Press On Christian Quotes

Promise Yourself To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but great deeds. To live in faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Everyone wanted to be the best. Best student. Best servant. Best Christian. They got caught up in it, pressing and pushing until they forgot whom it was they were trying to please.

The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.

He's pressing me to his chest. I melt. Oh, this is where I want to be I rest my head against him, and he kisses my hair repeatedly. This is home. He smells of linen, fabric softener, body wash, and my favourite smell - Christian. For a moment, I allow myself the illusion that all will be well, and it soothes my ravaged soul

Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year.

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything & and make your optimisom come true. Think only of the best, work only for the best. Forget the mistakes of the past & press on the greater achievements of the future. Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to critize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side as long as you are true to the best that is in you.

It was becoming clearer and clearer that if I wanted to come to the end of my life and not say, “I’ve wasted it!” then I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of God and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion.

Don't ever be discouraged with yourself because you have not arrived at success, but instead be pleased that you are pressing toward it.

May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him

It's one thing to have a goal, but it's quite another thing to actually accept the challenge, develop a strategy to press for the goal, make the sacrifices, pay the price to move forward, and blessing of blessing, to realize some part of it.

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.

even in pressing straits the word of God is not bound, not even in preachers who are bound.

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.

It was about falling asleep with Sam's chest pressed against my back so I could feel his heart slow to match mine. It was about growing up and realizing that the feel of his arms around me, the smell of him when he was sleeping, the sound of his breathing -- that was home and everything I wanted at the end of the day. It wasn't the same as being with him and we were awake.

Christianity nowadays is like a big household where many cousins live under the same roof. They all belong to the same clan, but at times they have very different ideas about how to run their family affairs. Some of them, for instance, have no use for any outside devotion. God is a spirit, and He wants to be worshipped in spirit only, they say. Consequently, they have dispensed with all liturgy. They don’t want any distracting ceremonies, no incense, no vestments, no music, no pictures and images, not even sacraments—only the service of the spirit. The trouble is, however, that as long as we live here on earth, we simply are not pure spirits, but we have also a body, and in that body, a very human heart; and this heart needs outward signs of its inward affections. That is why we embrace and kiss the one we love; and the more we love, the more ardently we press him to this very heart—somehow it seems as if these cousins had overlooked that fact. But you can’t cheat the heart; it knows what it wants, and it knows how to get it.

On the concept of unity- “Thatʼs right-Jesusʼ most pressing concern before leaving the earth was our unity. He was looking ahead, to every generation of believer. And as he prayed, he made it clear that our witness as his body in this fractured , messed-up, chaotic world would depend on our love for another.

It is one thing to read the Scriptures and affirm their truth. But until you are in the trenches of trial, until you are faced with life circumstances that test your faith, until you are pressed to the absolute limit of your physical and emotional capacity, until you face the unrelenting stress of ongoing trauma, you never really know how you'll respond to what you may have embraced so easily during a comfortable Bible study.

Up till now it has been thought that the growth of the Christian myths during the Roman Empire was possible only because printing was not yet invented. Precisely the contrary. The daily press and the telegraph, which in a moment spreads inventions over the whole earth, fabricate more myths (and the bourgeois cattle believe and enlarge upon them) in one day than could have formerly been done in a century.

ALONE One of my new housemates, Stacy, wants to write a story about an astronaut. In his story the astronaut is wearing a suit that keeps him alive by recycling his fluids. In the story the astronaut is working on a space station when an accident takes place, and he is cast into space to orbit the earth, to spend the rest of his life circling the globe. Stacy says this story is how he imagines hell, a place where a person is completely alone, without others and without God. After Stacy told me about his story, I kept seeing it in my mind. I thought about it before I went to sleep at night. I imagined myself looking out my little bubble helmet at blue earth, reaching toward it, closing it between my puffy white space-suit fingers, wondering if my friends were still there. In my imagination I would call to them, yell for them, but the sound would only come back loud within my helmet. Through the years my hair would grow long in my helmet and gather around my forehead and fall across my eyes. Because of my helmet I would not be able to touch my face with my hands to move my hair out of my eyes, so my view of earth, slowly, over the first two years, would dim to only a thin light through a curtain of thatch and beard. I would lay there in bed thinking about Stacy's story, putting myself out there in the black. And there came a time, in space, when I could not tell whether I was awake or asleep. All my thoughts mingled together because I had no people to remind me what was real and what was not real. I would punch myself in the side to feel pain, and this way I could be relatively sure I was not dreaming. Within ten years I was beginning to breathe heavy through my hair and my beard as they were pressing tough against my face and had begun to curl into my mouth and up my nose. In space, I forgot that I was human. I did not know whether I was a ghost or an apparition or a demon thing. After I thought about Stacy's story, I lay there in bed and wanted to be touched, wanted to be talked to. I had the terrifying thought that something like that might happen to me. I thought it was just a terrible story, a painful and ugly story. Stacy had delivered as accurate a description of a hell as could be calculated. And what is sad, what is very sad, is that we are proud people, and because we have sensitive egos and so many of us live our lives in front of our televisions, not having to deal with real people who might hurt us or offend us, we float along on our couches like astronauts moving aimlessly through the Milky Way, hardly interacting with other human beings at all.

Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

THE OPTIMIST CREED Promise Yourself… To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds. To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Anyone who knows he is loved is in turn prompted to love. It is the Lord himself, who loved us first, who asks us to place at the center of our lives love for him and for the people he has loved. It is especially adolescents and young people, who feel within them the pressing call to love, who need to be freed from the widespread prejudice that Christianity, with its commandments and prohibitions, sets too many obstacles in the path of the joy of love and, in particular prevents people from fully enjoying the happiness that men and women find in their love for one another.

I am the interpretation of the prophet I am the artist in the coffin I am the brave flag stained with blood I am the wounds overcome I am the dream refusing to sleep I am the bare-breasted voice of liberty I am the comic the insult and the laugh I am the right the middle and the left I am the poached eggs in the sky I am the Parisian streets at night I am the dance that swings till dawn I am the grass on the greener lawn I am the respectful neighbour and the graceful man I am the encouraging smile and the helping hand I am the straight back and the lifted chin I am the tender heart and the will to win I am the rainbow in rain I am the human who won’t die in vain I am Athena of Greek mythology I am the religion that praises equality I am the woman of stealth and affection I am the man of value and compassion I am the wild horse ploughing through I am the shoulder to lean onto I am the Muslim the Jew and the Christian I am the Dane the French and the Palestinian I am the straight the square and the round I am the white the black and the brown I am the free speech and the free press I am the freedom to express I will die for my right to be all the above here mentioned And should threat encounter I’ll pull my pencil

Promise Yourself To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

Extremist individuals live inside every single group on the planet. Devout followers from Christian to Muslim who kill in the name of God, down to people who perpetuate a cycle of abuse from parent to child. And do you know at what point they’re labeled as terrorists?” Martini said, “When the government—” “When the news reports it. The news can take a starving refugee and make them into an invading migrant. One of my Black ancestors was photographed carrying diapers over his head after a flood. They called him a ‘looter.’ A white man was photographed doing the same thing. They called him a ‘survivor.

Spiritual armor is useful only if we put it on!

I kissed him gently, not wanting to scare him. A soft press of my lips on his, nothing more. Time slowed to a crawl. Then Christian moved his lips, pressing harder, a gentle demand for more.

One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering. Religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are not--that is, when they have nothing to do with suffering or its alleviation. Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral--that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings.

One always feels the need to wash one’s hands after being forced to deal with the methods of U.S. interventionism. It is so unpleasant and filthy that one shudders. When one hears the pious nonsense of the Jewish-led world plutocracy over the radio or reads it in the press, one need only to look behind the scenes to feel pity for the miseries of mankind. That such a man has the impudence to judge us, to call on God and the world as witnesses of the purity of his deeds, to incite war and send innocent people singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” to battle for his filthy financial interests can only fill anyone with even the most primitive sense of decency with the deepest horror. Were there only such people in the world, one would have to despise humanity. "Mr. Roosevelt Cross-Examined", 30 November 1941

I started to walk the day I was told I was dying of cancer. I believe walking has kept me alive. I live with a constant, pressing awareness of death. Once I start to walk, I am not afraid anymore; all is well.

If someone is snarky or critical, I no longer try to “buff them up,” send love, or try to explain my position. If the comment is nasty or a put-down, I just delete it. If it happens again, I simply press “ban user.

I am pressed to admit that I don’t have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel.

I ask you to come down to earth," said the Baron in a calm, rather faint voice, "and to take up the duties of your station!" "I have no intention of obeying you, my Lord Father," said Cosimo. "I am very sorry." They were ill at ease, both of them, bored. Each knew what the other would say. "And what about your studies? Your devotions as a Christian?" said the father. "Do you intend to grown up like an American Savage?" Cosimo was silent. These were thoughts he had not yet put to himself and had no wish to. Then he exclaimed: "Just because I'm a few yards higher up, does it mean that good teaching can't reach me?" This was an able reply too, though it diminished, in a way, the range of his gesture; a sign of weakness. His father realized this and became more pressing. "Rebellion cannot be measured by yards," said he. "Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return." Now was the moment for my brother to produce some other noble reply, perhaps a Latin maxim, but at that instant none came into his head, though he knew so many by heart. Instead he suddenly got bored with all this solemnity, and shouted: "But from the trees I can piss farther," a phrase without much meaning, but which cut the discussion short. As though they had heard the phrase, a shout went up from the ragamuffins around Porta Capperi. The Baron of Rondo's horse shied, the Baron pulled the reins and wrapped himself more tightly in his cloak, ready to leave. Then he turned, drew an arm out of his cloak, pointed to the sky, which had suddenly become overcast with black clouds, and exclaimed: "Be careful, son, there's Someone who can piss on us all!"...

My method is atheism. I find the atheistic outlook provides a favourable background for cosmopolitan practices. Acceptance of atheism at once pulls down caste and religious barriers between man and man. There is no longer a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian. All are human beings. Further, the atheistic outlook puts man on his legs. There is neither divine will nor fate to control his actions. The release of free will awakens Harijans [lowest caste] and the depressed classes from the stupor of inferiority into which they were pressed all these ages when they were made to believe that they were fated to be untouchables. So I find the atheistic outlook helpful for my work [helping people]. After all it is man that created god to make society moral and to silence restless inquisitiveness about the how and why of natural phenomena. Of course god was useful though a falsehood. But like all falsehoods, belief in god also gave rise to many evils in course of time and today it is not only useless but harmful to human progress. So I take to the propagation of atheism as an aid to my work. The results justify my choice.

The problem of living a Christian life in a non-Christian society is pressing, since most of our social institutions are non-Christian and in pagan hands. The family remains the only trustworthy transmitter of Christian culture.

Press on eternally to the higher and larger realization of absolute goodness, and leave results to the law. More and more real goodness will naturally appear in all your thoughts and actions. You will therefore become good, not by thinking that you are good, but by thinking thoughts that are created in the image and likeness of that which is good.

Do not be fooled. Passive prayers hastily tossed out as some second-thought appeasement at those junctures when life’s more pressing duties benevolently grant us a moment of reprieve are nothing of prayer. Real prayer is first realizing the fact that prayer ‘is’ the pressing duty. And second, that real prayer is doggedly pushing everything else aside to deliberately act on that fact.

His eyes flared, and he tightened his grip on her arm. “Don’t press me, Meg.” She didn’t miss the intimate use of her Christian name, but there was no mistaking the threat this time. His voice was deep and liquid and seemed to wrap around her. She knew she shouldn’t provoke him, but he brought out a mischievous side of her long forgotten. Lifting one brow, she asked, “Or what?” Before the taunt had left her mouth, she was in his arms again and jerked firmly against the broad chest she’d just admired. She gasped. Not from shock, but from the realization of how much she liked being pressed against him. Of how she savored the sensation of her breasts and hips molded against the hard length of his body, of melting against him, of being secured in his arms. A wave of heated awareness shuddered through her. His eyes were hooded, his expression dark and full of promise. “Or I will prove to you just how innocent you are, my sweet, and how very little control you have over a man and a man’s desires.

You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.

Touching the copper of the ankh reminded me of another necklace, a necklace long since lost under the dust of time. That necklace had been simpler: only a string of beads etched with tiny ankhs. But my husband had brought it to me the morning of our wedding, sneaking up to our house just after dawn in a gesture uncharacteristically bold for him. I had chastised him for the indiscretion. "What are you doing? You're going to see me this afternoon... and then every day after that!" "I had to give you these before the wedding." He held up the string of beads. "They were my mother's. I want you to have them, to wear them today.” He leaned forward, placing the beads around my neck. As his fingers brushed my skin, I felt something warm and tingly run through my body. At the tender age of fifteen, I hadn't exactly understood such sensations, though I was eager to explore them. My wiser self today recognized them as the early stirrings of lust, and . . . well, there had been something else there too. Something else that I still didn't quite comprehend. An electric connection, a feeling that we were bound into something bigger than ourselves. That our being together was inevitable. "There," he'd said, once the beads were secure and my hair brushed back into place. "Perfect.” He said nothing else after that. He didn't need to. His eyes told me all I needed to know, and I shivered. Until Kyriakos, no man had ever given me a second glance. I was Marthanes' too-tall daughter after all, the one with the sharp tongue who didn't think before speaking. (Shape-shifting would eventually take care of one of those problems but not the other.) But Kyriakos had always listened to me and watched me like I was someone more, someone tempting and desirable, like the beautiful priestesses of Aphrodite who still carried on their rituals away from the Christian priests. I wanted him to touch me then, not realizing just how much until I caught his hand suddenly and unexpectedly. Taking it, I placed it around my waist and pulled him to me. His eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't pull back. We were almost the same height, making it easy for his mouth to seek mine out in a crushing kiss. I leaned against the warm stone wall behind me so that I was pressed between it and him. I could feel every part of his body against mine, but we still weren't close enough. Not nearly enough. Our kissing grew more ardent, as though our lips alone might close whatever aching distance lay between us. I moved his hand again, this time to push up my skirt along the side of one leg. His hand stroked the smooth flesh there and, without further urging, slid over to my inner thigh. I arched my lower body toward his, nearly writhing against him now, needing him to touch me everywhere. "Letha? Where are you at?” My sister's voice carried over the wind; she wasn't nearby but was close enough to be here soon. Kyriakos and I broke apart, both gasping, pulses racing. He was looking at me like he'd never seen me before. Heat burned in his gaze. "Have you ever been with anyone before?" he asked wonderingly. I shook my head. "How did you ... I never imagined you doing that...” "I learn fast.” He grinned and pressed my hand to his lips. "Tonight," he breathed. "Tonight we ...” "Tonight," I agreed. He backed away then, eyes still smoldering. "I love you. You are my life.” "I love you too." I smiled and watched him go.

As the church, we are in community together trying to fulfill this Great Commission that Jesus left us with. As we gently press into each other, we form one united thing, His church. As we work together, sharing the space God gives us to do His work, we all become shaped a little different. We all become a little more like Him.

But the whole modern world, or at any rate the whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds...Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a cowardly outrage? It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going to the lions. The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being torn in pieces by two thousand people. What the thing is, is not cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked. The man who does it is very infamous and very brave. But, again, the explanation is that our modern Press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything, rather than appeal to right and wrong.

May the grace of faith, keep you going in the forward motion to reach the ultimate goal.

Let us live this day in that light, that life, and that peace, so that we may gain the victory over those things that press us down.

Keep pressing forward and focused on your goals. Hard work does have a "pay day"!!-

Remember to forget what lies behind, reach and press forward.

Although it received little press and was rarely incorporated into explanations of his motivations, Dylann Roof's identity as a white Christian was central to his worldview.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not because I see it, but because, by it, I see everything else.

The job of the sin-sick Christian is to repent and turn from sin and press into Christ for continued healing.

Before we can pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ we must be willing to pray—‘My kingdom go!

The patent talks about “anticipatory package shipping,” which the press seized upon as though Amazon could somehow mail you something before you bought it.

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground -- would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many place is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune form the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

When she (Miss Betsey - M. Zh.)reached the house she gave another proof of her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the glass to that extent that my poor dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment. She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday." (Chapter I)

The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He’d been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he’d been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean. He’d been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He’d been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name. And, of course, never showed her face.

Why am I feeling guilty? Why is he so mad? I peek up at him. “Well, you know a lot more about me now,” he snaps, his mouth presses into a hard line. “I knew you were inexperienced, but a virgin!” He says it like it’s a really dirty word. “Hell, Ana, I just showed you …” he groans. “May God forgive me. Have you ever been kissed, apart from by me?” “Of course I have.” I try my best to look affronted. Okay … maybe twice. “And a nice young man hasn’t swept you off your feet? I just don’t understand. You’re twenty-one, nearly twenty-two. You’re beautiful.” He runs his hand through his hair again. Beautiful. I flush with pleasure. Christian Grey thinks I’m beautiful. I knot my fingers together, staring at them hard, trying to conceal my goofy grin.

In England, where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere, only two versions of the Spanish war have had any publicity to speak of: the Right-wing version of Christian patriots versus Bolsheviks dripping with blood, and the Left-wing version of gentlemanly republicans quelling a military revolt. The central issue has been successfully covered up.

He, however, is not unreasonably said to walk blamelessly, not who has already reached the end of his journey, but who is pressing on towards the end in a blameless manner, free from damnable sins, and at the same time not neglecting to cleanse by almsgiving such sins as are venial. For the way in which we walk, that is, the road by which we reach perfection, is cleansed by clean prayer.

I’ve heard so many people, particularly people of faith, say they could look past his wrongdoings. When they’re pressed further, the reply is always some variation of “He doesn’t mean what he says,” “It’s just to get a rise out of people,” or “It’s all for show.” When you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and say nothing, you are in fact saying everything. You are telling others you approve of immorality and injustice. You are telling them you support the marginalization and vilification of those who are different from you. You are telling them that fear reigns supreme and that you will tolerate nefarious behavior. As President John F. Kennedy said in a speech: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.” - Amy Erickson

It was better to die, like Eugénie and Digby, in the prime of life with all one's faculties about one. But he wasn't like that, she thought, glancing at the press cuttings. 'A man of singularly handsome presence... shot, fished, and played golf.' No, not like that in the least. He had been a curious man; weak; sensitive; liking titles; liking pictures; and often depressed, she guessed , by his wife's exuberance. She pushed the cuttings away and took up her book. It was odd how different the same person seemed to two different people, she thought. There was Martin, liking Eugénie; and she, liking Digby. She began to read. She had always wanted to know about Christianity - how it began; what it meant, originally. God is love, The kingdom of Heaven is within us, sayings like that she thought, turning over the pages, what did they mean? The actual words were very beautiful. But who said them - when? Then the spout of the tea-kettle puffed steam at her and she moved it away. The wind was rattling the windows in the back room; it was bending the little bushes; they still had no leaves on them. It was what a man said under a fig tree, on a hill, she thought. And then another man wrote it down. But suppose that what that man says is just as false as what this man - she touched the press cuttings with her spoon - says about Digby? And here I am, she thought, looking at the china in the Dutch cabinet, in this drawing-room, getting a little spark from what someone said all those years ago - here it comes (the china was changing from blue to livid) skipping over all those mountains, all those seas. She found her place and began to read.

You know that your church has always taken a view on these matters very different from ours, from the day that the first printing press was assembled. Your church did not want your holy scriptures in the hands of ordinary people. We felt differently. To us, printing was an avokat ha kodesh, a holy work. Some rabbis even likened the press to an altar. We call it 'writing with many pens' and saw it as furthering the spread of the word that began with Moses on Mount Sinai. So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you.

Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things. Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that invaluable "real life." But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is 'the results of modern investigation'.

The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact 7that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.

At the point that I have rigorously pressed out and reached the end of myself, I have in fact not even broached the place where God is about to begin. Therefore, a conclusion in my mind is barely a point of departure in God’s.

So much is spoken about wasting one’s life. But the only life wasted is the life of one who so lived it, deceived by life’s pleasures or its sorrows, that he never became decisively, eternally, conscious of himself as spirit, as self, or, what is the same, he never became aware- and gained in the deepest sense the impression- that there is a God there and that ‘he’, himself, his self, exists before this God, which infinite gain is never come by except through despair.

Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God’s grace might prove to be all too free on this side, that hell, instead of being populated with so many people, might some day prove to be empty! ~ Karl Barth, God Here and Now

It is not possible for the US military to know exactly what it needs for the future. But it is possible to create better incentives that stimulate the development of new capabilities and produce novel solutions to our most pressing military problems.

When the wounded mouse finally died, I held his little body. I rubbed the top of his head, and I thought of it as a blessing, a baptism. Whenever I fed the mice or weighed them for the lever-press task, I always thought of Jesus in the upper room, washing his disciples' feet. This moment of servitude, of being quite literally brought low, always reminded me that I needed these mice just as much as they needed me. More. What would I know about the brain without them? How could I perform my work, find answers to my questions? The collaboration that the mice and I have going in this lab is, if not holy, then at least sacrosanct. I have never, will never, tell anyone that I sometimes think this way, because I'm aware that the Christians in my life would find it blasphemous and the scientists would find it embarrassing, but the more I do this work the more I believe in a kind of holiness in our connection to everything on Earth. Holy is the mouse. Holy is the grain the mouse eats. Holy is the seed. Holy are we.

must, even among Christians, give over pressing the greatest part of those things that Christ hath taught us, though He has commanded us not to conceal them, but to proclaim on the housetops that which He taught in secret.  The greatest parts of His precepts are more opposite to the lives of the men of this age than any part of my discourse has been, but the preachers seem to have learned that craft to which you advise me: for they, observing that the world would not willingly suit their lives to the rules that Christ has given, have fitted His doctrine, as if it had been a leaden rule, to their lives, that so, some way or other, they might agree with one another.  But I see no other effect of this compliance except it be that men become more secure in their wickedness by it;

To invoke Jesus' name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy. The prayer of Jesus' name actually brings God closer, making him more present. He is always present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayers a difference; 'prayer changes things.' It may or may not change our external circumstances. (It does if God sees that that change is good for us; it does not if God sees that it is not.) but it always changes our relationship to God, which is infinitely more important than external circumstances, however pressing they may seem, because it is eternal but they are temporary, and because it is our very self but they are not.

THE OPTIMIST CREED Promise Yourself… To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds. To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you. The PATHWAY of ROSES

Let us for a little while lay aside a care the hour of which has not yet come, and, if you please, let us occupy ourselves with that which is always pressing. For there is no time at which it is not both suitable and necessary for us to consider in what way we can please God;

Porcophilia can also be used for oppressive and repressive purposes. In medieval Spain, where Jews and Muslims were compelled on pain of death and torture to convert to Christianity, the religious authorities quite rightly suspected that many of the conversions were not sincere. Indeed, the Inquisition arose partly from the holy dread that secret infidels were attending Mass—where of course, and even more disgustingly, they were pretending to eat human flesh and drink human blood, in the person of Christ himself. Among the customs that arose in consequence was the offering, at most events formal and informal, of a plate of charcuterie. Those who have been fortunate enough to visit Spain, or any good Spanish restaurant, will be familiar with the gesture of hospitality: literally dozens of pieces of differently cured, differently sliced pig. But the grim origin of this lies in a constant effort to sniff out heresy, and to be unsmilingly watchful for giveaway expressions of distaste. In the hands of eager Christian fa-natics, even the toothsome jamón Ibérico could be pressed into service as a form of torture.

Irony of ironies. Today, an aging, dying Christian West is pressing the Third World and the Islamic world to accept contraception, abortion, and sterilization as the West has done. But why should they enter a suicide pact with us when they stand to inherit the earth when we are gone?

God created the universe; he can heal sexual brokenness in an instant. But sometimes he allows various struggles to persist, because we are being sanctified. These struggles force us to press into him more and more and depend on his grace to get us “from one degree of glory to another.

The apostle said he was "hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed." He made no attempt to mask his pain in a fraudulent piety. The Christian is not a Stoic. Neither does he flee into a fantasy world that denies the reality of suffering. Paul freely admitted the pressure he experienced.

The truth is we believe in decency so much--we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so--that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behavior that we find all these explanations.

As Christians, I feel those of us in the creative community must seek to be more than scribes. If Diarmaid MacColloch is right in his immense history, The Reformation, we had plenty of Christian scribes on the eve of that enormous and painful upheaval. But it was the printing press that enabled the great thinkers of that time, both Reformer and Catholic, to transform our “assumptions about knowledge and originality of thought.” I suggest now that we must seize the revolutionary media of our age in the way that those earlier Christians and Catholics seized the printed book. We must truly use the realistic novel, the television drama, and the motion picture to tell the Christian story anew. It is our obligation to tell that story over and over and to use the best means that we have. In that spirit this novel was written—with the hope of exploring and celebrating the mystery of the Hypostatic Union as well as the mystery of the Incarnation—in a wholly fresh way.

My ——” or “My dearest ——” followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would be ‘My Marcel,’ or ‘My dearest Marcel.’ After this I would never allow my relatives, by calling me ‘dearest,’ to rob of their priceless uniqueness the delicious words that Albertine uttered to me

My God, what did I do to deserve such a reward? This was how I wanted to wake for the rest of my existence: Rose's beautiful blonde hair, pouring over her shoulders and onto my arms. Her sweet scent filling my nose, her sexy body pressed into mine just right. Damn, I had never wanted anything more than I wanted her in that moment.

As central expressions of patriotism, these changes guaranteed that religious sentiment would be not just a theme pressed by a transitory administration but rather a lasting trait of the nation. The addition of “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance ensured that the new fusion of piety and patriotism that conservatives had crafted over the past two decades would be instilled in the next generation of children and beyond. From then on, their interpretation of America’s fundamental nature would have a seemingly permanent place in the national imagination. And with “In God We Trust” appearing on postage stamps and paper currency, the daily interactions citizens made through the state—sending mail, swapping money—were similarly sacralized. The addition of the religious motto to paper currency was particularly important, as it formally confirmed a role for capitalism in that larger love of God and country. Since then, every act of buying and selling in America has occurred through a currency that proudly praises God.

I at this writing am an old man, only three years short of my three score and ten. And they tell me that Wycliffe’s bones have been dug up and burned and cast into the river that leads to the sea. The Church--she thinks--has had her revenge. But, as I hear it, Wycliffe’s writings had already touched one man in Bohemia, John Huss, whom the Church burned several years ago. And though both Wycliffe and Huss be dead, There are rumors of unrest in that small country, unrest caused by those who seek true religion. In England, King Henry rules hand in glove with the Pope, but not forever, I think. We are still here--the Lollards, I mean. Did you guess it? Yes, I have become a “poor priest.” And I will tell you this: the writings of Wycliffe have been driven out of Oxford, but they can be found in every other nook in England. Indeed, many a time I have talked with an Oxford scholar on the road and have seen God open his heart to the truth. This is what Saint Paul meant when he spoke of Christians as being pressed but never pinned. The Church rages, but the truth goes on. Many a stout English yeoman embraces it in these days and leads his family in true godly worship. John Wycliffe was our morning star. When all was darkest and England lay asleep in the deadly arms of the papacy, God sent him to us. The Scripture has come to England. What will it hold back? Soon--though perhaps not in my lifetime-- the dawn will break, and there will be a new day in England.

Billos ran. He tore down the shore, bounded up on the rock, and dove into the air. The warm water engulfed him. A boiling heat knocked the wind from his lungs. The shock alone might kill him. But it was pleasure that surged through his body, not pain. The sensations coursed through his bones in great unrelenting waves. Elyon. How he was certain, he did not know. But he knew. Elyon was in this lake with him. Billos opened his eyes. Gold light drifted by. He lost all sense of direction. The water pressed in on every inch of his body, as intense as any acid, but one that burned with pleasure instead of pain. He sank into the water, opened his mouth and laughed. He wanted more, much more. He wanted to suck the water in and drink it. Without thinking, he did just that. The liquid hit his lungs. Billos pulled up, panicked. He tried to hack the water from his lungs, but inhaled more instead. No pain. He carefully sucked more water and breathed it out slowly. Then again, deep and hard. Out with a soft whoosh. He was breathing the water! Billos shrieked with laughter. He swam into the lake, deeper and deeper. The power contained in this lake was far greater than anything he'd ever imagined. "I made this, Billos." Billos whipped his body around, searching for the words' source. "Elyon?" His voice was muffled, hardly a voice at all. "Do you like it?" "Yes!" Billos said. He might have spoken; he might have shouted--he didn't know. He only knew that his whole body screamed it. Billos looked around. "Elyon?" "Why do you doubt me, Billos?" In that single moment the full weight of Billos's foolishness crashed on him like a sledgehammer. "I see you, Billos." "I made you." "I love you." The words crashed over him, reaching into the deepest folds of his flesh, caressing each hidden synapse, flowing through every vein, as though he had been given a transfusion. "I choose you, Billos." Billos began to weep. The feeling was more intense than any pain he had ever felt. The current pulled at him, tugging him up through the colors. His body trembled with pleasure. He wanted to speak, to yell, to tell the whole world that he was the most fortunate person in the universe. That he was loved by Elyon. Elyon himself. "Never leave me, Billos." "Never! I will never leave you." The current pushed him through the water and then above the surface not ten meters from the shore. He stood on the sandy bottom. For a moment he had such clarity of mind that he was sure he could understand the very fabric of space if he put his mind to it. He was chosen. He was loved.

I heard Chuck Swindoll share another refreshing thought on one of his broadcasts. He said that Christians can be like a sack of marbles—unfeeling, unloving, just clacking against each other as they go through life. Or, they can be caring people—like a sack of grapes pressing together to provide a soft, loving place to cushion and comfort each other from the hard crushes of life.

Professional self-preservation as well as political correctness and economics has affected academic research in certain fields of study, in contrast to the fearlessness demonstrated by professors when unmasking horrors in such dangerous areas of investigation as Christian Europe (the burning of witches! colonialism!) and Catholic Spain (the ubiquitous Spanish Inquisition!). Islamic Spain is no exception to the rule. University presses do not want to get in trouble presenting an Islamic domination of even centuries ago as anything but a positive event, and academic specialists would rather not portray negatively a subject that constitutes their bread and butter. In addition, fear of the accusation of ‘Islamophobia’ has paralyzed many academic researchers.

Promise Yourself To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet. To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds. To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you. The original Optimist Creed, written by Christian D. Larson in his 1912 book, Your Forces and How to Use Them

His Majesty [James VI & I] did much press for my opinion touching the power of Satan in matters of witchcraft; and asked me, with much gravity, if I did truly understand why the devil did work more with ancient women than others? I did not refrain from a scurvy jest, and even said (notwithstanding to whom it was said) that we were taught hereof in scripture, where it is told that the devil walketh in dry places... More serious discourse did next ensue...

We are all seeking the steady beauty of the One who made us, we are all desperate for His breath on our skin, His lips on ours to ease the crushing weight of the world we feel pressing in on that deep, empty place in our hearts. Where matters of faith are concerned, everything is remedial. Carlson, Angela Doll (2014-09-09). Nearly Orthodox: On being a modern woman in an ancient tradition (Kindle Locations 119-121). Ancient Faith Publishing. Kindle Edition.

THANKS TO THE EVANGELICAL men’s movement, books on Christian masculinity began to roll off the presses. Drawing on charismatic and therapeutic traditions, prosperity teachings, Christian Reconstructionism, conservative Southern Baptist theology, and neo-Calvinism, authors ended up crafting visions of Christian masculinity that looked remarkably similar. In the 1990s, the most popular “blueprint for Christian manhood” to emerge was that of the “tender warrior.

Once they were both naked and pressed together again, with Christian’s mouth on one of Max’s nipples and Max’s hands on Christian’s inner thighs, Christian was struck by how intense it was, how urgent and powerful and deep this wanting went. All his life he was raised to believe—wanted to believe—that desire was a superficial thing, something you worked through and, if you were disciplined and moral, ultimately put aside in favour of deeper, more important pursuits.

He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors, -- songs so clear and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down, -- he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended there to build a city. At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich in form, in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courtesans. Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil its virgin brow before these marble wantons. Then the three statues advanced towards him with looks of love, and approached the couch on which he was reposing, their feet hidden in their long white tunics, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent charms the bird; and then he gave way before looks that held him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty completely veiled; and then followed a dream of passion like that promised by the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so that to Franz, yielding for the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips, and he was held in cool serpent-like embraces. The more he strove against this unhallowed passion the more his senses yielded to its thrall, and at length, weary of a struggle that taxed his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses, and the enchantment of his marvellous dream.

So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical Christianity ever is!  I read more of the New Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life.  I heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown conceit at me.

tell me off or worse—beat me? What can I say? I stare momentarily out of the window. The car is heading back across the bridge. We are both shrouded in darkness, masking our thoughts and feelings, but we don’t need the night for that. “Why, Anastasia?” Christian presses me for an answer. I shrug, trapped. I don’t want to lose him. In spite of all his demands, his need to control, his scary vices, I have never felt as alive as I do now. It’s a thrill to be sitting here beside him. He’s so unpredictable, sexy, smart, and funny. But his moods…oh—and he wants to hurt me. He says he’ll think about my reservations, but it still scares me. I close my eyes. What can I say? Deep down I would just like more, more affection, more playful Christian, more…love. He squeezes my hand. “Talk to me, Anastasia. I don’t want to lose you. This last week…” We’re coming near to the end of the bridge, and the road is once more bathed in the neon light of the street lamps so his face is intermittently in the light and the dark. And it’s such a

Tis true, that We are here a mix'd People--of different Countries Dialects, and Denominations. But how ridiculous it is, to carry any Nationality Prejudice, or Bias about Us in these Respects. We ought to leave them all behind Us in the Ocean and consider ourselves as one Great family--pursue one General Interest and banish all Selfishness, Bigotry--Narrow Spiritedness, and Atachments, whether it arises from Motives of Religion, Custom--or Habit--for these are Great follies, and very wide of the Christian Temper.

Celler pressed him on theological details that were only vaguely addressed in the amendment: “Would a Protestant child be taught papal infallibility? Would a Catholic boy or girl be required to listen to divine instruction from the Torah? Might Mohammedan parents insist their child be taught the scriptures of the Koran?” In an unusual statement for an evangelical leader, Cook dismissed those concerns, claiming that there was really “not that much difference” among the texts used in the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim traditions.

The nineteenth century is the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment. When pressed, many educated Christians today are too loyal to deny the virgin birth and the resurrection. But it embarrasses them because their rational minds know it is absurd, so they would much rather not be asked. Hence, if somebody like me insists on asking the question, it is I who am accused of being ‘nineteenth-century’. It is really quite funny, when you think about it.

A poster of a woman in tights heralded the Christmas pantomime, and little red devils, who had come in again that year, were prevalent upon the Christmas-cards. Margaret was no morbid idealist. She did not wish this spate of business and self-advertisement checked. It was only the occasion of it that struck her with amazement annually. How many of these vacillating shoppers and tired shop-assistants realised that it was a divine event that drew them together? She realised it, though standing outside in the matter. She was not a Christian in the accepted sense; she did not believe that God had ever worked among us as a young artisan. These people, or most of them, believed it, and if pressed, would affirm it in words. But the visible signs of their belief were Regent Street or Drury Lane, a little mud displaced, a little money spent, a little food cooked, eaten, and forgotten. Inadequate. But in public who shall express the unseen adequately? It is private life that holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone, that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.

The nineteenth-century connection is now clear. The nineteenth century is the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment. When pressed, many educated Christians today are too loyal to deny the virgin birth and the resurrection. But it embarrasses them because their rational minds know it is absurd, so they would much rather not be asked. Hence, if somebody like me insists on asking the question, it is I who am accused of being ‘nineteenth-century’. It is really quite funny, when you think about it.

Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner. I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.

Paul teaches that mature Christians are serious about the things of God and pursue God seriously, because when Christ is revealed in all His glory, we want to be raised with Him. We want all the riches. We want Him with us always. We don’t want a life-sized salvation; rather, we want an eternity-sized salvation. So we don’t stop at conversion; we press on. Because we want to make it evident that we believe someone is going to step in at that final moment and say, “I paid for that. I absorbed that. What was due for that, I paid for it all, not according to their riches but according to Mine.

The “god” which the vast majority of professing Christians “love” is looked upon very much like an indulgent old man, who himself has no relish for folly, but leniently winks at the “indiscretions” of youth. But the Word says, “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity” (Psa 5:5). And again, “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psa 7:11). But men refuse to believe in this God, and gnash their teeth when His hatred of sin is faithfully pressed upon their attention. No, sinful man was no more likely to devise a holy God than to create the Lake of Fire in which he will be tormented for ever and ever.

Once I began developing an appreciation for fantasy and imaginative literature like Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, C. S. Lewis’s series The Chronicles of Narnia, and of course J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I discovered that my appreciation for Revelation has grown and the weight of its images have pressed heavier on my soul. As I have read imaginative literature, my imagination has developed. As my imagination has developed, I have found myself reading Revelation more patiently, allowing the images to emerge in my mind until I feel the full spiritual shock of their intended voltage.

Most Christians are satisfied living their entire lives as common Christians. They never experience the richness of what it truly means to be a Christian. Without a deep insatiable hunger for the things of God, there is nothing within them prodding them to go forward to perfection. The condition of today’s Christian Church is the result of too many common Christians in leadership roles. Once again, we need a great move of the Holy Spirit to break out of the spiritual rut and press on to spiritual perfection. That move needs to start with individual Christians who are willing to give all to God and live the crucified life.

I suggested in my last sermon that if Oolon Colluphid had tracked down the "God" who had left a message in five mile high letters of fire on the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, he still wouldn't have found the person who actually created the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – namely, Douglas Adams. Dorothy L. Sayers pressed the idea that "God is like an author" quite hard, and C.S. Lewis practically broke it. It's also been used by Mr Grant Morrison and Mr David Sim. But seriously. You "brights" will understand us Christians much better once you've grasped that when we talk about "God", we are thinking of something much less like a fairy and much more like a Douglas.

Such is Fascist planning-the planning of those who reject the ideal postulates of Christian civilization and of the older Asiatic civilization which preceded ti and from which it derived-the planning of men whose intentions are avowedly bad. Let us now consider examples of planning by political leaders who accept the ideal postulates, whose intentions are good. The first thing to notice is that none of these men accepts the ideal postulates whole-heartedly. All believe that desirable ends can be achieved by undesirable means. Aiming to reach goals diametrically opposed to those of Fascism, they yet persist in taking the same roads as are taken by the Duces and Fuehrers. They are pacifists, but pacifists who act on the theory that peace can be achieved by means of war; they are reformers and revolutionaries, but reformers who imagine that unfair and arbitrary acts can produce social justice, revolutionaries who persuade themselves that the centralization of power and the enslavement of the masses can result in liberty for all. Revolutionary Russia has the largest army in the world; a secret police, that for ruthless efficiency rivals the German or the Italian; a rigid press censorship; a system of education that, since Stalin "reformed" it, is as authoritarian as Hitler's; an all-embracing system of military training that is applied to women and children as well as men; a dictator as slavishly adored as the man-gods of Rome and Berlin; a bureaucracy, solidly entrenched as the new ruling class and employing the powers of the state to preserve its privileges and protect its vested interests; an oligarchical party which dominates the entire country and within which there is no freedom even for faithful members. (Most ruling castes are democracies so far as their own members are concerned. Not so the Russian Communist Party, in which the Central Executive Committee acting through the Political Department, can override or altogether liquidate any district organization whatsoever.) No opposition is permitted in Russia. But where opposition is made illegal, it automatically goes underground and becomes conspiracy. Hence the treason trials and purges of 1936 and 1937. Large-scale manipulations of the social structure are pushed through against the wishes of the people concerned and with the utmost ruthlessness. (Several million peasants were deliberately starved to death in 1933 by the Soviet planners.) Ruthlessness begets resentment; resentment must be kept down by force. As usual the chief result of violence is the necessity to use more violence. Such then is Soviet planning-well-intentioned, but making use of evil means that are producing results utterly unlike those which the original makers of the revolution intended to produce.

Another bottle was brought out and poured into the reservoir. Once more I climbed inside the car and pressed the spurter button. Once more nothing happened--and once more, when we looked inside the reservoir, we found it empty. "Two litres!" I said. "Where has it all gone?" They'd vaporized, evaporated. And do you know what? It felt wonderful. Don't ask me why: it just did. It was as though I'd just witnessed a miracle: matter--these two litres of liquid--becoming un-matter--not surplus matter, mess or clutter, but pure, bodiless blueness. Transubstantiated. I looked up at the sky: it was blue and endless. I looked back at the boy. His overalls and face were covered in smears. He'd taken on these smears so that the miracle could happen, like a Christian martyr being flagellated, crucified, scrawled over with stigmata. I felt elated--elated and inspired. "If only..." I started, but paused. "What?" he asked. "If only everything could..." I trailed off. I knew what I meant. I stood there looking at his grubby face and told him: "Thank you." Then I got into the car and turned the ignition key in its slot. The engine caught--and as it did, a torrent of blue liquid burst out of the dashboard and cascaded down. It gushed from the radio, the heating panel, the hazard-lights switch and the speedometer and mileage counter. It gushed all over me: my shirt, my legs, my groin.

There is much: recognition of the fact that human beings live indeterminate and incomplete lives; recognition of the power exerted over and upon us by our own habits and memories; recognition of the ways in which the world presses in on all of us, for it is an intractable place where many things go awry and go astray, where one may all-too-easily lose one’s very self. The epistemological argument is framed by faith, but it stands on its own as an account of willing, nilling, memory, language, signs, affections, delight, the power and the limits of minds and bodies. To the extent that a prideful philosophy refuses to accept these, Augustine would argue, to that extent philosophy hates the human condition itself.

The thing that had happened in Spain was, in fact, not merely a civil war, but the beginning of a revolution. It is this fact that the anti-Fascist press outside Spain has made it its special business to obscure. The issue has been narrowed down to ‘Fascism versus democracy’ and the revolutionary aspect concealed as much as possible. In England, where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere, only two versions of the Spanish war have had any publicity to speak of: the Right-wing version of Christian patriots versus Bolsheviks dripping with blood, and the Left-wing version of gentlemanly republicans quelling a military revolt. The central issue has been successfully covered up.

18. A third powerful factor in the diffusion of communism is the conspiracy of silence on the part of a large section of the non-Catholic press of the world. We say conspiracy, because it is impossible otherwise to explain how a press usually so eager to exploit even the little daily incidents of life has been able to remain silent for so long about the horrors perpetrated in Russia, in Mexico and even in a great part of Spain; and that it should have relatively so little to say concerning a world organization as vast as Russian communism. This silence is due in part to short-sighted political policy, and is favored by various occult forces which for a long time have been working for the overthrow of the Christian Social Order.

With God’s permission the enemy has sent poison and deadly dung among us, and so I will pray to God that he may be gracious and preserve us. Then I will fumigate to purify the air, give and take medicine, and avoid places and persons where I am not needed in order that I may not abuse myself and that through me others may not be infected and inflamed with the result that I become the cause of their death through my negligence. If God wishes to take me, he will be able to find me. At least I have done what he gave me to do and am responsible neither for my own death nor for the death of others. But if my neighbour needs me, I shall avoid neither person nor place but feel free to visit and help him. Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, ed. T. G. Tappert (London: SCM Press, 1955), 242, from a letter of 1527.

The fantastic is what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself. [...] When the will becomes fantastic, the self is similarly increasingly volatized. [...] Now if possibility outstrips necessity, the self runs away from itself so that it has no necessity to return to. [...] Surely what the self now lacks is actuality; [...] [b]ut on closer examination, what the self really lacks is necessity. [...] What is really missing is the strength [...] to yield to the necessary in one's self, what might be called one's limits. [...] [T]he misfortune is that he did not become aware of himself, that he is a quite definite something. [...] Instead, through this self's fantastically reflecting itself in possibility, he lost himself.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.

Of what value are all the opinions and advice given here without the aid of the press? We will attain our aim only when the press will be in our hands. Our people must direct the daily publications.... We need great political newspapers which will mold public opinion—criticism, the literature of the street and the stage. In this way we will crowd out the Christians step by step, and will dictate to the world what it should believe in, what it should respect and what it should curse. We will repeat the sorrowful cry of Israel and the complaints against the persecutions which are directed against us.... With the press in our hands we can turn wrong into right, dishonesty into honesty. We can shake all foundations and separate families. We can destroy faith in all that our enemies believed until now. We can ruin credits and arouse passions. We can declare war; we can give

Only when Christianity came into its own as a political force, and emperors as well as other Roman officials embraced the Christian faith and were subject to pressure from Christian leaders, did Jews everywhere began to experience physical peril regardless of whether they had long maintained peaceful relations with governing authorities. The question of what to do about the Jews was far more pressing than what to do about pagans for the church fathers, given that Christianity developed out of Judaism and was seen as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. These prophecies eventually had to be twisted to fit the official events of the Christian story. The refusal of faithful Jews to accept that the story of their faith ended and was fulfilled by the arrival of Jesus was a constant challenge and reproach to Christianity in a way that the unrelated beliefs of pagans could never be.

You men that be known from these others by your Christian profession. Take heed, you bear in mind the piety you owe unto your country and unto your fellow countrymen, whose slaughter by the treachery of the Payneham shall be unto your disgrace everlasting. Unless you press hardily forward to defend them. Fight therefore for your country, and if it be that death overtake you, suffer it willingly for your country’s sake. For death itself is victory, and a healing unto the soul. In as much as he that shall have died for his brethren offers himself as a living sacrifice unto God, nor is it doubtful that herein he follows in the footsteps of Christ, who distained not to lay down his own soul for his breatharian. Who therefore amongst you shall be slain in this battle, unto him shall that death be as full penance and absolution of all his sins, if so be he receive it willingly on this way.

Stability Along those lines, a tree that is repeatedly uprooted and transplanted will be hard pressed to produce healthy fruit. So it is with people and their spiritual lives. Rootlessness is not a new problem. In the first chapter of the Rule, Saint Benedict denounced the kind of monk he called a “gyrovague.” “They spend their whole lives tramping from province to province,” he wrote, adding that “they are always on the move, with no stability, they indulge their own wills”—and are even worse, the saint said, than the hedonistic monks whose only law is desire. If you are going to put down spiritual roots, taught Benedict, you need to stay in one place long enough for them to go deep. The Rule requires monks to take a vow of “stability”—meaning that barring unusual circumstances, including being sent out as a missionary, the monk will remain for the rest of his life in the monastery where he took his vows.

They were, and still are, largely spared the public shame of this, because the world's media preferred the simplication of "Croat' and "Serb" and only mentioned religion when discussing "the Muslims." But the triad of terms "Croat", "Serb", and "Muslim is unequal and misleading, in that it equates two nationalities and one religion. (The same blunder is made in a different way in coverage of Iraq, with the "Sunni-Shia-Kurd" trilateral.) ...It would have been far more accurate if the press and television had reported that "today the Orthodox Christian forces resumed their bombardment of Sarajevo," or "yesterday the Catholic militia succeeded in collapsing the Stari Most." But confessional terminology was reserved only for "Muslims," even as their murderers went to all the trouble of distinguishing themself by wearing large Orthodox crosses over their bandoliers, or by taping portraits of the Virgin Mary to their rifle butts.

Listen to some words: Today Christianity stands at the head of this country. . . . I pledge that I will never tie myself to those who want to destroy Christianity. . . . We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit—we want to burn out all the recent immoral development in literature, theater, the arts and in the press. . . . In short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess the past . . . few years.2 Take these words at face value. Do they resonate with you? Here is what one listener said upon hearing them: “This . . . puts in words everything I have been searching for, for years. It is the first time someone gave form to what I want.”3 I suspect many would say the same. There are thousands of people who, upon hearing these words spoken, would cheer and agree and say amen. The words are Adolph Hitler’s, and the listener was someone in the audience who made that comment to Joseph Goebbels in 1933. Goebbels was Hitler’s minister of propaganda and clearly a very good one. Hitler’s words sound like they are inspired by Christian faith and morality. Listeners assumed a certain kind of person stood behind them. But Hitler’s words masked the deception behind them so that those listening, without knowing the character of the man, heard what they longed for but what never came to fruition. What did come was the extermination of millions, the destruction of countries, and evil that has affected generations. The words were said to manipulate the audience whose longings the Third Reich understood well. Hitler deliberately deceived the people and drew them in, calling forth loyalty and service. And he got it, not just from the general population but also from the German church. Words full of promises that cloaked great evil were tailored for a vulnerable culture.

This being so, when the good and the wicked suffer alike, the identity of their sufferings does not mean that there is no difference between them. Though the sufferings are the same, the sufferers remain different. Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes gold shine makes chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press. In the same way, the violence which assails good men to test them, to cleanse and purify them, effects in the wicked their condemnation, ruin, and annihilation. Thus the wicked, under pressure of affliction, execrate God and blaspheme; the good, in the same affliction, offer up prayers and praises. This shows that what matters is the nature of the sufferer, not the nature of the sufferings. Stir a cesspit, and a foul stench arises; stir a perfume, and a delightful fragrance ascends. But the movement is identical.

Weren’t you alarmed by all the racist talk? Hitler’s rants about the “Jewish virus” and “the noble German” . . . You can’t read more than four sentences by the man without knowing he was a racist fanatic, Ania’s daughter will press. I didn’t notice is all Ania can say. And it is true, as outlandish as it sounds. She has never been taught that drawing distinctions between races is dangerous. In Germany, there is no great history of equal rights. For thousands of years, the population was divided into an impoverished and disenfranchised peasant class and wealthy, ruling aristocrats. The only teaching that gives her pause is the Christian precept of kindness and tolerance. But the churches themselves are not making much fuss about Hitler’s harsh rhetoric. Christianity is superstition, Hitler says—a palliative against life’s brutal realities. This is before the war. Before the Jewish star badges, before the roundups and mass deportations and extermination camps. And, really, Ania is busy with her own life.

In under two weeks, and with no budget, thousands of college students protested the movie on their campuses nationwide, angry citizens vandalized our billboards in multiple neighborhoods, FoxNews.com ran a front-page story about the backlash, Page Six of the New York Post made their first of many mentions of Tucker, and the Chicago Transit Authority banned and stripped the movie’s advertisements from their buses. To cap it all off, two different editorials railing against the film ran in the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune the week it was released. The outrage about Tucker was great enough that a few years later, it was written into the popular television show Portlandia on IFC. I guess it is safe to admit now that the entire firestorm was, essentially, fake. I designed the advertisements, which I bought and placed around the country, and then promptly called and left anonymous complaints about them (and leaked copies of my complaints to blogs for support). I alerted college LGBT and women’s rights groups to screenings in their area and baited them to protest our offensive movie at the theater, knowing that the nightly news would cover it. I started a boycott group on Facebook. I orchestrated fake tweets and posted fake comments to articles online. I even won a contest for being the first one to send in a picture of a defaced ad in Chicago (thanks for the free T-shirt, Chicago RedEye. Oh, also, that photo was from New York). I manufactured preposterous stories about Tucker’s behavior on and off the movie set and reported them to gossip websites, which gleefully repeated them. I paid for anti-woman ads on feminist websites and anti-religion ads on Christian websites, knowing each would write about it. Sometimes I just Photoshopped ads onto screenshots of websites and got coverage for controversial ads that never actually ran. The loop became final when, for the first time in history, I put out a press release to answer my own manufactured criticism: TUCKER MAX RESPONDS TO CTA DECISION: “BLOW ME,” the headline read.

There are times when you may feel your life has been crumpled, crushed, stomped on, or even torn in pieces. Your value and worth is not determined by what has happened to you, but rather by the value placed upon you by the one who governs your life (the one who created you in His image and likeness). The one who sees you as wonderfully and fearfully made. .... A $100 dollar bill can be crumpled, crushed, stomped on or even torn -- it is still is worth $100. The value of the $100 dollar bill is not determined by what happened to it. To the government it will still spend as a $100; its value has not changed even if the state of its condition has. Even crumpled, it could be pressed out, crushed it could be pressed and smoothed out, or stomped on and torn, it could be taped back together and still be worth $100 in value. What may have happened to you in life does not define who you are. You are the apple of God’s eye. You are His prize possession and treasure. You must see yourself as a person of worth and value.

And so an untold number of Trump’s evangelical supporters believe that God has anointed him, God will protect him, and God will smite his enemies. However his presidency ends, the fundamental damage it has inflicted on our democracy will not be healed overnight. His “base” is not an accident of his unconventional foray into politics, or a quirk of this particular political moment. The vast majority of white evangelicals are all in with Trump because he has given them political power and allowed them to carry out a Christian supremacist agenda, inextricably intertwined with his administration’s white nationalist agenda. Conspiracy theories and lies about the core of our democracy—separation of powers, a free and independent press, and the dedication of public servants—run rampant through their print and social media, podcasts, and television programs. The depth and durability of their fervor have disproven the mantra “the religious right is dead” again and again—and their ability to sustain a presidency in the face of unprecedented scandal is the most compelling evidence against that mantra yet.

It is interesting, really: The Old Testament fits far more easily with Christian nationalism but is so problematic to defend that they often retreat from it when pressed. For example, you might have noticed in Leviticus that the wording for the verse condemning homosexuality is almost identical to those condemning cursing or attacking one's parents and adultery. The wages of those sins are death, and the sinner is held responsible for that outcome. But a significant number of Christians commit these sins, including many clergy members (at least, it would seem, when it comes to adultery), so it is very difficult to hide the hypocrisy inherent in strongly enforcing one rule while taking a relatively understanding stance on the others. In some cases, the rules are deemed historical artifacts to sidestep troublesome challenges. The Bible is the literal Word of God… but Christians see no problem in wearing clothing woven of two materials, wearing gold, pearls, and expensive clothing, cutting their hair and beards, and getting tattoos. Those commands are deemed no longer relevant, while, inexplicably, other very similar proscriptions are still thought to apply to modern life.

It may cost much to be a Christian, but you may be sure it pays. (3) If any reader of this paper really feels that he has counted the cost, and taken up the cross, I bid him persevere and press on. I dare say you often feel your heart faint, and are sorely tempted to give up in despair. Your enemies seem so many, your besetting sins so strong, your friends so few, the way so steep and narrow, you hardly know what to do. But still I say, persevere and press on. The time is very short. A few more years of watching and praying, a few more tossings on the sea of this world, a few more deaths and changes, a few more winters and summers, and all will be over. We shall have fought our last battle, and shall need to fight no more. The presence and company of Christ will make amends for all we suffer here below. When we see as we have been seen, and look back on the journey of life, we shall wonder at our own faintness of heart. We shall marvel that we made so much of our cross, and thought so little of our crown. We shall marvel that in "counting the cost" we could ever doubt on which side the balance of profit lay. Let us take courage. We are not far from home. IT MAY COST MUCH TO BE A TRUE CHRISTIAN AND A CONSISTENT BELIEVER; BUT IT PAYS.

Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will: for the will, as emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for one who commands, who commands sternly, — a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma, a party conscience. From whence perhaps it could be inferred that the two world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, might well have had the cause of their rise, and especially of their rapid extension, in an extraordinary malady of the will. And in truth it has been so: both religions lighted upon a longing, monstrously exaggerated by malady of the will, for an imperative, a "Thou-shalt," a longing going the length of despair; both religions were teachers of fanaticism in times of slackness of will-power, and thereby offered to innumerable persons a support, a new possibility of exercising will, an enjoyment in willing. For in fact fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system, in favour of the over-abundant nutrition (hypertrophy) of a particular point of view and a particular sentiment, which then dominates — the Christian calls it his faith. When a man arrives at the fundamental conviction that he requires to be commanded, he becomes "a believer".

For clarity's sake, and before going further with this account, I shall identify true aesthetic sorrow a little more closely. Sorrow has the opposite movement to that of pain. So long as one doesn't spoil things out of a misplaced mania for consistency―something I shall prevent also in another way―one may say: the more innocence, the deeper the sorrow. If you press this too far, you destroy the tragic. There is always an element of guilt left over, but it is never properly reflected in the subject; which is why in Greek tragedy the sorrow is so deep. In order to prevent misplaced consistency, I shall merely remark that exaggeration only succeeds in carrying the matter over into another sphere. The synthesis of absolute innocence and absolute guilt is not an aesthetic feature but a metaphysical one. This is the real reason why people have always been ashamed to call the life of Christ a tragedy; one feels instinctively that aesthetic categories do not exhaust the matter. It is clear in another way, too that Christ's life amounts to more than can be exhausted in aesthetic terms, namely from the fact that these terms neutralize themselves in this phenomenon, and are rendered irrelevant. Tragic action always contains an element of suffering, and tragic suffering an element of action; the aesthetic lies in the relativity. The identity of an absolute action and an absolute suffering is beyond the powers of aesthetics and belongs to metaphysics. This identity is exemplified in the life of Christ, for His suffering is absolute because the action is absolutely free, and His action is absolute suffering because it is absolute obedience. The element of guilt that is always left over is, accordingly, not subjectively reflected and this makes the sorrow deep. Tragic guilt is more than just subjective guilt, it is inherited guilt. But inherited guilt, like original sin, is a substantial category, and it is just this substantiality that makes the sorrow deeper. Sophocles' celebrated tragic trilogy, *Oedipus at Colonus*, *Oedipus Rex*, and *Antigone*, turns essentially on this authentic tragic interest. But inherited guilt contains the self-contradiction of being guilt yet not being guilt. The bond that makes the individual guilty is precisely piety, but the guilt which he thereby incurs has all possible aesthetic ambiguity. One might well conclude that the people who developed profound tragedy were the Jews. Thus, when they say of Jehova that he is a jealous God who visits the sins of the fathers on the children unto the third and fourth generations, or one hears those terrible imprecations in the Old Testament, one might feel tempted to look here for the material of tragedy. But Judaism is too ethically developed for this. Jehova's curses, terrible as they are, are nevertheless also righteous punishment. Such was not the case in Greece, there the wrath of the gods has no ethical, but aesthetic ambiguity" (Either/Or).

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

Christians wanted to affirm certain beliefs. But in some instances, if those affirmations were pressed to an extreme, they did not allow Christians to affirm other beliefs that they or other Christians also wanted to affirm. We have seen, for example, that some Christians wanted to affirm that Christ was human, but they did so to such an extent that they refused to acknowledge he was divine. Others wanted to affirm that he was divine and did so to such an extent that they refused to acknowledge he was human. Others tried to get around the problem by claiming that he was two different things: part of him was human and part of him was divine; but this solution brought division and disunity instead of harmony and oneness. Others wanted to affirm that since there can be only one God, Jesus could be divine only if he himself was that one God come to earth. But that solution ended up causing Christians to say that Jesus begot himself as the father to his own son, along with other equally confusing formulations. Some superscholars of the day such as Origen tried to resolve the problems in more sophisticated ways, but these views also led to ideas that were later deemed objectionable, [...] Throughout all these debates, we see Christian thinkers trying to figure it all out, wanting to make certain affirmations that they took to be gospel truth. [...] Eventually a Christology emerged that affirmed at one and the same time aspects of what opposing heresies affirmed, while refusing to deny what they denied. This led to a significantly refined but highly paradoxical understanding of how it is that Jesus could be God.

It is 1839. England is tumbling towards anarchy, with countrywide unrest and riots. The gutter presses are fizzing, fire-bombs flying. The shout on the streets is for revolution. Red evolutionists - visionaries who see life marching inexorably upward, powered from below - denounce the props of an old static society: priestly privilege, wage exploitation, and the workhouses. A million socialists are castigating marriage, capitalism, and the fat, corrupt Established Church. Radical Christians join them, hymn-singing Dissenters who condemn the 'fornicating' Church as a 'harlot,' in bed with the State. Even science must be purged: for the gutter atheists, material atoms are all that exist, and like the 'social atoms' - people - they are self-organizing. Spirits and souls are a delusion, part of the gentry's cruel deceit to subjugate working people. The science of life - biology - lies ruined, prostituted, turned into a Creationist citadel by the clergy. Britain now stands teetering on the brink of collapse - or so it seems to the gentry, who close ranks to protect their privileges. At this moment, how could an ambitious thirty-year-old gentleman open a secret notebook and, with a devil-may-care sweep, suggest that headless hermaphrodite molluscs were the ancestors of mankind? A squire's son, moreover, Cambridge-trained and once destined for the cloth. A man whose whole family hated the 'fierce & licentious' radical hooligans. The gentleman was Charles Darwin: well heeled, imperturbably Whig, a privately financed world traveller who had spent five years aboard HMS Beagle as a dining companion to the aristocratic captain.

Eric Metaxas emerged as a leading voice on Christian masculinity in the Obama era. Metaxas wasn’t new to the world of evangelical publishing, or to evangelical culture more generally. Raised in the Greek Orthodox Church, Metaxas got his start writing children’s books. In 1997 he began working as a writer and editor for Charles Colson’s BreakPoint radio show, and he then worked as a writer for VeggieTales, a children’s video series where anthropomorphic vegetables taught lessons in biblical values and Christian morality. (Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber became household names in 1990s evangelicalism.) Belying his VeggieTales pedigree, Metaxas brought a new sophistication to the literature on evangelical masculinity. As a witty, Yale-educated Manhattanite, Metaxas cut a different profile than many spokesmen of the Christian Right. If Metaxas’s writing wasn’t exactly highbrow, his was higher-brow than most books churned out by Christian presses. More suave in his presentation than the average evangelical firebrand, Metaxas was a rising star in the conservative Christian world of the 2000s. After Colson’s death in 2012 he took over BreakPoint, a program broadcast on 1400 outlets to an audience of eight million. That year he also gave the keynote address at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he relished the opportunity to scold President Obama to his face, castigating those who displayed “phony religiosity” by throwing Bible verses around and claiming to be Christian while denying the exclusivity of the faith and the humanity of the unborn. In 2015 he launched his own nationally syndicated daily radio program, The Eric Metaxas Show.

Jesus goes while blessing, and he remains in that gesture of blessing. His hands remained stretched out over this world. The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. . . . In faith we know that Jesus holds his hands stretched out in blessing over us. That is the lasting motive of Christian joy.[3] The blessing hands of Christ are over us. Whenever we look up at the sky, we can imagine the ascending Christ with his arms outstretched. Wherever we go, we go under the sky above us, so wherever we go, we go under the blessing protection and the blessing mission of the Lord Jesus. As Benedict wrote elsewhere of the disciples, “They knew that they were forever blessed and stood under blessing hands wherever they went.”[4] The implications for daily life are stirring. How hard are circumstances pressing you? Can you yet look up and see sky? That sky represents the blessing hands of Jesus keeping you even through these days. Have your powers been curtailed by illness or age? Can you at least still imagine sky? Let it remind you of the one who claims you and loves you. He went up to heaven still in the body. He is still wedded to our humanity. He has promised that he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21)—we too will live in rippling, embodied resurrection life. How hopeless does the future of the world seem? How far does the arm of evil reach? Look at the sky and remember Jesus’ blessing hands. Evil cannot ever go where Christ is and pull him down into our mire. Nor can it ever prevent his return to set all things right. He is still over us like the sky, his blessing hands like a great shell of protection all of our days on this earth.

This myth often plays a big part in our theology. If we are bad we will be punished. But for that to make any sense we have to be rewarded if we are good. Our law is to a large extent premised on just such notions of rewards and punishment. We define our goodness by another's lack of it. And that is one fallacy in letting te law become a repository for our moral aspirations. Any system that requires that we define our goodness by another's lack of it inevitably leaves us in the position of drawing lines. And as long as we draw lines, we will carefully and with great skill place ourselves on the right side. As long as we draw lines we will be hard-pressed to remember that in the context of salvation we are exactly like our neighbors, lost and in need. But this sort of thinking holds an even greater danger. Not only does it lead us to think that everyone who is different is potentially an outcast, but it leads us to believe that we can control God. It leads to blasphemy. If we are bad God will punish us. And if that is true, it must mean that if we are good God will have to reward us. So I can control God by my own behavior. And without a view of the world beyond difference it is inevitable that we will put ourselves or our institutions - like the law - where God ought to be. To dissolve difference, to conceive the inconceivable, to imagine the unimaginable - this is what allows us to see beyond ourselves and finally what sets us free. We are freed in two senses when we are liberated from the illusion of thinking that we are just a little bit better than our neighbors. We are freed to see our neighbors as neighbors and to love them. We are also freed to know that God is God - and we ain't.

Marvellous lovingkindness." Psalm 17:7 When we give our hearts with our alms, we give well, but we must often plead to a failure in this respect. Not so our Master and our Lord. His favours are always performed with the love of his heart. He does not send to us the cold meat and the broken pieces from the table of his luxury, but he dips our morsel in his own dish, and seasons our provisions with the spices of his fragrant affections. When he puts the golden tokens of his grace into our palms, he accompanies the gift with such a warm pressure of our hand, that the manner of his giving is as precious as the boon itself. He will come into our houses upon his errands of kindness, and he will not act as some austere visitors do in the poor man's cottage, but he sits by our side, not despising our poverty, nor blaming our weakness. Beloved, with what smiles does he speak! What golden sentences drop from his gracious lips! What embraces of affection does he bestow upon us! If he had but given us farthings, the way of his giving would have gilded them; but as it is, the costly alms are set in a golden basket by his pleasant carriage. It is impossible to doubt the sincerity of his charity, for there is a bleeding heart stamped upon the face of all his benefactions. He giveth liberally and upbraideth not. Not one hint that we are burdensome to him; not one cold look for his poor pensioners; but he rejoices in his mercy, and presses us to his bosom while he is pouring out his life for us. There is a fragrance in his spikenard which nothing but his heart could produce; there is a sweetness in his honey-comb which could not be in it unless the very essence of his soul's affection had been mingled with it. Oh! the rare communion which such singular heartiness effecteth! May we continually taste and know the blessedness of it!

this I say,—we must never forget that all the education a man's head can receive, will not save his soul from hell, unless he knows the truths of the Bible. A man may have prodigious learning, and yet never be saved. He may be master of half the languages spoken round the globe. He may be acquainted with the highest and deepest things in heaven and earth. He may have read books till he is like a walking cyclopædia. He may be familiar with the stars of heaven,—the birds of the air,—the beasts of the earth, and the fishes of the sea. He may be able, like Solomon, to "speak of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows on the wall, of beasts also, and fowls, and creeping things, and fishes." (1 King iv. 33.) He may be able to discourse of all the secrets of fire, air, earth, and water. And yet, if he dies ignorant of Bible truths, he dies a miserable man! Chemistry never silenced a guilty conscience. Mathematics never healed a broken heart. All the sciences in the world never smoothed down a dying pillow. No earthly philosophy ever supplied hope in death. No natural theology ever gave peace in the prospect of meeting a holy God. All these things are of the earth, earthy, and can never raise a man above the earth's level. They may enable a man to strut and fret his little season here below with a more dignified gait than his fellow-mortals, but they can never give him wings, and enable him to soar towards heaven. He that has the largest share of them, will find at length that without Bible knowledge he has got no lasting possession. Death will make an end of all his attainments, and after death they will do him no good at all. A man may be a very ignorant man, and yet be saved. He may be unable to read a word, or write a letter. He may know nothing of geography beyond the bounds of his own parish, and be utterly unable to say which is nearest to England, Paris or New York. He may know nothing of arithmetic, and not see any difference between a million and a thousand. He may know nothing of history, not even of his own land, and be quite ignorant whether his country owes most to Semiramis, Boadicea, or Queen Elizabeth. He may know nothing of the affairs of his own times, and be incapable of telling you whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Commander-in-Chief, or the Archbishop of Canterbury is managing the national finances. He may know nothing of science, and its discoveries,—and whether Julius Cæsar won his victories with gunpowder, or the apostles had a printing press, or the sun goes round the earth, may be matters about which he has not an idea. And yet if that very man has heard Bible truth with his ears, and believed it with his heart, he knows enough to save his soul. He will be found at last with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, while his scientific fellow-creature, who has died unconverted, is lost for ever. There is much talk in these days about science and "useful knowledge." But after all a knowledge of the Bible is the one knowledge that is needful and eternally useful. A man may get to heaven without money, learning, health, or friends,—but without Bible knowledge he will never get there at all. A man may have the mightiest of minds, and a memory stored with all that mighty mind can grasp,—and yet, if he does not know the things of the Bible, he will make shipwreck of his soul for ever. Woe! woe! woe to the man who dies in ignorance of the Bible! This is the Book about which I am addressing the readers of these pages to-day. It is no light matter what you do with such a book. It concerns the life of your soul. I summon you,—I charge you to give an honest answer to my question. What are you doing with the Bible? Do you read it? HOW READEST THOU?

The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at a time when no missionary's foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had never heard of the white man's God; has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King—and now look at him; an educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had never been out of it in his life time. How the experiences of this old man's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!

The First Amendment protects our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to practice religion, to peacefully assemble, and the right to petition the government. This is true tolerance as defined by our founding documents. This is the right of all American citizens. Does the right of free speech end on college campuses of higher learning? Does it end when you step into a designated "safe space" at your local university? Does it end if your choice of words is construed to be a "trigger warning" when you walk into a classroom? The answer obviously should be no. Unfortunately, the answer today on most college campuses is yes. And take this warning seriously: it won't end there. The commentator Andrew Sullivan has noted the student anti-free-speech movement "manifests itself . . . almost as a religion". He continues: "It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained--and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., "check your privilege", and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. This sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required. It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension: If you happen to see the world in a different way, if you're a liberal or libertarian or even, gasp, a conservative, if you believe that a university is a place where any idea, however loathsome, can be debated and refuted, you are not just wrong, you are immoral . . . your heresy is a direct threat to others, and therefore needs to be extinguished. You can't reason with heresy. You have to ban it". Ironically, Christians, and others committed to the free expression of ideas, are the ones who are often accused of trying to force our beliefs on others. But that's not the case. Because we believe in objective truth, we believe reason and a robust exchange of ideas, with good, healthy debate can guide us to the truth. It is the radical Left that denies objective truth and therefore always relies on forced compliance and fascist tactics.

Celia froze. She couldn't believe it-Proper Pinter was kissing her. Hard, boldly, with more feeling than the duke. Good heavens. Stung by the challenge he'd laid down, she fumbled for the pistol in her reticule, but she'd just got it in her hand when he whispered hoarsely against her lips, "Sweet God, Celia..." He'd never called her by only her Christian name. He'd certainly never said it so...desperately. It made her hesitate with the pistol in her hand. He took her mouth once more, and her world shifted on its axis as his kiss became wilder, more consuming. This wasn't about a challenge anymore-not when he kissed her is if her mouth held the secret to eternity. Such lovely, drugging kisses made her blood dance through her veins. His mouth slanted over hers, and his tongue swept the seam of her lips with an urgency that made her throat ache. Remembering how Ned had kissed her, she parted her lips for him. He went still for the briefest instant. Then with a groan, he slipped his tongue into her mouth. Ohhh, that was amazing. When Ned had done it she'd found it messy and disgusting, but Mr. Pinter's kiss was as opposite to Ned's as sun was to rain. Slow and sensual, he dove inside with hot strokes that had her eager for more. How could this be happening to her? With him? Who could ever have guessed that the passionless Mr. Pinter could kiss so very passionately? Scarcely aware of what she did, she slipper her free hand up to clutch his neck. He pressed into her, flattening her against the wall as he ravished her mouth with no remorse. His whiskers abraded her chin, his mouth tasted of champagne, and the smell of orange trees sweetened the air around them. It was delicious...it was intoxicating. Paradise. She forgot the pistol in her other hand, forgot that they were in full view of anyone who might be outside the orangery windows, forgot that he'd just been lecturing her as if she were some ninnyhammer. Because he was kissing her now as if she were an angel. His angel. And Lord help her, but she wanted him to keep kissing her like that forever. But a noise from the nearby stove-the crackle of a log as it settled-seemed to jerk him to his senses. He tore his lips from hers and stared down at her a moment, his eyes wild, his breathing heavy. A change came over his face, turning his expression to cold stone. "You see, Lady Celia?" he said in his harsh rasp. "A man can do anything he wants if he has a woman alone.

By pressing the doctrine of disinterestedness and love into the foreground, Christianity by no means elevated the interests of the species above those of the individual. Its real historical effect, its fatal effect, remains precisely the increase of egotism, of individual egotism, to excess (to the extreme which consists in the belief in individual immortality). The individual was made so important and so absolute, by means of Christian values, that he could no longer be sacrificed, despite the fact that the species can only be maintained by human sacrifices. All "souls" became equal before God: but this is the most pernicious of all valuations! If one regards individuals as equals, the demands of the species are ignored, and a process is initiated which ultimately leads to its ruin. Christianity is the reverse of the principle of selection. If the degenerate and sick man ("the Christian") is to be of the same value as the healthy man ("the pagan"), or if he is even to be valued higher than the latter, as Pascal's view of health and sickness would have us value him, the natural course of evolution is thwarted and the unnatural becomes law. ... In practice this general love of mankind is nothing more than deliberately favouring all the suffering, the botched, and the degenerate: it is this love that has reduced and weakened the power, responsibility, and lofty duty of sacrificing men. According to the scheme of Christian values, all that remained was the alternative of self-sacrifice, but this vestige of human sacrifice, which Christianity conceded and even recommended, has no meaning when regarded in the light of rearing a whole species. The prosperity of the species is by no means affected by the sacrifice of one individual (whether in the monastic and ascetic manner, or by means of crosses, stakes, and scaffolds, as the "martyrs" of error). What the species requires is the suppression of the physiologically botched, the weak and the degenerate: but it was precisely to these people that Christianity appealed as a preservative force, it simply strengthened that natural and very strong instinct of all the weak which bids them protect, maintain, and mutually support each other. What is Christian "virtue" and "love of men," if not precisely this mutual assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak, this thwarting of selection? What is Christian altruism, if it is not the mob-egotism of the weak which divines that, if everybody looks after everybody else, every individual will be preserved for a longer period of time? ... He who does not consider this attitude of mind as immoral, as a crime against life, himself belongs to the sickly crowd, and also shares their instincts. ... Genuine love of man kind exacts sacrifice for the good of the species it is hard, full of self-control, because it needs human sacrifices. And this pseudo-humanity which is called Christianity, would fain establish the rule that nobody should be sacrificed.

American DEWAR FAMILY Cameron Dewar Ursula “Beep” Dewar, his sister Woody Dewar, his father Bella Dewar, his mother PESHKOV-JAKES FAMILY George Jakes Jacky Jakes, his mother Greg Peshkov, his father Lev Peshkov, his grandfather Marga, his grandmother MARQUAND FAMILY Verena Marquand Percy Marquand, her father Babe Lee, her mother CIA Florence Geary Tony Savino Tim Tedder, semiretired Keith Dorset OTHERS Maria Summers Joseph Hugo, FBI Larry Mawhinney, Pentagon Nelly Fordham, old flame of Greg Peshkov Dennis Wilson, aide to Bobby Kennedy Skip Dickerson, aide to Lyndon Johnson Leopold “Lee” Montgomery, reporter Herb Gould, television journalist on This Day Suzy Cannon, gossip reporter Frank Lindeman, television network owner REAL HISTORICAL CHARACTERS John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth U.S. president Jackie, his wife Bobby Kennedy, his brother Dave Powers, assistant to President Kennedy Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s press officer Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Lyndon B. Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. president Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh U.S. president Jimmy Carter, thirty-ninth U.S. president Ronald Reagan, fortieth U.S. president George H. W. Bush, forty-first U.S. president British LECKWITH-WILLIAMS FAMILY Dave Williams Evie Williams, his sister Daisy Williams, his mother Lloyd Williams, M.P., his father Eth Leckwith, Dave’s grandmother MURRAY FAMILY Jasper Murray Anna Murray, his sister Eva Murray, his mother MUSICIANS IN THE GUARDSMEN AND PLUM NELLIE Lenny, Dave Williams’s cousin Lew, drummer Buzz, bass player Geoffrey, lead guitarist OTHERS Earl Fitzherbert, called Fitz Sam Cakebread, friend of Jasper Murray Byron Chesterfield (real name Brian Chesnowitz), music agent Hank Remington (real name Harry Riley), pop star Eric Chapman, record company executive German FRANCK FAMILY Rebecca Hoffmann Carla Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive mother Werner Franck, Rebecca’s adoptive father Walli Franck, son of Carla Lili Franck, daughter of Werner and Carla Maud von Ulrich, née Fitzherbert, Carla’s mother Hans Hoffmann, Rebecca’s husband OTHERS Bernd Held, schoolteacher Karolin Koontz, folksinger Odo Vossler, clergyman REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (Communist) Erich Honecker, Ulbricht’s successor Egon Krenz, successor to Honecker Polish Stanislaw “Staz” Pawlak, army officer Lidka, girlfriend of Cam Dewar Danuta Gorski, Solidarity activist REAL HISTORICAL PEOPLE Anna Walentynowicz, crane driver Lech Wałesa, leader of the trade union Solidarity General Jaruzelski, prime minister Russian DVORKIN-PESHKOV FAMILY Tanya Dvorkin, journalist Dimka Dvorkin, Kremlin aide, Tanya’s twin brother Anya Dvorkin, their mother Grigori Peshkov, their grandfather Katerina Peshkov, their grandmother Vladimir, always called Volodya, their uncle Zoya, Volodya’s wife Nina, Dimka’s girlfriend OTHERS Daniil Antonov, features editor at TASS Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief Vasili Yenkov, dissident Natalya Smotrov, official in the Foreign Ministry

You do have money, don’t you? You never paid your fare yesterday. It’s six pounds, eight. If you haven’t the coin, I’ll have no choice but to hold you for ransom once we reach Tortola.” Her fare. Sophia sipped her tea with relief. If Mr. Grayson was this concerned over six pounds, he surely had no idea he was harboring a runaway heiress with nearly one hundred times that amount strapped beneath her stays. She suppressed a nervous laugh. “Yes, of course I can pay my passage. You’ll have your money today, Mr. Grayson.” “Gray.” “Mr. Grayson,” she said, her voice and nerves growing thin, “I scarcely think that my moment of…of indisposition gives you leave to make such an intimate request, that I address you by your Christian name. I certainly shall not.” He clucked softly, wrapping the handkerchief around his fingers. With hypnotic tenderness, he reached out, drawing the fabric across her temple. “Now, sweetheart-surely my parents can be credited with greater imagination than you imply. Christening me ‘Gray Grayson’?” He chuckled low in his throat. “Everyone aboard this ship calls me Gray. Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s no particular privilege. There’s but one woman on earth permitted to address me by my Christian name.” “Your mother?” He grinned again. “No.” She blinked. “Oh, now don’t look so disappointed,” he said. “It’s my sister.” Sophia slanted her gaze to her lip, cursing herself for playing into his charm. If the sight of him drove the wits from her skull, the solution was plain. She mustn’t look. But then he pressed the handkerchief into her hand, covering her fingers with his own, and Sophia could not retrieve the small, defeated sigh that fell from her lips. His touch devastated her resolve completely. His hand was like the rest of him. Brute strength, neatly groomed. She heartily wished she’d thought to put on gloves. He leaned closer, his scent intruding through the pervasive smell of seawater-wholly masculine and faintly spicy, like pomade and rum. “And sweetheart, if I did make an intimate request of you”-his thumb swept boldly over the delicate skin of her wrist-“you’d know it.” Sophia sucked in her breath. “So call me Gray.” He released her hand abruptly. Disappointment-unbidden, imprudent, unthinkable emotion-cinched in Sophia’s chest. Distance from this man was precisely what she wished. Well, if not precisely what she wished, it was exactly what she needed. He looked at her as though he’d laid all her secrets bare, and her body as well. She pushed the tankard back at him, leaving him no choice but to take it from her hands. “I shall continue to address you as propriety demands, Mr. Grayson.” She cast him a sharp look. “And you certainly are not at liberty to call me ‘sweetheart.’” He donned an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “That isn’t what it stands for, then?” Teasing the handkerchief from her clenched fist, he ran his thumb over the embroidered monogram. S.H. “You see?” He traced each letter with the pad of his finger. “Sweet. Heart. I thought surely that must be it. Because I know your name is Jane Turner.” His lips curved in that insolent grin. “Unless…don’t tell me. It was a gift?

Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.

As Jarrod Saul McKenna reminds us, “A text without a context is a con.

3. When, she said, we were still under legal surveillance and my father was liked to vex me with his words and continually strove to hurt my faith because of his love: Father, said I, Do you see (for examples) this vessel lying, a pitcher or whatsoever it may be? And he said, I see it. And I said to him, Can it be called by any other name than that which it is? And he answered, No. So can I call myself nought other than that which I am, a Christian. Then my father angry with this word came upon me to tear out my eyes; but he only vexed me, and he departed vanquished, he and the arguments of the devil. Then because I was without my father for a few days I gave thanks unto the Lord; and I was comforted because of his absence. In this same space of a few days we were baptised, and the Spirit declared to me, I must pray for nothing else after that water save only endurance of the flesh. After a few days we were taken into prison, and I was much afraid because I had never known such darkness. O bitter day! There was a great heat because of the press, there was cruel handling of the soldiers. Lastly I was tormented there by care for the child." Opening Paragraphs of Perpetua from The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, translated by Shewring

That better way is the unseen order inside us. It is the vision we carry in our imagination about a truer, more beautiful world—one in which all children have enough to eat and we no longer kill each other and mothers do not have to cross deserts with their babies on their backs. This better idea is what Jews call shalom, Buddhists call nirvana, Christians call heaven, Muslims call salaam, and many agnostics call peace. It is not a place out there—not yet; it’s the hopeful swelling in here, pressing through our skin, insisting that it was all meant to be more beautiful than this. And it can be, if we refuse to wait to die and “go to heaven” and instead find heaven inside us and give birth to it here and now. If we work to make the vision of the unseen order swelling inside us visible in our lives, homes, and nations, we will make reality more beautiful. On Earth as it is in heaven. In our material world as it is in our imagination.

Get out of here,” Tom said to the two Berserkers. “He doesn’t understand!” “This is all wrong!” said Ron, pressing his bleeding mouth with his hand. “Everybody knows homophobia was invented by the Christians!” “Then you can have the comfort,” said Jorgen with a smile, “of knowing you’re not the victim of a hate crime.

are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that surround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply. There are others who attend church less frequently or not at all but whose attitudes and behavior reflect a more genuine centering in the principles of the basic Judeo-Christian ethic.

Pray is not the exercise of the faint-hearted, for it takes more determination than we can imagine to set aside the press of our agendas in order to partner with God in the working out of His.

to be human is to have “a ceaseless drive toward meaning and truth…there is a dynamic thrust to the human intellect that constantly presses toward the fullness of meaning and truth in the Absolute.”18

These particular beliefs are being challenged—God as supernatural being up there, out there; humans as the center and point of creation; Christianity as the true religion; Christianity as singularly about individual salvation; the Bible as consistent, not contradictory; you can add to the list. Christians in our day are being pressed to reflect on cherished beliefs. Their foundations are shaking. Some seize the opportunity. Others dig in and resent the challenge of this inner, theological work. Jesus references the “winnowing fan that separates the grain from the chaff” (Matt 3:12). Isn’t this a part of what you do? You help parishioners separate the wheat from the chaff, letting go what’s not alive and retaining what’s lifegiving. Each letting go is a loss. Each one is an experience of dying. It’s grief work. It’s hospice chaplaincy. With patience and tender care you invite members to grieve the loss of what was but no longer contains vitality for them.

Immediately after the Christmas holidays I stopped speaking to her. The guy who had spotted me near the station seemed to have forgotten the incident, but I had been afraid even so. In any case, dating Bardot would have demanded a moral strength far superior to the one I could, even at the time, pride myself on. Because not only was she ugly but she was plain nasty. Goaded on by sexual liberation (it was right at the beginning of the 80s, AIDS still did not exist), she couldn't make appeal to some ethical notion of virginity, obviously. On top of that she was too intelligent and too lucid to account for her state as being a product of "JudeoChristian influence" - in any case her parents were agnostics. All means of evasion were thus closed to her. She could only assist, in silent hatred, at the liberation of others; witness the boys pressing themselves like crabs against others' bodies; sense the relationships being formed, the experiments being undertaken, the orgasms surging forth; live to the full a silent selfdestruction when faced with the flaunted pleasure of others. Thus was her adolescence to unfold, and thus it unfolded: jealousy and frustration fermented slowly to become a swelling of paroxystic hatred.

This lesson is especially important when so many Christians today identify themselves with some “single issue” (a concept drawn from politics) other than the cross, other than the gospel. It is not that they deny the gospel. If pressed, they will emphatically endorse it. But their point of self-identification, the focus of their minds and hearts, what occupies their interest and energy, is something else: a style of worship, the abortion issue, homeschooling, the gift of prophecy, pop sociology, a certain brand of counseling, or whatever. Of course, all of these issues have their own importance. Doubtless we need some Christians working on them full time. But even those who are so engaged must do so as an extension of the gospel, as an extension of the message of the cross. They must take special pains to avoid giving any impression that being really spiritual or really insightful or really wise turns on an appropriate response to their issue.

It struck me, even at the time, that the basic hope of the conference was a very scholarly one. Many of the contributions and lectures were motivated by a touching faith in the collective memory of Christianity. They believed that the writings of the age of the Fathers could be sifted by scholars in such a way as to bring healing to the present. Understanding the Patristic age was like a remedium (to use a late Roman Latin term). A remedium was a homeopathic poultice—like a modern medical patch—which was thought to work slowly, and with almost occult power, to heal: to redress deep-seated imbalances; to fortify good humors; to smooth away the cramps and to soften the hard constrictions that wracked the body. It was hoped that a remedium could be concocted, from our renewed and ever-deeper knowledge of Patristic Christianity, that could be pressed against the fevered body of the church in our own times.

We should not be trapped by appearances. There are people who call themselves Buddhist who in fact are not very Buddhist, because there is discrimination and dogmatism in them. They are less Buddhist than many Christians. There are many Christians who do not call themselves Buddhist, but they are more Buddhist than these "Buddhists." We have to learn to look in that way. There are enough Buddhists; we don't need to convert more people to Buddhism. The right attitude is not to encourage people to be uprooted from their own tradition. The right attitude is to urge them to go back to their tradition. With the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, concentration, and insight they should be able to do this.

Thinking about children as simply being at the transitory exploration stage of a lifelong algorithm might provide some solace for parents of preschoolers. (Tom has two highly exploratory preschool-age daughters, and hopes they are following an algorithm that has minimal regret.) But it also provides new insights about the rationality of children. Gopnik points out that “if you look at the history of the way that people have thought about children, they have typically argued that children are cognitively deficient in various ways—because if you look at their exploit capacities, they look terrible. They can’t tie their shoes, they’re not good at long-term planning, they’re not good at focused attention. Those are all things that kids are really awful at.” But pressing buttons at random, being very interested in new toys, and jumping quickly from one thing to another are all things that kids are really great at. And those are exactly what they should be doing if their goal is exploration. If you’re a baby, putting every object in the house into your mouth is like studiously pulling all the handles at the casino.

Lawrence O’Donnell wrote some dialogue in The West Wing that captures this point perfectly: “And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there: if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to…. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes.

We live today in the grand age of diversion, and the reasons why are obvious. With our economic prosperity, our high-tech devices and the cornucopia of entertainment pressing for our attention, we can surround ourselves with diversion from the cradle to grave. We do not focus our attention on anything for long. We do not ask what 'the good life' is and what it requires. Happiness is a small circle, and it is no surprise that the last thing on most people's minds at any moment is the question of the meaning of life, the coming of death and the priorities that are needed to choose wisely. What Socrates call the 'unexamined life' that is 'not worth living' now seems to be the life more people have slipped into than ever before.

Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

Of course as a Christian theologian Dionysius speaks much of creation and redemption. And he says that as Christians we must not say anything about the Godhead 'except those things which are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures.' But the whole story of redemption from creation to consummation of history is soon pressed into the framework of the scale of being. Above all other reality is the 'Super-Essential Godhead' of which we must not dare 'to speak, or even to form any conception.'...The principle of plentitude, to which Dionysius is committed, takes care of both the idea of utter negation and, as correlative to it, of communication. For the superessential Good 'while dwelling alone by itself, and having there firmly fixed its superessential Ray, it lovingly reveals itself by illuminations corresponding to each separate creature's powers, and thus draws upwards holy minds into such contemplation, participation and resemblance of itself as they can attain even them that holily and duly strive thereafter...' If there is any help in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of man, it is because of his identity with the superessential. It is from this, the superessential, that he emanates. It is not for anything that he has done for men by suffering for them on the cross and by rising for their justification from the dead but rather by virtue of his pointing them to the superessential being that he saves them. It is this superessential being that is a 'Principle of Illumination to them that are being enlightened; a Principle of Perfection to them that are being perfected; a Principle of Deity to them that are being deified and of Simplicity to them that are being brought unto simplicity and of Unity to them that are being brought unto unity.

Of course as a Christian theologian Dionysius speaks much of creation and redemption. And he says that as Christians we must not say anything about the Godhead 'except those things which are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures.' But the whole story of redemption from creation to consummation of history is soon pressed into the framework of the scale of being. Above all other reality is the 'Super-Essential Godhead' of which we must not dare 'to speak, or even to form any conception.'...The principle of plentitude, to which Dionysius is committed, takes care of both the idea of utter negation and, as correlative to it, of communication. For the superessential Good 'while dwelling alone by itself, and having there firmly fixed its superessential Ray, it lovingly reveals itself by illuminations corresponding to each separate creature's powers, and thus draws upwards holy minds into such contemplation, participation and resemblance of itself as they can attain even them that holily and duly strive thereafter...' If there is any help in the person and work of Christ for the salvation of man, it is because of his identity with the superessential. It is from this, the superessential, that he emanates. It is not for anything that he has done for men by suffering for them on the cross and by rising for their justification from the dead but rather by virtue of his pointing them to the superessential being that he saves them. It is this superessential being that is a 'Principle of Illumination to them that are being enlightened; a Principle of Perfection to them that are being perfected; a Principle of Deity to them that are being deified and of Simplicity to them that are being brought unto simplicity and of Unity to them that are being brought unto unity.

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension. No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space. William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace...

Press on when growth seems slow.

You knew, you knew the Commandments, had learned them out of the missal-thin pages of the green Catechism, where, in a genius move of utter simplicity God had set the high bar for Christianity by saying Love your neighbor like yourself, and you read that and looked over at your neighbor, Patrick Plunkett picking his nose and pressing the pickings on the underside of your desk, and by virtue of nothing more than carnal reality that bar got that much higher.

Sir Tristan?’ Simeon ventured. ‘But even if he does, will he defend the King? Coming from Lyonesse, surely he’ll follow the Goddess?’ Dominian showed his teeth in a nasty laugh. ‘The Great Mother, yes. The old whore we are driving from the land.’ ‘As soon as we have taken Her ways for our own?’ Dominian frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’ An earnest student of both history and the modern world, Simeon had been waiting for the moment to bring this up. ‘Did not the first Christians take over the apparatus of the Mother?’ he began importantly. ‘Her threefold incarnation of Maiden, Mother, and Wise Woman, is that not what people in those days called the Holy Trinity?’ Dominian paused. ‘This is not something to share with the common folk,’ he said carefully. ‘We teach them that God the Father was here before all things.’ ‘But our Communion, too,’ Simeon pressed on. ‘At the feasts of the Mother, the Lady is the loaf giver to all who come and pours wine from her loving cup with her own hand. When we offer bread and wine, haven’t we taken thus from the first power of the Lady, to feed and to provide?

The distinction of what is called dulia and latria was invented for the very purpose of permitting divine honours to be paid to angels and dead men with apparent impunity. For it is plain that the worship which Papists pay to saints differs in no respect from the worship of God: for this worship is paid without distinction; only when they are pressed they have recourse to the evasion, that what belongs to God is kept unimpaired, because they leave him λατρια. But since the question relates not to the word, but the thing, how can they be allowed to sport at will with a matter of the highest moment? But not to insist on this, the utmost they will obtain by their distinction is, that they give worship to God, and service to the others. For λατρεὶα in Greek has the same meaning as worship in Latin; whereas δουλεὶα properly means service, though the words are sometimes used in Scripture indiscriminately. But granting that the distinction is invariably preserved, the thing to be inquired into is the meaning of each. Δουλεὶα unquestionably means service, and λατρεὶα worship. But no man doubts that to serve is something higher than to worship. For it were often a hard thing to serve him whom you would not refuse to reverence. It is, therefore, an unjust division to assign the greater to the saints and leave the less to God. But several of the ancient fathers observed this distinction. What if they did, when all men see that it is not only improper, but utterly frivolous?

There is the seen order unfolding in front of us every day on our streets and in the news. In this visible order, violence reigns and children are shot in their schools and warmongers prosper and 1 percent of the world hoards half of all we have. We call this order of things reality. This is “the way things are.” It’s all we can see because it’s all we’ve ever seen. Yet something inside us rejects it. We know instinctively: This is not the intended order of things. This is not how things are meant to be. We know that there is a better, truer, wilder way. That better way is the unseen order inside us. It is the vision we carry in our imagination about a truer, more beautiful world—one in which all children have enough to eat and we no longer kill each other and mothers do not have to cross deserts with their babies on their backs. This better idea is what Jews call shalom, Buddhists call nirvana, Christians call heaven, Muslims call salaam, and many agnostics call peace. It is not a place out there—not yet; it’s the hopeful swelling in here, pressing through our skin, insisting that it was all meant to be more beautiful than this. And it can be, if we refuse to wait to die and “go to heaven” and instead find heaven inside us and give birth to it here and now. If we work to make the vision of the unseen order swelling inside us visible in our lives, homes, and nations, we will make reality more beautiful. On Earth as it is in heaven. In our material world as it is in our imagination.

Ruth was not swayed by the promise of a better life in her home country of Moab. She rejected the chance to go back “to her people and to her gods” (verse 15); she did not want to return. She is an example of a woman who presses in to know the Lord and His people. In this true story, we are getting a little preview of a resonant biblical melody. Though God loved Israel, He loved others from outside the nation as well. Israel was God’s covenant people; yet Israel could not rightly conclude that God loved only Israelites. His people were bigger and broader than this chosen nation, vital as it was to God’s plan; indeed, as the story went on, figures like Ruth and Rahab show us that many who were not of Israel by birth were actually more “of Israel” spiritually than many Jews by birth.

We do not see into the world in which God lives, but He definitely sees into ours.

Orwell writes: It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you—something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.

First, not all the proponents of limited election seem to regard these texts as particularly important. Louis Berkhof, for example, managed to write an entire systematic theology without citing either of the texts in question;129 and though John Calvin did comment upon them briefly in his commentary on 1 John, he evidently did not regard them as important enough even to mention in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. When one thinks about it, this is truly astonishing. Calvin’s Institutes is a monumental work of over 1500 pages; in it he sought to provide an exhaustive summary of Christian doctrine, as he understood it, along with the biblical support for it. In the Westminster Press edition, the index of Bible references alone is thirty-nine pages of small print with three columns per page. And yet, in this entire work, as massive and thorough as it is, Calvin never once found the Johannine declaration that God is love important enough to discuss.

Guide my hands. I don't wish to hurt you." "Lower," she said when he pressed fingertips to the middle of her back. "Lower," she urged, guiding him downward. "There." He started softly, pressing the pads of his fingers to the muscles he felt. She sighed, a sound that vibrated down his spine, settling with a flickering and tightening heat in his scrotum. He shifted as his blood thickened like honey in his veins. This was too much to ask of him. He was already drunk on arousal and need. It swam through his head like whisky, making his thoughts give way to instinct and consequences appear murky.

The United States was no bystander in all this. Jewish Americans had suffered generations of discrimination in their own country, but they and other Jews emigrating from the West to Israel still shared language, customs, and appearance with their white Christian brethren, and in comparison to Arabs, they still enjoyed far more sympathy from the American public. Harry Truman had been the first foreign leader to formally recognize Israel as a sovereign state, and the American Jewish community pressed U.S. officials to assist the fledgling nation. With the world’s two Cold War superpowers vying for influence in the Middle East, the United States became Israel’s primary patron—and with that, Israel’s problems with its neighbors became America’s problems as well.

One of the most famous stories of medieval chivalry tells how Sir James, the “Black” Douglas, for twenty years the faithful sword-arm of the Bruce, took his master’s heart to be buried in the Holy Land, and how, touching at a Spanish port, he responded to a sudden call of chivalry and joined the hard-pressed Christians in battle with the Moors. Charging the heathen host, he threw far into the mêlée the silver casket containing the heart of Bruce. “Forward, brave heart, as thou wert wont. Douglas will follow thee or die!” He was killed in the moment of victory.

Caine, Philip D. Aircraft Down! Evading Capture in WWII Europe. Virginia: Potomac Books, 1997. Champlain, Héléne de. The Secret War of Helene De Champlain. Great Britain: Redwood Burn, Ltd., 1980. Chevrillon, Claire. Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance. Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Coleman, Fred. The Marcel Network: How One French Couple Saved 527 from the Holocaust. Virginia: Potomac Books, 2013. Eisner, Peter. The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Fitzsimons, Peter. Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Foot, M.R.D., and J.M. Langley. MI9: Escape and Evasion, 1939–1945. Boston: Little Brown, 1979. Humbert, Agnés. Résistance: A Woman’s Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2004. Jackson, Julian. France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Litoff, Judy Barrett. An American Heroine in the French Resistance. The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Long, Helen. Safe Houses Are Dangerous. London: William Kimber, 1985. Moorehead, Caroline. A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Neave, Airey. Little Cyclone. London: Coronet Books, 1954. Ideas for Book Groups Dear Readers, I truly believe in book groups.

Beecher, a quick-witted but lazy student, attended school for about six years before leaving to care for the family after her mother died. By our standards, Beecher was religious. Even so, when her father pressed her to have a deep religious conversion experience and submit to God—else, he believed, she would not be saved—she resisted, deciding that she would follow Christian doctrine but not act excessively humble herself. She refused to sing a hymn with the lyrics “I am nothing, Lord,” because, she said, “I am not nothing.

With Calvin I find the point of contact for the presentation of the gospel to non-Christians in the fact that they are made in the image of God and as such have the ineradicable sense of deity within them. Their own consciousness is inherently and exclusively revelation of God to themselves. No man can help knowing God for in knowing himself he knows God. His self-consciousness is totally devoid of content unless, as Calvin puts it at the beginning of his Institutes, man knows himself as a creature of God. There are no atheistic men because no man can deny the revelational activity of the true God within him. Man's own interpretative activity whether of the more or less extended type, whether in ratiocination or intuition, is no doubt the most penetrating means by which the Holy Spirit presses the claims of God upon man... His conscience troubles him when he disobeyes; he knows deep down in his heart that he is disobeying his creator. There is no escape from God for any human being. Every human being is by virtue of his being made in the image of God accessible to God. And as such he is accessible to one who without compromise presses upon him the claims of God.

When reframed in this way, critics often accuse couples intent on pursuing ART of being selfish for expending so much time, energy, and resources to have a biological connection to their child when they could pursue adoption in-stead. But beyond the practical barrier of adoption not being accessible to all prospective parents in all contexts given variables of age, sexual orientation, marital status, and the pool of available children, what is missing in this anti-ART/pro-adoption position is an explanation for why the criticism of narcissism or selfishness is directed primarily at couples who use ART, not also at those intent on bearing children the old-fashioned way through intercourse. Why must those who cannot reproduce "naturally" be put in the position of having to justify their desire to have "their own" child — why isn't every prospective parent pressed to give an account?

Fear is not from God. Fear is from the enemy. It is the spirit Satan uses to try to keep God’s people from coming under the leadership of our true Master, Jesus Christ. The only acceptable attitude (and confession) that a Christian can have toward fear is this: “It is not from God, and I will not put up with it or let it control my life! I will confront fear, because it is a spirit sent from hell to torment me.” I believe God works powerfully in us to bring us out of bondage, to take us from fear into liberty. The Bible is full of instructions to “fear not.” Events in my own life have led me to understand that “Fear not” means “Do not run; face it.” I encourage you to press on, and if need be, “do it afraid”—whatever “it” is in your life. Do not run from fear; instead, “Be strong and courageous,” as Joshua 10:25 exhorts. Confront fear in prayer and take whatever actions God leads you to take.

This is a wake up call. Don’t press the snooze alarm. The barbarians are at the gates, and, because they encourage breeding beyond the ability of the breeders to house, feed, and educate the breedees, violence and social disorganization continue. As the most Christian nation on earth watches its civilization dissolve like a Dove bar fallen off of that ark, attempts to enforce irrational superstitious solutions will accelerate. That Branch Davidian thing was a sample. Lots of other messiahs are waiting. Maybe we can have court-ordered Branch Davidian Social Services counseling for people who won’t share their wives with their god’s anointed. Maybe courts can acquit murderers if they believe a god’s finger was on their trigger. Maybe the barbarians will actually succeed in assuring that books, pictures, ideas, doctors, judges and military commanders share their vision. Then we will have a lot of interesting tribal warfare. One useful defense will be humanistic hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a fancy word for biblical interpretation. When religious types want to make something simple sound holy and mysterious, they often give it an important sounding high falutin’ name. This practice contrasts sharply with the usage of secular humanists, who, in explaining their views, employ simple words, that fall trippingly from the tongue, like ‘eupraxophy.’ Hermeneutics can be an important weapon to use against religious fanatics in the coming ARCW. The hard core nut cases—those who would control every aspect of our lives by forcing us to accept their understanding of the will of their god—tend to share certain operational assumptions. These include the belief that: (1) Every word of the Bible is true. (2) The English translation of the Bible authorized by King James the First of England, completed in 1611, Common Era, is the only fully acceptable, authoritative, and inspired-by-god translation of holy scripture. This translation is accurate in every respect, including punctuation marks. (3) The Bible is the basis of all morality. Without it there can be no morality. (4) The United States of America was established, and should be governed, according to biblical principles. (5) The Bible is without error. (6) No part of the Bible is in conflict with, or contradictory to, any other part. (7) Hermeneutics can be used to clarify and explain those truths of god in the Bible that might appear, to finite minds, to be in conflict. The goal of hermeneutics is to reconcile all portions of the ‘Word of God’ (the Bible) into a seamless, complete, infallible, and final statement of all past and future history (the latter is called prophecy), of divine law, and of how humans should behave and understand morality. The Bible, properly interpreted, is the final word on everything.

He looked down at her face and felt more alive than he'd ever felt in his life.... When she tilted her head back and laughed, he was hard-pressed to not give in to the urge he immediately felt to lower his head and claim the lips that were only inches away from his own.

The sacrifice of Jesus is not to be thought of as something that changes God and his mind, it is something that God does through Jesus that changes us and our ways of thinking.

TOWARD THE MARK” Forgetting those things which are behind…I press toward the mark.  Philippians 3:13–14 It is one of the devil’s oldest tricks to discourage Christian believers by causing them to look back at what they once were. It is indeed the enemy of our souls who makes us forget that we are never at the end of God’s love. No one will make progress with God until the eyes are lifted to the faithfulness of God and we stop looking at ourselves! Our instructions in the New Testament all add up to the necessity of looking forward in faith—and not spending our time looking back or just looking within. Brethren, our Lord is more than able to take care of our past. He pardons instantly and forgives completely, and his blood makes us worthy! The goodness of God is infinitely more wonderful than we will ever be able to comprehend. If the “root of the matter” is in you and you are born again, God is prepared to start with you where you are! Thank You, Lord, that we can never reach the end of Your love for us. Your love, like all Your attributes, is never-ending. OCTOBER 5 THE WINSOME SAINTS Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ.  Philippians 1:11

For want of "counting the cost," the children of religious parents often turn out ill, and bring disgrace on Christianity. Familiar from their earliest years with the form and theory of the Gospel--taught even from infancy to repeat great leading texts--accustomed every week to be instructed in the Gospel, or to instruct others in Sunday schools--they often grow up professing a religion without knowing why, or without ever having thought seriously about k. And then when the realities of grown-up life begin to press upon them, they often astound every one by dropping all their religion, and plunging right into the world. And why? They had never thoroughly understood the sacrifices which Christianity entails. They had never been taught to "count the cost.

Don't live in the past. It doesn't exist. To Jesus submit. To satan resist. Leave the past behind. Don't get entangled like seeds in the thorns choked until strangled. Just press towards the mark. Keep on pressing. Live in the knowing, not in the guessing. Keep walking in faith, and don't stop to doubt. Believe and be strong, sincere and devout.

Recognizing the problem, some secularists are searching for ways to salvage an objective status for morality. The favored strategy is to invoke evolutionary psychology. Hardly a week goes by without an article appearing in the popular press claiming that natural selection has explained the origin of this or that moral trait. Typically the argument goes something like this: You Christians claim that it is impossible to have morality without God. Well, we’ve solved that problem. Evolutionary forces can produce empathy, cooperation, mutual aid, and all the other forms of social bonding. These behaviors are selected for because they help secure genetic fitness and promote survival. Voilá, evolution becomes the basis for moral realism. And evolutionary biologists become the new priests. As a New York Times article says, if “morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution,” then “it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.”40 But

One final word before we press on. Paul speaks at one point of Christians as “God’s poem,” God’s “artwork.” We are his “workmanship,” say some of the translations of Ephesians 2.10. The Greek word Paul uses there is poiēma, the very word from which the English word “poem” is derived. God gives us these poems, the Psalms, as a gift, in order that through our praying and singing of them he may give us as a gift to his world. We are called to be living, breathing, praying, singing poems.

The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.

I pressed my hands into my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to stifle the memories. But they bled through. As if there had always been cracks in me meant for her -- then, when we had finally found each other, her soul somehow was broken in all the right places so that she fit inside me.

Although the move from Calvinism to Arminianism began in the seminary classroom, it came to have a profound influence on American culture through the events of the Second Great Awakening. The revivals of the first Great Awakening were supernatural events, wrought by the power of God’s Spirit. The same could be said of the new wave of revivals that began in the 1790s and continued well into the nineteenth century. Like its predecessor, the Second Great Awakening began and flourished in Calvinist churches, where it was believed that because revival is a work of God alone, it is “peculiarly illustrative of the glorious doctrines of grace.”29 However, since it was only natural to want the awakening to continue, some Christian leaders—especially Methodists—sought to devise methods for promoting revival. Their concern for personal salvation was commendable. However, rather than relying on God to bless the ordinary means of grace (prayer, the ministry of the Word, and the sacraments), they adopted the “New Measures” associated with the invitation system: the protracted camp meeting, the “anxious bench,” the altar call. These pragmatic techniques were susceptible to manipulation, especially where it was considered important to count the number of converts. Preachers stressed the necessity of “coming forward to receive Christ,” with the unintended consequence of con-fusing a human decision (to come forward) with a divine transformation (spiritual conversion). In short, there was a shift from revival to revivalism.30 This transition was rooted in an Arminian theology of conversion, which maintained that sinners were neutral—free to choose their own spiritual destiny. Whereas the Puritans had insisted that depravity prevented anyone from choosing for Christ apart from the prior work of the Holy Spirit, the new revivalists called on people to exercise their own ability to receive the gospel. Gardiner Spring described this as the difference between a revival that is “got up by man’s device” and one that is “brought down by the Spirit of God.”31 The difference can be illustrated by comparing Jonathan Edwards, who described revival as “a very extraordinary dispensation of Providence,”32 with Charles Finney, who insisted that a revival is not supernatural but the natural “result of the right use of the constituted means.” Like most revivalists, Finney explicitly rejected the doctrines of grace. Early in his ministry he left the Presbyterian church and repudiated Calvin’s views “on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, or any of the kindred doctrines.”33 The view he eventually adopted was not merely Arminian but actually Pelagian. Finney believed that sinners could initiate their own conversion: “Instead of telling sinners to use the means of grace and pray for a new heart, we called on them to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit and pressed the duty of instant surrender to God.

Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.

King refused to accept protection from police or the FBI. During one arrest, he was choked, kicked, tried, convicted, fined, jailed, spit upon, and cursed by a Montgomery police officer who also tried to break his arm. He never pressed charges[...] He was stabbed in New York City. He was stoned in Chicago, beaten in Selma, and booed in Los Angeles. They threw eggs at him in Harlem and heckled him in London. Racists threw a knife and stones at him in Cicero, Illinois. He received scores of life-threatening telephone calls and hate mail. By the time of his assassination in Memphis, he had gone through arrests, jail transfers, court hearings, and release proceedings twenty-nine times. King's response to his suffering and trials was not 'compassionate conservatism.' It was extravagant love, unconditional charity, and responsibility. It was agape-- the love which knows no boundaries. It has justice at its heart.

I believe more than ever before in the power of nonviolent resistance. It has a moral aspect tied to it. It makes it possible for the individual to secure moral ends through moral means[...] While addressing an audience in Birmingham, a man mounted the stage and suddenly punched King in the face, while a shocked audience watched in amazement as King made no move to strike back or turn away. Instead he looked at his assailant and spoke calmly to him. Within seconds, several people pulled the attacker away. While others led the crowd in song, King and his colleagues spoke with the assailant at the rear of the stage. Then King returned to the podium to tell the audience that the man was twenty-four-year-old Roy James, a member of the Nazi Party from Arlington, Viriginia. King refused to press charges.

It is worth observing, before we move on, that a counterpart of what Nehemiah saw to be needed in Jerusalem in the mid-fifth century B.C. is just as badly needed in the modern West. Parents no longer teach their children the Bible at home; preaching in the church is often topical and superficial rather than expository and theological, and Sunday school teaching is often very rudimentary as far as the Bible is concerned; and the public educational system, the media, and the press, both popular and academic, all treat Christianity as a dead letter, only surviving as a hobby for persons of an unusual type. So there is not the least encouragement in our culture to become biblically literate, and the net result is a generation frighteningly and pathetically ignorant of the Word of God. No significant movement towards God can be expected while this remains so.

THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS: A POLEMIC The three essays which constitute this genealogy are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art[Pg 117] of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as you know, is also the god of darkness. In each case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less calmness prevails; here and there a flash of lightning defines the horizon; exceedingly unpleasant truths break upon your ears from out remote distances with a dull, rumbling sound,—until very soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything presses forward at a terrible degree of tension. At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The truth of the first essays the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the "Spirit,"—in all its essentials, a counter-movement, the great insurrection against the dominion of noble values. The second essay contains the psychology of conscience: this is not, as you may believe, "the voice of God in man"; it is the instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture. The third essay replies to the question as to the origin of the formidable power of the ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply: it flourished not because God was active behind the priests, as is generally believed, but because it was[Pg 118] a faute de mieux—from the fact that hitherto it has been the only ideal and has had no competitors. "For man prefers to aspire to nonentity than not to aspire at all." But above all, until the time of Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counter-ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist to a Transvaluation of all Values.—This book contains the first psychology of the priest.

THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS: A POLEMIC The three essays which constitute this genealogy are, as regards expression, aspiration, and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that have ever been written. Dionysus, as you know, is also the god of darkness. In each case the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. Gradually less calmness prevails; here and there a flash of lightning defines the horizon; exceedingly unpleasant truths break upon your ears from out remote distances with a dull, rumbling sound,—until very soon a fierce tempo is attained in which everything presses forward at a terrible degree of tension. At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new truth shines out between thick clouds. The truth of the first essays the psychology of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of resentment, not, as is supposed, out of the "Spirit,"—in all its essentials, a counter-movement, the great insurrection against the dominion of noble values. The second essay contains the psychology of conscience: this is not, as you may believe, "the voice of God in man"; it is the instinct of cruelty, which turns inwards once it is unable to discharge itself outwardly. Cruelty is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture. The third essay replies to the question as to the origin of the formidable power of the ascetic ideal, of the priest ideal, despite the fact that this ideal is essentially detrimental, that it is a will to nonentity and to decadence. Reply: it flourished not because God was active behind the priests, as is generally believed, but because it was[Pg 118] a faute de mieux—from the fact that hitherto it has been the only ideal and has had no competitors. "For man prefers to aspire to nonentity than not to aspire at all." But above all, until the time of Zarathustra there was no such thing as a counter-ideal. You have understood my meaning. Three decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist to a Transvaluation of all Values.—This book contains the first psychology of the priest.

Strange Christianity, whose most pressing anxiety seems to be that God’s grace might prove to be all too free on this side, that hell, instead of being populated with so many people, might some day prove to be empty!

Don’t limit yourself by trying to do life alone. God gave you His Spirit to dwell within so that you can get through each day and accomplish what He has called you to do in life. He didn’t give you His Spirit to simply reside within you, but to be this “incredible greatness” that will help you to rise above and press onward to finish the race.

strangely, on the verge of storming Rome itself, Attila withdrew. Why? For many centuries the official answer was that God had intervened in some mysterious way to protect his chosen city, Rome, seat of the papacy. In more recent times, such supernatural explanations have fallen out of favor and the question has arisen anew. Some have suggested that Attila was overawed by the sanctity of Rome. But why would a pagan warlord like Attila stand in awe of a Christian center? Attila was by no means an ignorant barbarian: For example, he invited Roman and Greek engineers into Hun territory to install bathing facilities. However, his respect for Roman civilization was clearly of a pragmatic rather than a religious nature. Another theory is that Attila was worried about leaving unattended his newly acquired homeland, in what is now Hungary. But then why did he venture out almost as far as Rome and hang around indecisively for so long before returning? All these explanations founder on the same point. It seems clear that Attila did indeed set out with every intention of taking Rome, but his expedition came to a premature halt. Mounting modern evidence suggests that Attila was stopped by a virulent epidemic of dysentery, or some similar disease. Most of his men were too ill to stay on their horses, and a significant number died. In short, bacteria saved Rome.

First, many of us are tempted to affirm whatever our favorite political tribe affirms, and deny whatever it denies. Nobody likes to risk losing friends and allies over a policy issue. So we’re subtly pressed to believe what we’re expected to believe as a good “conservative” or a good “liberal.

My sins are many, but oh! it is nothing to Jesus to take them all away. The weight of my guilt presses me down as a giant's foot would crush a worm, but it is no more than a grain of dust to him, because he has already borne its curse in his own body on the tree. It will be but a small thing for him to give me full remission, although it will be an infinite blessing for me to receive it.