Taking Thoughts Captive

Taking Thoughts Captive

Never lend a book to a man as you will have to set a stick of dynamite under him before you get it back.

Flannery O’Connor, “Letter to Betty Hester” dated 12th November 1956

#quotes #reading #OConnor

I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.

— Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Note: While there are many things I do not see eye-to-eye with Merton on, this observation is right on the money.

#quotes #culture #theology

If you're using the Daily Devotional Guide for your daily bible readings (and I hope you are!), this morning you read Matthew 18.21-35. This reading is one of the very difficult parables of Jesus that we tend to gloss over, explain away, or ignore.

In this parable, a king forgives a man who owed him an inconceivable amount of money: 10,000 talents. Now, some study bibles will do the math to compute exactly how much money this is in current dollars (the ESV Study Bible computes it at nearly $6 billion). What is more shocking, however, is that a) a talent was the largest known denomination of money at the time and b) 10,000 is the largest numeral for which a Greek term existed. In other words, it is not nearly as important to try and run the numbers as it is to realize this is the largest sum of money that could readily be described in that day. One scholar says the combined effect of these two terms together “is like our 'zillions.' What God has forgiven his people is beyond human calculation.”

Read more...

If ever one wished to render the church’s message obsolete and her existence pointless, adopting queerness would seem a most excellent way to do it. Queer theory is the perfect tool for demolishing any “oppressive” dogma or claim to transcendent truth. But if the church has no truth to proclaim, why does she exist? Or, more pointedly, why should anyone bother with her?

— Carl R. Trueman, “Lessons from the Decline of Protestant Churches”

#quotes #culture #theology

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

— Flannery O'Connor

#quotes #life #theology

It seems far too early to make mention of Christmas, but today—nine months before the celebration of our Lord's birth—is when the Church celebrates the festival of the Annunciation our Our Lord. This day commemorates Gabriel's visit to Mary and his announcement that she would conceive and bear the Messiah, God incarnate, in her womb.

Some think they have no need for the liturgical calendar or that it is 'too Roman Catholic' or something. I think that attitude is a mistake. Everything on the Church calendar points us to Jesus and his saving work for us. On this day, we remember, marvel, and worship that God kept his promise made through the prophet Isaiah in a particular place and time in history. These words of the Prophet are not relegated to the lost recesses of the Old Testament but are front and center for our faith:

Moreover the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!”

Then he said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.

— Isaiah 7.10-16 (NKJV)

Read more...

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

— Flannery O'Connor

#quotes #life #theology

not so random reads from the interwebs

miscellany [ mis-uh-ley-nee], noun 1. a miscellaneous collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items 2. a miscellaneous collection of literary compositions or pieces by several authors, dealing with various topics, assembled in a volume or book

This week is politics, religion, and even the blending of the two...oh, hic sunt dragones (here be dragons)...definitely dangerous territory. Enjoy!

Read more...

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

— Ray Bradbury

#quotes #reading #culture

Beginning more than 2,500 years ago, from all quarters of the Greek world men thronged every four years to the sacred grove of Olympia, under the shadow of Mount Cronus, to compete in the most famous athletic contests of history—the Olympian games. During the contest a sacred truce was observed among all the states of Greece as the best athletes of the Western world competed in boxing and foot races, wrestling and chariot races for the wreath of wild olive which was the prize of victory. When the winners returned to their home cities to lay the Olympian crown in the chief temples they were greeted as heroes and received rich rewards.

For the Greeks prized physical excellence and athletic skills among man’s greatest goals and among the prime foundations of a vigorous state. Thus the same civilizations which produced some of our highest achievements of philosophy and drama, government and art, also gave us a belief in the importance of physical soundness which has become a part of Western tradition; from the mens sana in corpore sano of the Romans to the British belief that the playing fields of Eaton brought victory on the battlefields of Europe. This knowledge, the knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for the vigor and vitality of all the activities of the nation, is as old as Western civilization itself. But it is a knowledge which today, in America, we are in danger of forgetting.

— John F. Kennedy, “The Soft American,” Sports Illustrated (December 1960)

#quotes #life

Enter your email to subscribe to updates.