in angels and sheep and robes, and singing hymns about letting my little candle shine in my own small, dark corner.

We struggle to find the space between avoiding all biblical arguments and identifying one policy as the only Christian one, but such space exists! Citing biblical passages about caring for the poor and vulnerable in support of tax policy that is intended to serve those people can be a faithful way of engaging in public life. Claiming that your tax policy is the only Christian option is not.

We are starting to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who want us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who, for that matter, wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream.

The number of books on theology must be reduced and only the best ones published. It is not many books that make people learned or even much reading. It is, rather, a good book frequently read, no matter how small it is, that makes a person learned in the Scriptures and upright. Indeed, the writings of all the holy Fathers should be read only for a time so that through them we may be led into the Scriptures. As it is, however, we only read them these days to avoid going any further and getting into the Bible. We are like people who read the signposts and never travel the road they indicate. Our dear Fathers wanted to lead us to the Scriptures by their writings, but we use their works to get away from the Scriptures. Nevertheless, the Scripture alone is our vineyard in which we must all labor and toil.

In church, sexual purity was always something portrayed through abstaining rather than valuing something deeper. I learned how to avoid sexaul immorality but rarely did I learn why in a way that captivated my heart. The why was always, God wants that for you, or the bible says it's a sin. It's no wonder so many have sexual relationships when the argument against doing so has nothing to do with our affections for God.

Acts 24:24 in 1611 referred to Drusilla, the wife of the Roman governor Felix, as a Jew; in 1629, this was altered to “Jewess.” The original translation of Mark 10:18 read thus: “there is no man good, but one, that is, God.” This could be misunderstood as implying that God was a human being. A small alteration was introduced in 1638, avoiding this implication: the text now read “there is none good but one, that is, God.

Legalism is far more than the conscious belief that “I can be saved by my good works.” It is a web of attitudes of heart and character. It is the thought that God’s love for us is conditioned on something we can be or do. It is the attitude that I offer certain things—my ethical goodness, my relative avoidance of deliberate sin, my faithfulness to the Bible and the church—that support Christ’s work and contribute to God’s goodwill toward me.

Arguing about how it literally happened can be an easy way to avoid facing the people in your life you need to forgive. For the people who first heard this story, the story would have had a provocative, unsettling effect. The Assyrians? The Assyrians were like a huge, gaping, open wound for the Israelites. Bless the Assyrians? The story is extremely subversive because it insists that your enemy may be more open to grace and love than you are.

When God gave us the Bible, God did not give us an internally consistent book of answers. God gave us an inspired library of diverse writings, rooted in a variety of contexts, that have stood the test of time, precisely because, together, they avoid simplistic solutions to complex problems. It’s almost as though God trusts us to approach them with wisdom, to use discernment as we read and interpret, and to remain open to other points of view.

From Bacon, Diderot learned that science need not bow down before a Bible-based view of the world; it should be based on induction and experimentation, and, ideally, used to further humankind’s mastery of nature. Locke delivered two related concepts. The first was a theory of mind that rejected the long-standing belief that humans were born with innate ideas (and, therefore, with an inborn understanding of the divine). In Locke’s view, the mind is a blank slate at birth, and our understanding of the exterior world comes about solely through sensation and reflection. This entirely nonspiritual view of cognition set up a second critical lesson. Since, according to the English philosopher, true knowledge is limited to what we can learn through our senses, anyone involved in seeking out nature’s secrets must rely on observation and experiment — on a so-called empirical approach — and avoid building huge systems based on fantasy.

Satanists are encouraged to indulge in the seven deadly sins, as they need hurt no one; they are only invented by the Christian Church to insure guilt on the part of its followers. The Christian Church knows that it is impossible for anyone to avoid committing these sins, as they are all things which we, being human, most naturally do. After inevitably committing these sins financial offerings to the church in order to "pay off" God are employed as a sop to the parishioner's conscience!

according to Jewish teaching, the ban on blood consumption specifically banned tearing off the limb of a live animal. This practice was used in the ancient world to avoid killing an animal and losing some of its meat to decay. This practice kept the animal alive—and its meat fresh—for a few more days, but it resulted in terrible suffering to the animal. As this ban is written before Jews existed, it is considered a universal ban—one of the “Seven Noahide Laws” incumbent upon all of humanity.

Sacrifice is violence and it's obviously an effort to prevent violence in the community by finding the right escape hatch through some kind of innocuous violence. This they didn't see. They couldn't see it because, influenced by Enlightenment presuppositions, they believed in the innocence of humanity, the basic goodness of man. Why should humanity need that violence? The only possible answer is that humanity needed that violence to avoid another kind of violence: people’s own violence against one another.

The Bible actually has a category for faithful anxiety (e.g. 2 Corinthians 11:28; 1 Corinthians 7:32-34): a passionate concern for good that doesn’t spiral into fear and bitterness, but rather, leads us to pray and trust in the Lord, giving thanks for what we do have even as we cry out to him about what we do not (Philippians 4:6-8). But when our anxiety is fueled by fear, the Bible talks about it less in terms of a weakness of constitution that needs to be overcome, and more as a sin to be avoided and repented of (1 Peter 5:5-7).

No one could believe that Rachel Held—once such a promising young evangelist—was losing faith. Their prescriptions rolled in: “God’s ways are higher than our ways. You need to stop asking questions and just trust him.” “There must be some sin in your life causing you to stumble. If you repent, your doubts will go away.” “You need to avoid reading anything besides the Bible. Those books of yours are leading you astray.” “You should come to my church.” “You should listen to Tim Keller.” “You need to check your pride, Rachel, and submit yourself to God.

Midrash, which initially struck me as something of a cross between biblical commentary and fan fiction, introduced me to a whole new posture toward Scripture, a sort of delighted reverence for the text unencumbered by the expectation that it must behave itself to be true. For Jewish readers, the tensions and questions produced by Scripture aren’t obstacles to be avoided, but rather opportunities for engagement, invitations to join in the Great Conversation between God and God’s people that has been going on for centuries and to which everyone is invited.

It is fashionable to avoid talking of the wrath of God. Karl Barth for years neglected the theme and likewise most contemporary theologians. But the Apocalypse knows no such finicky reserve. There are sixteen references to wrath here. Moderns have forgotten that the most loved verse of the Bible warns that unbelievers will “perish.” The sun that melts wax also hardens clay. No one can be the same after hearing the gospel. They are either better or worse—much better or much worse. But God’s wrath is not irritable and moody like ours. It is the inevitable recoil of holiness against all that would destroy.

When she was young, Peter learned in a vision from God that if she remained healthy, she would lead many astray; she apparently was beautiful as a child, and as an adult she would entice men to sleep with her. When she was ten, a next-door neighbor attempted to seduce her, but before he could sleep with her, she became paralyzed, by the mercy of God. The neighbor went blind for his troubles, until healed by Peter and converted to faith in Christ. But the girl had to remain paralyzed, lest she lead others astray. Here again the point is perfectly clear: sex is dangerous and to be avoided at all costs, even if it means being an invalid for life.

Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. 6For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, 7always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

But understand this, that  y in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2For people will be  z lovers of self,  a lovers of money,  b proud,  b arrogant, abusive,  b disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 c heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal,  d not loving good, 4treacherous, reckless,  e swollen with conceit,  f lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5having the appearance of godliness, but  g denying its power.  h Avoid such people. 6For among them are  i those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7always learning and never able to  j arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

read the Bible daily? That means every day without fail. Each of us should say to ourselves,“No Bible, no breakfast. No read, no feed.” Be like Job, who “treasured the words of His mouth more than [his] necessary food” (Job 23:12, emphasis added). The key is to put your Bible before your belly—to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. If we are not “disciples” of Christ—disciplined to His Word—we will more than likely reproduce after our own kind. If we are worldly and undisciplined, our kids may grow up to follow our poor example of what a Christian should be. If we are hypocrites, we may just reproduce hypocrites. What greater parental betrayal could there be than to lead your children to hell? So esteem God’s Word more than your necessary food, and teach your kids to do the same.

We may never have thought of the Christian life in this way. But in reality, we may be practicing it by relegating our spiritual walk to well-defined religious activities such as church attendance, group Bible studies, and personal times of “devotion.” The rest of our life—whatever else consumes our time—is not part of the journey. It’s a vacation. It doesn’t count. This is contrary to Scripture. In God’s eyes, our journey includes all of our life. We are always on our journey, making decisions and taking steps in one direction or another. Even when we avoid deciding about something, we are deciding, taking a step in some direction—no decision is a decision. Thus our spiritual growth or heart transformation includes all of the activities of our life—work, family life, social life, recreation, physical exercise (if we do it), and so on.

forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders.

The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the Church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin. The preacher gets up into the pulpit, opens the Bible, and addresses the congregation somewhat as follows: "You people are very good," he says; "you respond to every appeal that looks toward the welfare of the community. Now we have in the Bible—especially in the life of Jesus—something so good that we believe it is good enough even for you good people." Such is modern preaching. It is heard every Sunday in thousands of pulpits. But it is entirely futile. Even our Lord did not call the righteous to repentance, and probably we shall be no more successful than He.

As a society we are only now getting close to where Dogen was eight hundred years ago. We are watching all our most basic assumptions about life, the universe, and everything come undone, just like Dogen saw his world fall apart when his parents died. Religions don’t seem to mean much anymore, except maybe to small groups of fanatics. You can hardly get a full-time job, and even if you do, there’s no stability. A college degree means very little. The Internet has leveled things so much that the opinions of the greatest scientists in the world about global climate change are presented as being equal to those of some dude who read part of the Bible and took it literally. The news industry has collapsed so that it’s hard to tell a fake headline from a real one. Money isn’t money anymore; it’s numbers stored in computers. Everything is changing so rapidly that none of us can hope to keep up. All this uncertainty has a lot of us scrambling for something certain to hang on to. But if you think I’m gonna tell you that Dogen provides us with that certainty, think again. He actually gives us something far more useful. Dogen gives us a way to be okay with uncertainty. This isn’t just something Buddhists need; it’s something we all need. We humans can be certainty junkies. We’ll believe in the most ridiculous nonsense to avoid the suffering that comes from not knowing something. It’s like part of our brain is dedicated to compulsive dot-connecting. I think we’re wired to want to be certain. You have to know if that’s a rope or a snake, if the guy with the chains all over his chest is a gangster or a fan of bad seventies movies. Being certain means being safe. The downfall is that we humans think about a lot of stuff that’s not actually real. We crave certainty in areas where there can never be any. That’s when we start in with believing the crazy stuff. Dogen is interesting because he tries to cut right to the heart of this. He gets into what is real and what is not. Probably the main reason he’s so difficult to read is that Dogen is trying to say things that can’t actually be said. So he has to bend language to the point where it almost breaks. He’s often using language itself to show the limitations of language. Even the very first readers of his writings must have found them difficult. Dogen understood both that words always ultimately fail to describe reality and that we human beings must rely on words anyway. So he tried to use words to write about that which is beyond words. This isn’t really a discrepancy. You use words, but you remain aware of their limitations. My teacher used to say, “People like explanations.” We do. They’re comforting. When the explanation is reasonably correct, it’s useful.

Satanism encourages any form of sexual expression you may desire, so long as it hurts no one else. This statement must be qualified, to avoid misinterpretation. By not hurting another, this does not include unintentional hurt felt by those who might not agree with your views on sex, because of their anxieties regarding sexual morality. Naturally, you should avoid offending others who mean a great deal to you, such as prudish friends and relatives. However, if you earnestly endeavor to escape hurting them, and despite your efforts they accidentally find out, you cannot be held responsible, and therefore should feel no guilt as a result of either your sexual convictions, or their being hurt because of those convictions. If you are in constant fear of offending the prudish by your attitude towards sex, then there is no sense in trying to emancipate yourself from sexual guilt. However, no purpose is served by flaunting your permissiveness.

Command, promise, Messiah—the basic terms of the Bible’s message are ineradicably verbal and cannot be communicated in isolation from words. Bin the words and whatever else you are left with; it is not Christianity, biblical, historical or otherwise. We do need to think about how such a word-based religion can be communicated in this day and generation; we do need to avoid at all costs becoming a middle-class ghetto for frustrated academics. But we also need to be faithful to the Bible’s own form and matter, both of which involve words at their very centre. Let us not despair: the Word is not just the Word; it is the Word of, in, and through the Spirit. It is powerful in its very essence. Our task is ultimately to communicate it; the power of the communication resides in God alone. Let us remember the words of Isaiah and concentrate not so much upon technique as upon the moral attitude we should adopt: This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word. (Isa. 66:2).

The early church theologian Tertullian in the third century identified Eve as the origin of sin in a manner that has been repeated endlessly: “You are the Devil’s gateway. You are the unsealer of that forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine Law. You are she who persuaded him whom the Devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image of man. On account of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die.”36 Traditional Christian culture had long portrayed woman as a sexual temptress. She was thought to have little control over her primal sexual urges. Men were constantly warned to avoid women lest they be seduced and brought down by them.37 In the nineteenth century, women were spoken of more gently but nonetheless kept carefully segregated from any place of power. America was shifting from an agrarian to an industrial society. As men left farms for factories, the role of women changed. Now they were not colaborers in the fields, but were given a separate sphere from men, the home, with care of children the foremost priority.

Yes, you say, but many of the fathers were saved and even became teachers without the languages. That is true. But how do you account for the fact that they so often erred in the Scriptures?…Even St. Augustine himself is obliged to confess…that a Christian teacher who is to expound the Scriptures must know Greek and Hebrew in addition to Latin. Otherwise, it is impossible to avoid constant stumbling; indeed, there are plenty of problems to work out even when one is well versed in the languages...it is a still greater sin and loss that we do not study languages, especially in these days when God is offering and giving us men and books and every facility and inducement to this study, and desires his Bible to be an open book. O how happy the dear fathers would have been if they had had our opportunity to study the languages and come thus prepared to the Holy Scriptures! What great toil and effort it cost them to gather up a few crumbs, while we with half the labor—yes, almost without any labor at all—can acquire the whole loaf! O how their effort puts our indolence to shame! Yes, how sternly God will judge our lethargy and ingratitude!

It is my contention that the popular misuse of “do not judge” reveals just how far the discipline of sound biblical study has slipped in recent years. More than that, it sheds light on the state of our culture, a culture that seeks to avoid accountability and responsibility for personal actions. This current trend and mentality runs counter to the teachings of Scripture. For the collective teaching of the Bible insists that those who are created in the image of God are morally responsible to God and to one another. So to use “do not judge” as a means of dismissing oneself from moral responsibility would be to interpret it in a way that pits it against the rest of Scripture. We should remember that “all Scripture is God-breathed,” or inspired by the Holy Spirit, and as such it is without error and never contradicts itself (because God never contradicts himself). Therefore, it is always wise to interpret a given passage of Scripture by comparing it with the principles and teachings found elsewhere in Scripture. This provides a healthy check and balance and helps us avoid misinterpretations, logical inconsistencies, and inappropriate applications.

Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a sheep-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a man-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors. Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I mean, by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words, deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders.

The ideal relationship is one in which the people are deeply in love with one another and are sexually compatible. However, perfect relationships are relatively uncommon. It is important to point out here that spiritual love and sexual love can, but do not necessarily, go hand in hand. If there is a certain amount of sexual compatibility, often it is limited; and some, but not all, of the sexual desire will be fulfilled. There is no greater sexual pleasure than that derived from association with someone you deeply love, if you are sexually well-suited. If you are not suited to one another sexually, though, it must be stressed that lack of sexual compatibility does not indicate lack of spiritual love. One can, and often does, exist without the other. As a matter of fact, often one member of a couple will resort to outside sexual activity because he deeply loves his mate, and wishes to avoid hurting or imposing upon his loved one. Deep spiritual love is enriched by sexual love, and it is certainly a necessary ingredient for any satisfactory relationship; but because of differing sexual predilections, outside sexual activity or masturbation sometimes provides a needed supplement.

A box of dominoes, a deck of cards, those were under the folded blankets. There are a lot of paperbacks on the shelves in the bedrooms, detective novels mostly, recreational reading. Beside them are the technical books on trees and the other reference books, Edible Plants and Shoots, Tying the Dry Fly, The Common Mushrooms, Log Cabin Construction, A Field Guide to the Birds, Exploring Your Camera, he believed that with the proper guidebooks you could do everything yourself; and his cache of serious books: the King James Bible which he said he enjoyed for its literary qualities, a complete Robert Burns, Boswell’s Life, Thompson’s Seasons, selections from Goldsmith and Cowper. He admired what he called the eighteenth-century rationalists: he thought of them as men who had avoided the corruptions of the Industrial Revolution and learned the secret of the golden mean, the balanced life, he was sure they all practiced organic farming. It astounded me to discover much later, in fact my husband told me, that Burns was an alcoholic, Cowper a madman, Dr. Johnson a manic-depressive and Goldsmith a pauper. There was something wrong with Thompson also; “escapist” was the term he used. After that I liked them better, they weren’t paragons any more.

Life within a Templar house was designed where possible to resemble that of a Cistercian monastery. Meals were communal and to be eaten in near silence, while a reading was given from the Bible. The rule accepted that the elaborate sign language monks used to ask for necessities while eating might not be known to Templar recruits, in which case "quietly and privately you should ask for what you need at table, with all humility and submission." Equal rations of food and wine were to be given to each brother and leftovers would be distributed to the poor. The numerous fast days of the Church calendar were to be observed, but allowances would be made for the needs of fighting men: meat was to be served three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Should the schedule of annual fast days interrupt this rhythm, rations would be increased to make up for lost sustenance as soon as the fasting period was over. It was recognized that the Templars were killers. "This armed company of knights may kill the enemies of the cross without stated the rule, neatly summing up the conclusion of centuries of experimental Christian philosophy, which had concluded that slaying humans who happened to be "unbelieving pagans" and "the enemies of the son of the Virgin Mary" was an act worthy of divine praise and not damnation. Otherwise, the Templars were expected to live in pious self-denial. Three horses were permitted to each knight, along with one squire whom "the brother shall not beat." Hunting with hawks—a favorite pastime of warriors throughout Christendom—was forbidden, as was hunting with dogs. only beasts Templars were permitted to kill were the mountain lions of the Holy Land. They were forbidden even to be in the company of hunting men, for the reason that "it is fitting for every religious man to go simply and humbly without laughing or talking too much." Banned, too, was the company of women, which the rule scorned as "a dangerous thing, for by it the old devil has led man from the straight path to paradise the flower of chastity is always [to be] maintained among you.... For this reason none Of you may presume to kiss a woman' be it widow, young girl, mother, sister, aunt or any other.... The Knighthood of Christ should avoid at all costs the embraces of women, by which men have perished many times." Although married men were permitted to join the order, they were not allowed to wear the white cloak and wives were not supposed to join their husbands in Templar houses.

{The final resolutions at Robert Ingersoll's funeral, quoted here} Whereas, in the order of nature -- that nature which moves with unerring certainty in obedience to fixed laws -- Robert G. Ingersoll has gone to that repose which we call death. We, his old friends and fellow-citizens, who have shared his friendship in the past, hereby manifest the respect due his memory. At a time when everything impelled him to conceal his opinions or to withhold their expression, when the highest honors of the state were his if he would but avoid discussion of the questions that relate to futurity, he avowed his belief; he did not bow his knee to superstition nor countenance a creed which his intellect dissented. Casting aside all the things for which men most sigh -- political honor, the power to direct the futures of the state, riches and emoluments, the association of the worldly and the well- to-do -- he stood forth and expressed his honest doubts, and he welcomed the ostracism that came with it, as a crown of glory, no less than did the martyrs of old. Even this self-sacrifice has been accounted shame to him, saying that he was urged thereto by a desire for financial gain, when at the time he made his stand there was before him only the prospect of loss and the scorn of the public. We, therefore, who know what a struggle it was to cut loose from his old associations, and what it meant to him at that time, rejoice in his triumph and in the plaudits that came to him from thus boldly avowing his opinions, and we desire to record the fact that we feel that he was greater than a saint, greater than a mere hero -- he was a thoroughly honest man. He was a believer, not in the narrow creed of a past barbarous age, but a true believer in all that men ought to hold sacred, the sanctity of the home, the purity of friendship, and the honesty of the individual. He was not afraid to advocate the fact that eternal truth was eternal justice; he was not afraid of the truth, nor to avow that he owed allegiance to it first of all, and he was willing to suffer shame and condemnation for its sake. The laws of the universe were his bible; to do good, his religion, and he was true to his creed. We therefore commend his life, for he was the apostle of the fireside, the evangel of justice and love and charity and happiness. We who knew him when he first began his struggle, his old neighbors and friends, rejoice at the testimony he has left us, and we commend his life and efforts as worthy of emulation.

Bonhoeffer talked about how the German penchant for self-sacrifice and submission to authority had been used for evil ends by the Nazis; only a deep understanding of and commitment to the God of the Bible could stand up to such wickedness. “It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith,” he wrote, “and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.” Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God’s purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One’s obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible: 447 If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.

When parents greet their children’s disagreement, disobedience, or practicing with simple hostility, the children are denied the benefit of being trained. They don’t learn that delaying gratification and being responsible have benefits. They only learn how to avoid someone’s wrath. Ever wonder why some Christians fear an angry God, no matter how much they read about his love? The results of this hostility are difficult to see because these children quickly learn how to hide under a compliant smile. When these children grow up they suffer depression, anxiety, relationship conflicts, and substance-abuse problems. For the first time in their lives, many boundary-injured individuals realize they have a problem. Hostility can create problems in both saying and hearing no. Some children become pliably enmeshed with others. But some react outwardly and become controlling people—just like the hostile parent. The Bible addresses two distinct reactions to hostility in parents: Fathers are told not to “embitter [their] children, or they will become discouraged” (Col. 3:21). Some children respond to harshness with compliance and depression. At the same time, fathers are told not to “exasperate [their] children” (Eph. 6:4). Other children react to hostility with rage. Many grow up to be just like the hostile parent who hurt them.

Author’s Note Caroline is a marriage of fact and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s fiction. I have knowingly departed from Wilder’s version of events only where the historical record stands in contradiction to her stories. Most prominently: Census records, as well as the Ingalls family Bible, demonstrate that Caroline Celestia Ingalls was born in Rutland Township, Montgomery County, Kansas on August 3, 1870. (Wilder, not anticipating writing a sequel to Little House in the Big Woods, set her first novel in 1873 and included her little sister. Consequently, when Wilder decided to continue her family’s saga by doubling back to earlier events, Carrie’s birth was omitted from Little House on the Prairie to avoid confusion.) No events corresponding to Wilder’s descriptions of a “war dance” in the chapter of Little House on the Prairie entitled “Indian War-Cry” are known to have occurred in the vicinity of Rutland Township during the Ingalls family’s residence there. Drum Creek, where Osage leaders met with federal Indian agents in the late summer of 1870 and agreed peaceably to sell their Kansas lands and relocate to present-day Oklahoma, was nearly twenty miles from the Ingalls claim. I have therefore adopted western scholar Frances Kay’s conjecture that Wilder’s family was frightened by the mourning songs sung by Osage women as they grieved the loss of their lands and ancestral graves in the days following the agreement. In this instance, like so many others involving the Osages, the Ingalls family’s reactions were entirely a product of their own deep prejudices and misconceptions.

As part of his long-winded bullshit, Baby fell into a genre trope that he had avoided in his first two novels. He started inventing new words. This was a common habit amongst Science Fiction writers. They couldn’t help themselves. They were always inventing new words. Perhaps the most famous example of a Science Fiction writer inventing a new word occurs in Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Part of Heinlein’s vision of horny decentralized alien sex involves the Martian word grok. To grok something is to comprehend that something with effortless and infinite intuition. When you grok something, that something becomes a part of you and you become a part of that something without any troublesome Earthling attempts at knowing. A good example of groking something is the way that members of the social construct of the White race had groked their own piglet pink. They’d groked their skin color so much that it became invisible. It had become part of them and they had become part of it. That was groking. People in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially those who worked in technology like Erik Willems, loved to talk about groking. With time, their overusage stripped away the original meaning and grok became synonymous with simple knowledge of a thing. In a weird way, people in the Bay Area who used the word grok did not grok the word grok. Baby had always been popular with people on the Internet, which was a wonderful place to deny climate change, willfully misinterpret the Bible, and denounce Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now that Baby had coined nonsense neologisms, he had become more than popular. He had become quotable.

Who May Enter? Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill? Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth from sincere hearts. Psalm 15:1-2 When we kneel at the altar, we present our hearts in reverent worship to God. It is our inward sacrifice of praise. In these verses the psalmist presents another side of worship—the worship that praises God with our lives. We offer this type of worship when we live in integrity and honesty in everyday situations. We offer it when we treat others with fairness in business deals and speak highly of others no matter who is listening. When we avoid the bitter tongue of gossip, tell the truth instead of resorting to a lie, or keep a promise we have made even at great cost, we are showing that our lives are a living sacrifice of worship to God. I’m thankful that we don’t have to be perfect to worship God. No one is without fault. However, when we endeavor to worship God through the way we live our lives, we offer him more than a show of worship. We present him with a heartbeat that sincerely desires to please him. Ask God today to help you live in such a way that your life is an offering of praise to his name. GOD, I am far from perfect, but I desire to serve you in integrity and honesty. I realize that others watch my life and that my daily decisions influence others. I pray that they will see you in both my words and my actions. Lord, I sincerely desire to worship you not only with my heart but with my character. Help me to live a blameless life. Only you can do this. May I speak your truth from a sincere heart so that you will receive the glory and honor you deserve.   THE HEART THAT IS NOT ENTRUSTED TO GOD FOR HIS SEARCHING, WILL NOT BE UNDERTAKEN BY HIM FOR CLEANSING. Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879)

Need to Be Honest about My Issues Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (PSALM 139:23 – 24) Thought for the Day: Avoiding reality never changes reality. Mostly I’m a good person with good motives, but not always. Not when I just want life to be a little more about me or about making sure I look good. That’s when my motives get corrupted. The Bible is pretty blunt in naming the real issue here: evil desires. Yikes. I don’t like that term at all. And it seems a bit severe to call my unglued issues evil desires, doesn’t it? But in the depths of my heart I know the truth. Avoiding reality never changes reality. Sigh. I think I should say that again: Avoiding reality never changes reality. And change is what I really want. So upon the table I now place my honesty: I have evil desires. I do. Maybe not the kind that will land me on a 48 Hours Mystery episode, but the kind that pull me away from the woman I want to be. One with a calm spirit and divine nature. I want it to be evident that I know Jesus, love Jesus, and spend time with Jesus each day. So why do other things bubble to the surface when my life gets stressful and my relationships get strained? Things like … Selfishness: I want things my way. Pride: I see things only from my vantage point. Impatience: I rush things without proper consideration. Anger: I let simmering frustrations erupt. Bitterness: I swallow eruptions and let them fester. It’s easier to avoid these realities than to deal with them. I’d much rather tidy my closet than tidy my heart. I’d much rather run to the mall and get a new shirt than run to God and get a new attitude. I’d much rather dig into a brownie than dig into my heart. I’d much rather point the finger at other people’s issues than take a peek at my own. Plus, it’s just a whole lot easier to tidy my closet, run to the store, eat a brownie, and look at other people’s issues. A whole lot easier. I rationalize that I don’t have time to get all psychological and examine my selfishness, pride, impatience, anger, and bitterness. And honestly, I’m tired of knowing I have issues but having no clue how to practically rein them in on a given day. I need something simple. A quick reality check I can remember in the midst of the everyday messies. And I think the following prayer is just the thing: God, even when I choose to ignore what my heart is saying to me, You know my heart. I bring to You this [and here I name whatever feeling or thoughts I have been reluctant to acknowledge]. Forgive me. Soften my heart. Make it pure. Might that quick prayer help you as well? If so, stop what you are doing —just for five minutes — and pray these or similar words. When I’ve prayed for the Lord to interrupt my feelings and soften my heart, it’s amazing how this changes me. Dear Lord, help me to remember to actually bring my emotions and reactions to You. I want my heart reaction to be godly. Thank You for grace and for always forgiving me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

ultimately the best way to avoid sin, the most powerful means of self-control, comes by listening to a “sweeter song.” For Christians, this means tuning in to God’s ultimate purpose for us. It means listening to His voice and obeying His commands.

You will find no asterisks beside the biblical exhortations to exercise self-control. What you will find is a truckload of commands to resist evil, flee lust, avoid temptation, abstain from sin, control your tongue, guard your heart, and, most graphically, kill the flesh.

Unfortunately, we don’t always take advantage of this blank slate. Or at least I don’t. When I mess up, I’m reluctant to confess my sins and ask God for forgiveness. Not only that, but I start avoiding my Bible and stop praying. In order words, I start avoiding God (as if I could).

Summing Up While the Old Testament envisions occasional short-term avoidance of sex for the purposes of holiness, it does not envision celibacy as a lifelong calling. The ancient world generally tended to view the question of whether to marry or remain single as a pragmatic matter. Marriage was considered primarily in terms of the responsibilities and duties required to sustain a household. Cynics and Stoics differed on the relative importance of marriage for the fulfilled life. Jesus, in his commendation of those who have “made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19: 12), recognized that God calls some, but not all, to a single life. Paul addresses this question extensively in 1 Corinthians 7 in a carefully balanced way, recognizing some circumstances under which married people might avoid sex for brief periods of time, but discouraging married people from avoiding sex altogether. Paul invites single people to remain unmarried, but clearly recognizes that not all people are gifted with lifelong celibacy. The modern awareness of the persistence of sexual orientation thus raises an important question: Are all gay and lesbian Christians whose sexual orientation is not subject to change necessarily called to a celibate life? If so, then this stands in some tension with the affirmation—of both Jesus and Paul—that lifelong celibacy is a gift for some but not for all.

Our only option, then, is honesty that leads to repentance. As the Bible shows, God’s grace can cover any sin, including murder, infidelity, or betrayal. Yet by definition grace must be received, and hypocrisy disguises our need to receive grace. When the masks fall, hypocrisy is exposed as an elaborate ruse to avoid grace.

Avoiding strife brings a man honor, but every fool is quarrelsome.

Many white Westerners feel that the worst thing they could be called is a racist. We know deep down that we're not supposed to make value distinctions between people of different ethnicities, as if it's better to be white or Black or whatever. Because we're hesitant to make value distinctions, and rightfully so, we're often slow to make any distinctions at all. Thus it goes without being said for many that to be truly equal everyone must be the same. This is what we mean by being colorblind—the belief that ethnic differences don't matter. Of course it would be fine if what we meant was that everyone should be treated with equal dignity or enjoy the same rights. But we suspect what is commonly meant is that everyone should be treated as if they were the same, and by same, what is frequently meant is majority culture. Consequently, we are trained to assume that ethnicity is unimportant, and that prejudice on the basis of ethnicity is an impossible motivation for behavior. We avoid making an issue a race issue unless there's no way around it, because we have convinced ourselves that ethnicity is no longer a factor in social situations. This leaves us somewhat schizophrenic, because we all know that we carry latent prejudices privately, while we are trained to pretend publicly that we don't.

Allah does not judge the Muslims’ words but what they determine in their hearts. ~ The Quran states that lying is acceptable.  It even teaches how to make amends for breaking an oath. ~ Muslims are allowed to deny their faith for self-preservation. ~ Muhammad allowed lying in three situations: war, to reconcile two parties, and to avoid marital conflict.

The thesis that we need to address the dangerous implications of the UFO and alien abduction phenomenon as a “psychic and symbolic reality,” as well as a “control system which acts on humans and uses humans,” contradicts certain trends in contemporary spiritual and New Age thought. These days, we find a strong tendency in many spiritual communities to focus single-mindedly on the power of positivity and affirmations of the light, based on ideas such as “The Law of Manifestation” or “The Secret.” The underlying belief is that each of us creates our own reality through our thoughts and intentions. Therefore, if we simply avoid anything dark or malevolent, nothing negative will be able to enter our field. But unfortunately, reality is not that simple, and this approach is a blatant form of spiritual bypassing. Paul Levy explores the idea that modern Anglo-European culture is infected by what the Algonquins call “wetiko,” a cannibalistic spirit driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption. “Spiritual/New Age practitioners who endlessly affirm the light while ignoring the shadow” fall “under the spell of wetiko,” he writes. By seeking to turn away from and hide their darkness, these practitioners unwittingly reinforce “the very evil from which they are fleeing. Looking away from darkness, thus keeping it unconscious, is what evil depends upon for its existence. If we unconsciously react … to evil by turning a blind eye toward it – “seeing no evil” – we are investing the darkness with power over us.” The alternative is to permeate evil with awareness, “stalking” the shadow so we can catch and assimilate it. Carl Jung wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” If the thesis developed in this essay has validity, then New Age spiritual practitioners will have to overcome their bypassing and confront the dark side of the psyche, reckoning with the occult control system. At the same time, political and ecological activists will need to interrogate their inveterate bias toward a purely materialist analysis, to acknowledge the existence of occult, hyper-dimensional, forces at work behind the scenes, influencing the course of events. And conspiracy theorists who believe in an incredibly evil, highly organized and intelligent cabal of human controllers working to bring about a New World Order surveillance society of enslavement will have to recognize that the controllers operating behind the scenes are not humans at all. Here and there, the Bible gets this right - as in Ephesians: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” If we aren’t aiming at the proper targets, we will never hit the mark.

1 For some readers, the traditional Christian designation to describe the first half of the canon, the Old Testament, is problematic. The defining adjective, “old,” can denote something irrelevant or inferior or in need of completion—all meanings that work to diminish the collection’s role and importance on its own terms. As a result, some prefer the Jewish designation the “Hebrew Bible” or the “Tanak” (an acronym based on the beginning letters of the three sections of the Hebrew Bible: the Torah, the Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim). Others, perhaps attempting to retain a Christian interpretive identity, have proposed the First Testament or the Older Testament as a necessary corrective. Words and intentions matter, so I have a great deal of respect for those wishing to avoid any hint of Christian supersessionism through an adapted use of terminology. In this work, I will use the Hebrew Bible. 2

The views of St. Paul on marriage are set forth in I Corinthians VII 1-9: 1. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. 3. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence; and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 4. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. 6. But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. 7. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. 8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to abide even as I. 9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. ...one wonders what would have become of, our race if all women had carried St. Paul's teaching, "It is good for them if they abide even as I," into practice. Bertrand Russell, in his "Marriage and Morals," has gone to the root of the matter when he states, "He does not suggest for a moment that, there may be any positive good in marriage, or that affection between husband and wife may be a beautiful and desirable thing, nor does he take the slightest interest in the family; fornication holds the center of the stage in his thoughts, and the whole of his sexual ethics is arranged with reference to it. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.

Who Failed to Pray? When my wife and I were first married, we lived temporarily in my parents’ home before beginning our pastorate in another state. One night each week my parents drove several miles to a country schoolhouse, where my father conducted a Bible study and prayer meeting. One evening, while they were away, my wife and I were alone in my parents’ home, praying on our knees, when a sudden premonition of terrible danger swept over me. I began to plead God’s mercy, lifting my hands in agony of prayer. I did not know what the danger was and thought perhaps a robber was outside our window. For ten minutes or more I could only plead the blood of Jesus and claim the name of Jesus. Then the burden lifted. My wife could not understand what had happened to me, and said my face was as white as a sheet. She asked me what I thought it was. I replied that I did not know, only that I was sure God had delivered from some great danger. About twenty minutes later there was a knock on our bedroom door. It was my mother. Her first words confirmed my earlier apprehension: “Oh, Wesley, God has been so merciful to us tonight! When Papa and I were driving home on the highway, the bright light of an oncoming car blinded our eyes. The car was coming at high speed straight at us. At the last moment it swerved and just missed us. When it was past, we realized that we were on the wrong side of the road!” Explain it as you will. Perhaps it was the hand of prayer that guided the steering wheel of the speeding car and swerved it to avoid a collision. Perhaps I had touched heaven’s throne, and God sent an angel to handle the situation. I do not know. But this I do know: God alerted us to intercede and at the very time of danger spared the lives of my parents to many more years of ministry. Thereafter, when I hear that a valuable servant of God has been killed in an accident, I ask myself: “Who failed to pray?

The preacher’s role is to challenge those who hear in a way that might too easily be avoided by their personal Bible reading. This was the institutional role of the priests in the Old Testament, augmented by God’s servants the prophets, especially in times of crisis.

Arguments Arguments can be avoided by using gentle words (Proverbs 15:1) Loving arguments is a sin (Proverbs 17:19) A fool is quick to argue (Proverbs 20:3) Avoid becoming entangled in others’ arguments (Proverbs 26:17) Avoid arguing with a weak Christian (Romans 14:1) We should avoid arguments (Philippians 2:14) Arguments between Christians are useless (Titus 3:9)

The fact that Aaron is permitted to become high priest despite his sin in making the golden calf (and later trying to avoid responsibility for it) is testimony to the forgiving nature of God, as well as perhaps to the need for the one who will intercede on behalf of his people to be thoroughly acquainted with temptations and moral failure.

Things go wrong when you fish, and those chances increase when you’re in a boat. Often this has to do with what’s known as human error. This is the preferred term because it doesn’t name the human who made the error, especially when that human is me. Once, Dave and I were in his canoe on the last quarter mile of a long day on the water. We were around a bend from the takeout. Beyond one final rapids we would pull over and load up his van. The only thing standing in our way was a large rock. The current picked up and moved us faster, but it would be easy to avoid the rock. It would almost be harder to hit it than to miss it. I was in the bow, Dave was in the stern. Without question he was the captain, I’m not sure a fifteen-foot canoe has a captain, but Dave would be the captain of anything from a kayak to a steamer. “Go to the left of the rock,” he bellowed. This could not have been clearer and took on some urgency as the rock got nearer. Yet we rowed at cross-purposes and continued to head straight toward it. In search of clarity I shouted: “Our left or the rock’s left?” The metaphysical nature of this question has remained with me over the years. If it appeared in a Basho haiku, it might be considered cryptically wise or at least a noble mistranslation. Canoe in summer Floats slowly down the river Past the large rock’s left Not this time. The last thing I remember hearing, which echoed in my ears underwater as we turned over, was Dave saying emphatically, “The rock doesn’t have a left!” My tendency to overanalyze simple situations was captured in this question, though I’m embarrassed to admit in private moments it still makes sense to me that a rock can have a left. Hitting a rock with a canoe may have many reasons but one result. The canoe tipped at once, decisively, and Dave’s only concern was the fate of his tackle box, which occupied a place in his spiritual landscape like the Gutenberg Bible. Thankfully, the river wasn’t deep there, just a few feet. Once the tackle box was salvaged—which he always kept tightly shut in case of this exact sort of catastrophe—Dave was in a fairly agreeable mood. He didn’t care about getting wet or even mention it. He had the grin of a teenager who’s just talked his way out of a speeding ticket. This was not the first canoe he’d tipped out of. He was seventy-five years old.

Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for; through the fear of the LORD evil is avoided. [20:6] Many claim to have unfailing love, but a faithful person who can find?

Quarreling [Prov. 17:14] Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out. [17:19] Whoever loves a quarrel loves sin; whoever builds a high gate invites destruction. [20:3] It is to one’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel. [22:10] Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; quarrels and insults are ended. [26:21] As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.

People say that Yazidism isn’t a “real” religion because we have no official book like the Bible or the Koran. Because some of us don’t shower on Wednesdays—the day that Tawusi Melek first came to earth, and our day of rest and prayer—they say we are dirty. Because we pray toward the sun, we are called pagans. Our belief in reincarnation, which helps us cope with death and keep our community together, is rejected by Muslims because none of the Abrahamic faiths believe in it. Some Yazidis avoid certain foods, like lettuce, and are mocked for their strange habits. Others don’t wear blue because they see it as the color of Tawusi Melek and too holy for a human, and even that choice is ridiculed.