The theologian who has no joy in his work is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thougths and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this science.

~Karl Barth, as quoted by Eugene Peterson

I have a friend who is dean in a theological seminary where men and women are being trained to be pastors. Sometimes he calls one of these people into his office and says something like this:

“You have been here for several months now, and I have had an opportunity to observe you. You get good grades, seem to take your calling to ministry seriously, work hard and have clear goals. But I don’t detect any joy. You don’t seem to have any pleasure in what you are doing. And I wonder if you should not reconsider your calling into ministry. For if a pastor is not in touch with joy, it will be difficult to teach or preach convincingly that the news is good. If you do not convey joy in your demeanor and gestures and speech, you will not be an authentic witness for Jesus Christ. Delight in what God is doing is essential in our work”

The first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism is “What is the chief end of man?” What is the final purpose? What is the main thing about us? Where are we going, and what will we do when we get there? The answer is…

“To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

~Eugene Peterson

• 
  A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society
  Author: Eugene H. Peterson

Categories: Karl Barth, Eugene Peterson, Quotes, Books, Theology
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I hate to think how many hundreds of thousands of miles this ridiculous carcass of mine has been carted about the world for one reason and another. As the years have passed, the carriers have grown faster and faster. Five weeks from Tilbury to Colombo; then five days from Delhi to London, with night-stops along the way, sometimes at mysterious desert stockades. Then flying boats following the African coast, hovering over jungle and slithering down on to great stretches of muddy river water. Wartime flying fortresses, lying racked among the kit-bags in the fuselage.

Then the stratocruisers, then the jets; faster than sound, faster than light, until our whole earth, and all its beauties and its wonders, can be encompassed in one piercing supersonic shriek. Distance annihilated, and the world with it.

Bull-dozed away by the runway-and road-makers; jet deafened, oil-drenched, smog-smothered; its inside gouged out like Prometheus’s entrails. Trampled to death by stampeding travelers, consumed by curiosity’s ravening eye, stung by cameras click-clicking and flashing like dragonflies. Where the rainbow ends; where the runway disappears and the motorways intersect.

I cannot say that I myself derived any evident benefit from participating in this dance of death.

Taj Mahal unvisited, Madura Temple with golden dome unseen, sphinx and pyramids barely noticed, Arctic splendors briefly glimpsed through a crack in a Boeing’s shutter. ‘We’re now flying over Samarkand at a height of … at a speed of …’ Where are you, Samarkand? What memories I must have of Peking, Celestial City! Of Katmandu where the junkies roam! Bring me my home Kine of burnished gold; bring me my transparencies of desire! Where are we now, air-hostess? Laying an extra coat of red on lips tired with smiling, she looks at her watch. ‘We’ll be landing at La Guardia in… minutes’ time.’

Travel narrows the mind.

~Malcom Muggeridge; Chronicles of Wasted Time

• 
  Chronicles of Wasted Time
  Author: Malcolm Muggeridge

Categories: Malcolm Muggeridge, Travel, Quotes, Books
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They regard the Father of their spirits as their governor! They yield the idea of… “the glad Creator,” and put in its stead a miserable, puritanical, martinet of a God, caring not for righteousness but for His rights: not for the eternal purities, but the goody properties. The prophets of such a God take all the glow, all the hope, all the color, all the worth, out of life on earth, and offer you instead what they call eternal bliss–a pale, tearless hell… But if you are straitened in your own mammon-worshiping soul, how shall you believe in a God any greater than can stand up in that prison chamber?

~George MacDonald, Mean Theologies

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

Categories: George MacDonald, Quotes, Books, Theology
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“The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”

~Andy Crouch, Culture Making

• 
  Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
  Author: Andy Crouch

Categories: Culture, Quotes, Art, Books
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Lest it should be possible that any unchildlike soul might, in arrogance and ignorance, think to stand upon his rights against God, and demand of Him this or that after the will of the flesh, I will lay before such a possible one some of the things to which he has a right… He has a claim to be compelled to repent; to be hedged in on every side: to have one after another of the strong, sharp-toothed sheep dogs of the Great Shepherd sent after him, to thwart him in any desire, foil him in any plan, frustrate him of any hope, until he come to see at length that nothing will ease his pain, nothing make life a thing worth having, but the presence of the living God within him.

~George MacDonald, A Man’s Right

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

Categories: Rights, George MacDonald, Quotes, Books
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Or are you so well satisfied with what you are, that you have never sought eternal life, never hungered and thirsted after the righteousness of God, the perfection of your being? If this latter be your condition, then be comforted; the Master does not require of you to sell what you have and give to the poor. You follow Him! You go with Him to preach good tidings!–you who care not for righteousness! You are not one whose company is desirable to the Master. Be comforted, I say: He does not want you; he will not ask you to open your purse for Him; you may give or withhold: it is nothing to Him…. Go and keep the commandments. It is not come to your money yet. The commandments are enough for you. You are not yet a child in the kingdom. You do not care for the arms of your Father; you value only the shelter of His roof. As to your money, let the commandments direct you how to use it. It is in you but pitiable presumption to wonder whether it is required of you to sell all that you have… for the Young Man to have sold all and followed Him would have been to accept God’s patent of peerage: to you it is not offered.

~George MacDonald; Carrion Comfort

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

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Categories: Money, George MacDonald, Quotes, Bible Study, Books
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Our Nonage

The number of fools not yet acknowledging the first condition of manhood nowise alters the fact that he who has begun to recognize duty and acknowledge the facts of his being, is but a tottering child on the path of life. He is on the path: he is as wise as at the time he can be; the Father’s arms are stretched out to receive him; but he is not therefore a wonderful being; not therefore a model of wisdom; not at all the admirable creature his largely remaining folly would, in his worst moments (that is, when he feels best) persuade him to think himself; he is just one of God’s poor creatures.

~ George MacDonald

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

I think I am going to be spending a lot of time with this wise old Scottish Christian full of hard truth, tender guidance, and humorous observations.

Categories: George MacDonald, Mentors, Poetry, Quotes, Books
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A friend of mine and I were recently having a conversation in which the following commonplace proverb seemed to describe the situation well…

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

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I believe the context of our conversation had something to do with the auto industry and the current global economic crisis.

Our profound musings amounted to something like this; you can’t have responsible spending and excessive profits at the same time. If people figure out that they do not need a new car every 3 years, then you don’t need as many cars, and there will not be as much profit to be made in the auto industry.

We both knew what we meant as we nodded in agreement to the saying, but somehow the adage did not quite have the punch we were demanding of it… it seemed so easily disproved. By the experience of attending any single birthday party or wedding, this bit of proverbial admonishment can be quickly undone; indeed people have cake and eat it all the time.

So we did what any responsibly confused 21st century thinkers guided by curiosity and technology would do, we Wikipediaed it (now a real word, you can Wiktionary it here), and discovered the supposed original ordering of the saying yields a much more profound statement.

Translated to modern english from the original 1546 record, the idiom should read…

You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

It took nearly 300 years for the wording to get turned around, but once done it may be impossible to restore it to its original power.

The phrase’s earliest recording is from 1546 as “wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?” (John Heywood’s ‘A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue’) alluding to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards; the modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signaled in 1812.

Subtle refinements of language have a tendency to remove their potency over time. I am reminded of C. S. Lewis’s discussion of the loss of meaning in the term “Gentlemen”, which at one time was reserved for property owners, then was slowly turned into men of noble regard, then further digressed into “guys that are nice”, and now it can be loosely applied to anyone who enters a strip club.

Categories: Economy, Language, Quotes
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The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

~ G.K. Chesterton; Orthodoxy

Categories: Quotes, Art, Books
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He threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.

~Jeremy Taylor

Categories: Quotes
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Poetry is words empowered, subjective truth with an objective reality because someone has realized it.

~from “No direction home: Bob Dylan”

Categories: Quotes, Art, Music, Movies
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