Relax and smile!

Thus, given that we live under a smiling, relaxed, all-forgiving, and all-powerful God, we too should relax and smile, at least once in a while, because, irrespective of anything that has ever happened or will ever happen, in the end, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of being shall be well.”—The Holy Longing, 241

<idle musing>
That's the final snippet from this book. I hope you enjoyed it and found some beneficial thoughts in it. I know I did.

Next up is John Barclay, Paul and the Gift. It's a monster of a book, but extremely interesting.
</idle musing>

Projecting God

In the past, our concept of God was often too much a projection of our own anger and incapacity to forgive each other. Hence, we tended to paint God as a punishing God, a God with a great recording book within which every one of our sins was written and who subsequently demanded some kind of payment for every one of those sins. He was a God who had drawn up some very strict criteria (“the narrow way”) for salvation. Hellfire awaited those who could not morally Vault over that rather lofty high-jump bar. We lived in fear of that God.—The Holy Longing, 238

Forget 80/20; it's 90/10

Sobriety is only 10 percent about alcohol; it’s 90 percent about honesty.

The Gospels would essentially agree with that assessment, spiritual health is 90 percent about honesty. What is best within the secular world would also agree with that; despite our moral and emotional struggles, we still identify integrity with honesty.—The Holy Longing, 229

Practicing atheists

Twenty-five years ago, while teaching at Yale, Henri Nouwen had already made the statement that, even among seminarians, the dominant consciousness was agnostic. God essentially had no place, even among people talking about religion and preparing for Christian ministry.—The Holy Longing, 216

A contradiction

Our culture today, of course, resists that notion and protests that sex can be casual and neutral, that it need not be a big deal. The irony is, however, that just as our culture is affirming that sex can be casual and spiritually and psychologically neutral, it is recognizing for the first time the incredible devastation of soul that occurs when someone is sexually violated. This is progress. Unfortunately, this deepening of insight has not yet extended itself to the recognition of how destructive of true community, and often of the individual soul as well, casual sex can be.—The Holy Longing, 199

Is God a violent god?

Ultimately, how we conceive of God will color how we conceive of everything else, especially justice and peace and the road that leads to them. If we conceive of God as somehow violent, however redemptive we imagine this violence to be, we will then conceive of the road to peace as also lying in violence.—The Holy Longing, 186

Your actions are speaking so loud that I…

What we are coming more and more to realize, however, is that one of the reasons why the world is not responding more to our challenge to justice is that our actions for justice themselves often mimic the very violence, injustice, hardness, and egoism they are trying to challenge.

Our moral indignation very often leads to the replication of the behavior that aroused the indignation.—The Holy Longing, 179–80

How do you treat them? It matters!

The quality of our faith depends upon the character of justice in the land and the character of justice is to be measured by how we treat three groups—widows, orphans, and foreigners (those with the least status in society). Thus, for the Jewish prophets, our standing with God depends upon where we stand with the poor and no private faith and piety, be they ever so pure and sincere, can soften that edict.—The Holy Longing, 175

A heart change…

To have a just world we need a new world order. Such an order, however, can never be imposed by force of any kind, but must win the world’s heart by its own intrinsic moral merit. Simply put, to change the world in such a way that people want justice and are willingly willing to live in a way that makes justice possible requires an appeal to the heart that is so deep, so universal, and so moral that no person of good conscience can walk away from it. No human ideology, no private crusade, and no cause that takes its origins in guilt or anger can ever provide that.—The Holy Longing, 173–74

The poor? Who cares...

It is no accident that laissez-faire democracy has rarely been kind to the poor.—The Holy Longing, 171

It's bigger than you

Social justice has to do with changing the way the world is organized so as to make a level playing field for everyone. In simple terms this means that social justice is about trying to organize the economic, political, and social structure of the world in such a way so that it values equally each individual and more properly values the environment. Accomplishing this will take more than private charity. Present injustices exist not so much because simple individuals are acting in bad faith or lacking in charity but because huge, impersonal systems (that seem beyond the control of the individuals acting within them) disprivilege some even as they unduly privilege others. This is what social justice language terms systemic injustice and systemic violence.—The Holy Longing, 170

It's the system!

Social justice, therefore, tries to look at the system (political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and mythical) within which we live so as to name and change those structural things that account for the fact that some of us are unduly penalized even as others of us are unduly privileged. Thus, social justice has to do with issues such as poverty, inequality, war, racism, sexism, abortion, and lack of concern for ecology because what lies at the root of each of these is not so much someone’s private sin or some individual’s private inadequacy but rather a huge, blind system that is inherently unfair.—The Holy Longing, 169

Resurrection or resuscitation?

There are also two kinds of life: There is resuscitated life and there is resurrected life. Resuscitated life is when one is restored to one’s former life and health, as is the case with someone who has been clinically dead and is brought back to life. Resurrected life is not this. It is not a restoration of one’s old life but the reception of a radically new life. We see this difference in scripture by comparing the resurrection of Jesus and the so-called resurrection (which is really a resuscitation) of Lazarus. Lazarus got his old life back, a life from which he had to die again. Jesus did not get his old life back. He received a new life—a richer life and one within which he would not have to die again.—The Holy Longing, 146

We're doing it wrong!

There is a great irony here. If this woman had gone to Jesus’ grave with this outpouring of affection and perfume, it would have been accepted, even admired. You were allowed to anoint a dead body, but it was not acceptable to express similar love and affection to a live one. Nothing has changed in two thousand years. We still save our best compliments and flowers for the funeral. Jesus’ challenge here is for us to anoint each other while we are still alive: Shower those you love with affection and flowers while they are alive, not at their funerals.—The Holy Longing, 133

There's plenty of room!

What does it mean to be catholic? Jesus gave the best definition of the term when he said: “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.” This is not a description of a certain geography in heaven but a revelation of the breadth of God’s heart. The bosom of God is not a ghetto. God has a catholic heart—in that catholic means universal, wide, all-encompassing. The opposite of a catholic is a fundamentalist, a person who has a heart with one room.—The Holy Longing, 130

We're not there yet

Whenever I meet the presence of God within Community I will not meet it in its pure form. All communities of faith mediate the grace of God in a very mixed way. Sin, pettiness, and betrayal are always found alongside grace, sanctity, and fidelity.—The Holy Longing, 127

Look around—then look at Jesus

Outside of a focus on his person [Jesus] and what we are drawn to spontaneously live when we sense his presence, we have angry fireworks and constant dissipation, as the state of our families, communities, nations, and world gives ample testimony to. Nothing else, ultimately, holds us together.

Hence the basis for Christian ecclesial community, church, is a gathering around the person of Jesus Christ and a living in his Spirit. And that Spirit too is not some vague bird or abstract tonality. The spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, is defined in scripture as charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long—suffering, fidelity, mildness, and chastity.—The Holy Longing, 120

<idle musing>
Oh my. He has us pegged here, doesn't he? Nothing outside of the power of the Holy Spirit can hold us together (see today's Tozer for Tuesday).
</idle musing>

A word for today

Apostolic community is not had by joining others who share our fears and, with them, barricading ourselves against what threatens us. It is had when, on the basis of something more powerful than our fears, we emerge from our locked rooms and begin to take down walls. 116

You look like what you believe

What is important about all of this is what, in the end, forms our faces. Up until age forty, genetic endowment is dominant and that is why, up until that age, we can be selfish and still look beautiful. From then onward, though, we look like what we believe in. If I am anxious, petty, selfish, bitter, narrow, and self-centered, my face will show it. Conversely, if I am warm, gracious, humble, and other-centered, my face will also show it. A scary thought; there can be no poker faces after forty.—The Holy Longing, 103

<idle musing>
I'm not sure I entirely believe him, but it does tend to be true—and is definitely something to think about.
</idle musing>

Really? You gotta be kidding!

Both as liberals and conservatives we too easily write off this third prong of the spiritual life, rationalizing that our causes are so urgent, we are so wounded, and our world is so bad, that, in our situation, anger and bitterness are justified. But we are wrong and, as the American poet William Stafford warns, “following the wrong God home we may miss our star.” The wrong God is the God of both the contemporary right and the contemporary left, that is, the God who is as wired, bitter, anxious, workaholic, neurotic, and unhappy as we are. But that is not the God who lies at the end of the spiritual quest, who, as Julian of Norwich assures us, sits in heaven, smiling, completely relaxed, looking like a marvelous sympathy” and who agrees with Albert Camus that the real revenge on our enemies, both to the right and to the left, and on the deepest demons that haunt us, is to be madly happy.—The Holy Longing, 67–68