Socrates, Jesus, Amos and Us

A short reflection on Side B (http://mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com/2016/03/gay-and-catholic-part-i-gaystation-two.html) lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians, originally written as a comment to a friend – There’s much that I’m grateful for in the witness of Side B Christians. Christianity as I understand it is, in many ways, a fiercely ascetic religion and the Side B crowd has done the Christian community a real service in drawing renewed attention to the necessity of self-discipline, sacrifice and ascesis in Christian life. With that said, I worry about the rhetoric of sacrifice. I think for a sacrifice to be life-giving, at least in my experience, three things need to be present: (Criterion 1)   sacrifice must be motivated by love and aimed at growing in knowledge of and respect for God, other people, and the image of God in oneself; in other words, rightly done, sacrifice is a means to the end of nourishing covenantal relationships (Criterion 2) sacrifice must be supported...

The below was written for a gentleman with whom I was having a rather heated discussion concerning whether the Church Fathers were deliberate frauds. Enjoy!

There's a book by a classics scholar named Paul Woodruff, focused on an intellectual virtue he calls "reverence," translating the Greek word eusebia, or piety. It seems odd to say that an atheist could be pious/reverent, but I think in Woodruff's sense, Eusebia knows no creed, and needs no gods. She (and yes, Piety was a divine being in Greek myth) visits anyone who is patient enough to slow down and pay attention. Humans are odd, loud, lumpish things, but we occasionally have our moments of grace, when our tongues don't clang like New York traffic and our egos are (for once) asleep. I am a person, not a planet. Yet from all the attention I pay to the whiney community of my psyche, you'd think there were no world outside, no vast and colorful sea that this very small fish swims in. What holds me up? A whole polis of Being in which I am the most ignorant citizen. And so, as an ignoramus, I have to ask others for news of city doings: "What is the business o...

So, a couple of years back, the webmaster of a site called EvilBible.com posted a list of Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian. Just for grins, I thought I'd write a reply to it. 10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours. Actually, no I don't. I just happen to believe that the Triune God of Christianity is the one, absolutely simple, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent creator and sustainer of all reality. My position would be that other gods – though I tend to believe they exist – aren't "God" in the full classical theist sense of the term. 9 – You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt. No, I don't feel "dehumanized." I'm a theistic evolutionist, not a ...

"A brother was jealous of [Saint] John the Short as he was sitting, teaching the brothers in front of the church. So he said, 'John, your cup is full of poison.' John answered, 'Yes, Abba, it is. But you said that when you could only see the outside. I wonder what you would say if you saw the inside.' " ~ Sayings of the Desert Fathers