NT Wright. Is His God...Right?

Over at Calvin College NT Wright gave a lecture this past January. If you have an hour, Wright offers a wonderful re-telling of the Gospel.  If you've been curious about what Christianity is, from an insider's perspective, or if you're wondering what N.T. Wright has to say, this is worth the time.  If nothing else, begin at the 35 minute-mark and watch for a few.  Or, to get his conclusion, hit the 56 minute-mark through the end.

1 of the amazing things Saint Augustine said.

“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”
― Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

what does thanksgiving mean?

Thanksgiving.

Giving thanks.

To who?  What is gratitude if simply sent into the air with no recipient?  Why should I be thankful if I fully believe that everything that has happened to me was either by chance or a product of my own diligence? Am I thanking myself?  Imagine this same scenario but with another concept.  Like love.

I could say, "I am a really loving person."  But, problematically, this isn't true if I am not loving anything.  I could claim to be the most compassionate soul on this desolate planet, but if all I did was sit at home and play Call of Duty, you'd surely call me a liar.

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some interesting quotes about Jesus.

I wanted to do something a little different and share these quotes that I've stumbled upon.  Enjoy.  Oh, and these in no way express my own views, except some of them--

"Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot."

-Bob Dylan 

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Video on knowing God and Christian meditation

Trying out a videoblog!  

Obama and Romney will die, just like the rest of us.

The last traces of fall are slipping away; the leaves have done most of their falling and the orange and yellow glows are greying, preparing our eyes for the white winter.  Okay, enough of the sappy intro.

Lately I've been reading J.I. Packer's Knowing God, and page after page I'm humbled.  Not by Packer, per se, but by the recognition of my own "knowing" of God.  I've long prided myself on knowledge; if you know me, you know this.  I have lots of big, classy looking books; blue and red cloth hardcovers with golden gilt lettering.  Many of these books have tons of incredible information about the world and philosophy and God and language.  My primary interest in all of this is centered around knowing about God.

And that seems noble.

The problem, though, is that key word "about."

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Plato, The Good, And The God.

Deep within the first utopia, Plato's dialogue known in english as The Republic, lies the renowned "allegory of the cave."  In brief, the allegory goes like this:  There are prisoners chained to chairs with their necks and bodies fettered forward, so as to disallow any turning of their vision away from the end wall of the cave they're in.  Far above and behind them is a fire casting shadows on the wall before them--but, of course, they don't know the reality of anything behind them.  Between them and the fire is a raised road with a high wall, which is blocking the shadows of people who pass on the road.  The people are carrying constructed objects--like cardboard cutouts of sheep and boxes and children--putting them above the wall.  The objects cast shadows on the wall before the chained prisoners.

It's like a puppet show.  These shadows are all that the prisoners know.  They have games and honors for the prisoner who can guess which figure will dance next as a shadow across the wall before them.

Plato compares the shadows on the wall to the objects of our imagination...

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