Some of you might have seen this quote from Bob Dylan in a recent interview: “I’m not a fan of packaged programs, or news shows, so I don’t watch them. I never watch anything foul smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting; nothing dog ass. I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.”
Tomorrow my wife and I fly from Kansas City to Portland, Oregon for the funeral of a nephew who, high on meth, walked in front of a truck. Deliberately. Several years ago his brother died of a heroin overdose. There is great evil loose in the world and all too many of the people I know just think the church is supposed to make us "nice" people. I'm a big fan of Fleming Rutledge and Robert Farrar Capon who said "Jesus did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable, he came to raise the dead".
You’ve said so many of the things that I’ve said and asked inside my head for years. But I never had the courage or “permission” to verbalize them. Thank you! Great to meet you at the Scholars event Sunday night. Looking forward to your next visit to Pleasant Valley.
I too feel the urgency. It can be hard when so many in the world seem asleep or dulled. I’ve been reading your work for a bit now and thoroughly enjoy it! And what a great quote, “Lord created us out of dust, made us blood and nerve and mind, made us to bleed and weep and think, and set us in a world of loss and fire.”
Dylan’s quote made me think: if you don’t believe in Hell, you’re not paying close enough to the real evil being perpetrated by people. Surely there must be judgement by God on behalf of the righteous who are under the thumb of the wicked! But then Paul says all are sin-full, none are righteous. The “banality of evil” afflicts us all. What a desperate situation we are all in. Anyways, thanks for the Dylan quote. I’m sure this will get absorbed into my sermon tomorrow somehow.
We are 100% on same page. On Dylan. On O'Connor. All of it.
Funny sidebar: My now 19 year old and I still joke about a Care Bears movie we watched when she was small. The themes were reminiscent of something out the Dead Sea Scrolls. We laugh at because of course, it's sort of terrifying as a children's cartoon. But on the other hand . . . we both kind of appreciate it because it seemed really take on the spiritual warfare required in this world.
Tomorrow my wife and I fly from Kansas City to Portland, Oregon for the funeral of a nephew who, high on meth, walked in front of a truck. Deliberately. Several years ago his brother died of a heroin overdose. There is great evil loose in the world and all too many of the people I know just think the church is supposed to make us "nice" people. I'm a big fan of Fleming Rutledge and Robert Farrar Capon who said "Jesus did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable, he came to raise the dead".
Love this. Sometimes I look around at my local church and think to myself, “What in the hell are we doing?”
And thanks for hosting my daughter, Gaby, yesterday. 😊
You’ve said so many of the things that I’ve said and asked inside my head for years. But I never had the courage or “permission” to verbalize them. Thank you! Great to meet you at the Scholars event Sunday night. Looking forward to your next visit to Pleasant Valley.
I too feel the urgency. It can be hard when so many in the world seem asleep or dulled. I’ve been reading your work for a bit now and thoroughly enjoy it! And what a great quote, “Lord created us out of dust, made us blood and nerve and mind, made us to bleed and weep and think, and set us in a world of loss and fire.”
Dylan’s quote made me think: if you don’t believe in Hell, you’re not paying close enough to the real evil being perpetrated by people. Surely there must be judgement by God on behalf of the righteous who are under the thumb of the wicked! But then Paul says all are sin-full, none are righteous. The “banality of evil” afflicts us all. What a desperate situation we are all in. Anyways, thanks for the Dylan quote. I’m sure this will get absorbed into my sermon tomorrow somehow.
We are 100% on same page. On Dylan. On O'Connor. All of it.
Funny sidebar: My now 19 year old and I still joke about a Care Bears movie we watched when she was small. The themes were reminiscent of something out the Dead Sea Scrolls. We laugh at because of course, it's sort of terrifying as a children's cartoon. But on the other hand . . . we both kind of appreciate it because it seemed really take on the spiritual warfare required in this world.