Interesting Ideas

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Bear with me because I am going to skip around a little bit on this. I read a few blogs and ran across some interesting stuff today. I don't have time to write much about it, but I'll try to distill my core reactions to the postings. Ready? Here goes...

1. Father Stephen had this to say about righteous anger:
Strangely, I find our century (and the ones preceding it) not overburdened with love, but rather riddled with those who believe their hatreds to be justified. God save me from the man who believes Himself just. I do not stand a chance before him. Rather, number me with the harlots and the publicans - number me with the worst of sinners. Within that refuse of humanity I may find mercy and a heart kind enough to pray for a man as wicked as myself.

Strangely I have been thinking about anger and "tough love" lately. If tough love makes you feel good and justified, then it wasn't love. The same with righteous anger. If it makes you feel better to vent it, then it wasn't righteous, it was just frustration.

2. Tony Jones gives us an interesting set of maps to contrast. It is scary, this map that compares the slavery states to our current political state of affairs. Maybe this map says something. Then again, maybe it is just a coincidence...

3. The Naked Pastor asks some good questions about how we look at salvation and which souls we should be most worried about. Even more, we need to be less worried about individuals' actions than about the individuals themselves. Should I try to stop the thief from stealing, or should I simply love him because he is a fellow human being? From a civic standpoint, laws are laws, but as a judge of human beings, I need to be VERY humble. There but for the grace of God go I...

Isn’t it possible that Jesus, when he ate and drank with prostitutes, drunkards, tax-collectors, soldiers, gluttons, criminals and foreigners, was living truthfully? Surely he wasn’t just acting symbolically or analogously, a sort of in-living-color demonstration that this is how God would act if he were here. Neither do I think he lived with them as an outreach. I think he was with them because they were his friends who constituted his kingdom. He told the religious that prostitutes were going into the kingdom ahead of them… no mention of reformed prostitutes… just prostitutes! Is it possible that we still don’t get it?

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