Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

[Kendel]

The pastor was flummoxed. Clearly, no one had contradicted him before, at least not since he’d taken the helm of this church. It was also quite clear no one had insulted his haircut before, either. And especially not in the middle of a sermon.

He paused and looked at Ryan thoughtfully. He slowly raised his microphone to the side of his mouth, much in the style of the musicians who perform “rap,” a genre of human “music.”

The pastor cracked a sly smile as if he were about to drop a killer verse. Right on cue, the thrum of the bass resumed. A bolt fell from the projector mount above, and it shuddered, causing the song lyrics on the screen to vibrate ever so slightly. No one noticed.

“Give this young man a microphone!” the pastor said. “I believe today is a divine appointment for him.”

Scattered applause from the congregation, who still didn’t know what to think.

“Come on. We don’t bite. I believe God has a divine plan for you, and I want to find out what it is.”

A beefy security guard with an Agent Smith-style earpiece 8 walked up and tensely handed Ryan a microphone, apparently ready to bear-hug him and drag him out of the building.

“What do you have to say for yourself son? And please—no bad language.”

Ryan took a deep breath. “I mean… I just… Look, life sucks, OK? Life is suffering. It’s not a fairy tale. The rest of the world, we deal with that. We try to process grief and tragedy and… and family members dying in hospital beds even though they’re the nicest people in the world. You’d think you all could accept that, but no. Not you. You build this stupid Willy Wonka place so you can pretend the real world doesn’t exist, but it does! God doesn’t exist. We are on our own. If He does exist, He’s either powerless, or—or else He’s just a huge jerk. My little brother died a horrible death for no reason. There’s no plan here. We’re animals. We live and we die, and that’s it, and it sucks. You people are delusional.”

Ryan wasn’t sure if he was making sense. The words just kind of poured out of him. He was trying to hold back tears but couldn’t. The audience just stared at him, a thousand eyes in the dark. The preacher still stood there—clearly, he had gotten more than he’d bargained for. Finally, he eyed another security guard who began to close in on him from his left.

Well, I guess my time’s up , Ryan thought.

The projector fell.

The Postmodern Pilgrim’s Progress (end of Chapter 1)

SUMMING UP ON THE BOOK:

Ok. A few final thoughts on The Postmodern Pilgrim’s Progress:

Pros:
Fun cultural references (movies, and books; great reminder I want to read and watch a great number of things I have yet to)
I like the sense of humor, smart-alecky, ironic, quirky, sometimes bizarre.
More relatable than Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Cons:
Not all that PoMo after all. The story-telling after the first few chapters is straight-forward, linear. (See Paper Girls for a very PoMo story structure and aesthetic.)
If one is expecting an anti-Pilgrim’s Progress, this is not that book.
If one can’t deal with the original being tinkered with, this is not the book for one.
If one is put off by cultural references, this is not the book for one.

@jpm I’m tagging you, since you had mentioned this book in the 2022 Christmas wish list thread.

[Kendel]

I listened to the Language of God Podcast interview with Mónica Guzmán, “The Gift of Curiosity,” and found a few of her points worth posting here.
These are heavily edited for clarity and brevity. Pulling things straight from the podcast transcript can be no fun to try to read. You can find the full transcript at the link I included above.

The Sense of Devience in Discourse

Things that would have previously been seen as being in the sphere of legitimate discourse, are now in the sphere of deviance. This tends to happen at our political extremes, where people say, “Man, if at this point, you believe that,” (this legitimate thing, 20 years ago) “then you’re crazy, you’re deviant. I don’t want to engage with you because I dismiss you, I condescend to you, something’s wrong with you.” Now, there are deviant beliefs that lots of people do accept, right? Something about racism seems pretty darn deviant, right? Something about being a Nazi. You know, you can put a lot of these things in there. But for some folks too, there’s a fear that deviant beliefs are coming into the sphere of legitimate discourse when they ought not to.

How to Approach Discussions

A lot of us are in these situations where you get the sense, “I don’t want to approach that invalid idea, what to me is an invalid idea, therefore, I don’t want to approach people who might hold that idea.” And the key distinction here is you don’t think of approaching an invalid idea. Think of approaching a valid person.

Focusing on the Meaningful Brings Persuasion Back from the Dead

There are three types of conversations across disagreement: the conversation about what’s true, the conversation about what’s meaningful, and the conversation about what’s useful. Because it’s ultimately all about people, where there’s a disagreement about what’s true, and it is strong, it feels like we have two options. Either I sit here and yell and convince you to change your mind and agree with what I see as reality, or I walk away, right? It’s worth remembering that you can also have the conversation about what’s meaningful, and that, in fact, that’s the more important conversation to have, at that moment. People’s fears, concerns, hopes, that is what builds trust. And once you build trust, hopefully, you can get to a point where you calibrate your perspectives enough that you can begin to say, “Okay, thank you for sharing that with me. It makes sense why you see things this way. Can I tell you why I see it differently? Can I tell you what I mean?” That’s what brings persuasion back from the dead. Because basically, the persuasive ability of the society to keep talking up the good ideas, is endangered when there’s so little trust. We need to build that back by talking about what’s meaningful, not requiring each other to agree first with what’s true.

The Surprise of Curiosity

Curiosity is contagious. People cannot hear unless they are heard. People cannot hear unless they feel heard. So when you give somebody the gift of your interest in them and it is not accusatory, it is curious, you know, it is not cold, it is warm. For most people most of the time, that’s a surprise. It depends on your relationship obviously. Hopefully they don’t think you’re playing some agenda, you’re playing some game.

Thanks, @Terry_Sampson, for bringing my attention back to the podcast. I had almost forgotten I wanted to write this post.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

Given today’s date I found this article Today is Tommorow: Groundhog Day & the Postmodern Parable. Hadn’t thought of it that way before but it really is the quintessential PoMo movie. Holy Irony, Soren!

[Kendel]

Which I have yet to see.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

Content moved to its own thread, “A Review of The Matter With Things”.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Pithy quotes, to some, about factual reality (others are badly mistaken):

@St.Roymond

The experience of God, like the experience of Hobbes, is a lived experience. It is an Inside view. Consequently, it is difficult to communicate to those on the Outside. All such communication appears like talk about stuffed tigers and imaginary friends. And to be honest, I don’t think there is much that can be done about this disjoint. It is what it is. And will always be this way. But just because the life of faith is an Inside experience doesn’t mean it is a form of magical thinking. I think Watterson puts it well. The conversation isn’t about “magical thinking” or “imaginary friends.” Although the conversation may appear that way to non-believers, the conversation is actually about reality.

In the gospel according to John, Jesus said this: “My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me. If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” In short, the “truth” of Jesus (Is his teaching from God?) cannot be ascertained from the Outside. The verification of Jesus’s claims must be discovered from the Inside, by participating in the journey. Because from the Outside it’s all just stuffed tigers. But on the Inside, well, it’s Hobbes.

@RoyC

The grounds of belief in God is the experience of God: God is not the conclusion of an argument but the subject of an experience report.

   

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

These quotes/links appear with no comment whatsoever. That goes against site guidelines. If you have nothing to say about them please remove them yourself so that the mods can be spared the bother.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

These are nicely complementary:

Joy & Strength

 

C.H. Spurgeon

(For higher resolution, click on the images or follow the links.)

[heymike3]

Here is a good one from Wendy Widder’s commentary on Daniel:

… history may appear to be running amok, but all is not as it seems. Israel’s God has such control of the world that he does not rush about in desperation, marshal emergency forces, or play “Whack-a-mole” with antichrists: he does everything at exactly the right time, even though his people (and his name) may suffer in the meantime.

The wisdom behind such apparent displays of weakness is not intuitive to us. We think God should always “show up,” defeating his enemy and rescuing his people. In our way of thinking, he gets the most glory when everyone sees how powerful he is. Yet God regularly chooses to operate within the limitations of his creation rather than wowing the world with supernatural acts.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@heymike3

he does everything at exactly the right time

My three-fourths of a century here can attest to that! It’s not always fun (there are certainly times when it is ; - ) and sometimes it’s quite hard, but it is always good. What’s the saying, “God is seldom early, but he’s never late!”?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Joy & Strength (For higher resolution, click on the image or the link.)

@Mervin_Bitikofer

…something could possibly apply to you

Yes, Merv, I know it applies to me – ‘more than a little’ is understatement.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@heymike3

Psalm 82:6-8

While looking up Mike’s reference (Psalm 82:6-8), a worthy read (as is the whole Psalm, “Read the full chapter”), interestingly, the search engine, transposing digits, also yielded Psalm 62:8. It’s one of my favorite verses:

Trust in him at all times, you people;
    pour out your hearts to him,
    for God is our refuge.

 

The first verse:

Truly my soul finds rest in God;
    my salvation comes from him.

[Randy]

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.”

― E.B. White

I read this some time ago–but it occurred to me in reference to @mitchellmckain 's discussion on humor.

Thanks.

[Randy]

This is just a bit of a mind exercise, but it occurred to me that we could insert “faith” in the above quote, and wonder if there’s a similar outcome. I’m not sure; it’s not that faith isn’t valid, but that it expresses so a wide part of our psyche similarly, in a different way. And it’s still very valid to analyze it. I am just wondering why I run into a brick wall when I try. Maybe it’s because both humor and faith illustrate very important, core parts of our beings.

Thanks.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

It also applies to most of lit crit, maybe including poetry.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

@Randy

it’s not that faith isn’t valid, but that it expresses so a wide part of our psyche similarly, in a different way.

Randy I like it. Faith isn’t just blind loyalty to tribe, God isn’t just like an infantilizing father and neither is transcendence nothing but an afterlife celebratory party of the kind most Star Wars movies end with once the good guys have thwarted the bad guys again. It really does give Christianity a black eye to represent in such reductionist ways. I appreciate you speaking up against it in a such a graspable way.

I’m almost sorry I shut off receiving notices when people post on this thread because of the way a very few have turned into their personal urinal, always seeking to plaster their mark over anything they disagree with. Keeping the forum safe for their anti intellectualism. This isn’t anything I care to see as it’s come to be used.

[Randy]

@MarkD

Randy I like it. Faith isn’t just blind loyalty to tribe, God isn’t just like an infantilizing father and neither is transcendence nothing but an afterlife celebratory party of the kind most Star Wars movies end with once the good guys have thwarted the bad guys again. It really does give Christianity a black eye to represent in such reductionist ways.

I appreciate your developing the thoughts, Mark; that helps, too. I suspect that any belief system is so personal that we can disrespect it by being reductionist, as well.

[Randy]

I’ve been “reading” the Sherlock Holmes tales again by listening to them on Audible, read aloud by Stephen Fry. It’s been a treat. However, I find myself torn between delight at Holmes’ brilliance and Doyle’s humor, and the perception of what is more important. At times, Holmes seems offensive-- as he quotes,

“L’homme c’est rien–l’oeuvre c’est tout.” (“Man is nothing–the work is everything.”)

I think that Doyle’s point is the tension between pride and caring for others–and that’s why he juxtaposes Watson and Holmes–the caring and commonplace with the brilliant, drug addicted introvert. Each learns from the other. Will caring win in the end, over hard intellectualism? It’s difficult to know.

[MarkD (A Whateverist, not a Christian)]

I finally remembered enough of it to find it online. Thought you might appreciate it now, @Jay313, though I imagine you know it well.

The Flower

By George Herbert

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amiss
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

Oh that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. Oh, my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

[Jay313 (Jay Johnson)]

First time I’ve seen it. Thanks.

@MarkD

After so many deaths I live and write;