When Being Right Trumps Being Christlike

Dallas Willard was once asked, “Why are Christians so mean?”

His answer was up to the task. He said that Christians are mean in proportion to when they value being “right” over being “like Christ.”

My Good Temper

"Good temper on the other hand is useful in some circumstances, adorns and sweetens others, and gets the better of all peevishness and anger by its gentleness."

- First Century Greek Philosopher, Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals 

I Deny My Inner Suicide Bomber

"To be a saint is to be fuelled by gratitude, nothing less. Christian discipleship is as much about having a mellow and forgiving heart as it is about believing and doing the right things. But this is not an easy thing to accept. Irrespective of our ecclesial or political ideology and Ethos, liberal or conservative, we all tend to write off this demand as a non-negotiable in regards to Christian discipleship. Invariably, we tend to rationalize it away by pointing to the weight and urgency of our causes, be they dogmatic or moral. We see this, in its worst example, in suicide bombers, who are religiously convicted that their cause is so important that they can be martyrs, for God, by destroying dozens or perhaps even thousands of innocent lives. When the case is this extreme, we see more easily what misguided religious fervour looks like and how important religiously it is to have a mellow and forgiving hurt. But we are not as perceptive in seeing the rationalizing suicide bomber inside ourselves when, for the sake of God and Truth, our own religious and political discourse is laced with bitterness, anger, jealousy, demonization, lack of respect, lack of graciousness, and lack of elementary Christian and human charity. We also tend not to recognize in the embittered moralizing that sometimes emanates from our ecclesial communities.  A mellow and gracious heart is not a negotiable Christian virtue. It is an essential demand of Christian discipleship."

- Roland Rolheiser. Sacred Fire 

Titanium Rule Of Christians

"The church is filled with too many Golden Rule Christians whose motto is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and not enough Platinum Rule Christians: “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.” What is most lacking, however, is “Titanium Rule” Christians, practicing the most powerful command of all: “Do unto to others as Christ has done unto you.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

How A Church Stays Relevant

"A lot of people look at what will change in the future,” he said. “I look at what’s not going to change. People will still have marriage problems, they’re still going to be lonely, they’re still going to want to know the purpose of life, they still have problems with depression, fear, bitterness, jealousy. They’re human problems. If you’re dealing with personal lives of people you’re always relevant.”

- Rick Warren 

Be Water - Not A Stone

"A liquid, no matter how yielding and transient it appears, can erode stone. Soft water wins out over hard rock every time....

Over time, there is nothing stronger than water. Water wears down even rock to make a new world. No matter how hardened and stony the human heart, softness defeats hardness … over time every time; gentleness beats rigidness … over time every time; fluidity overcomes flintiness … over time every time. The waters of abounding grace are even more powerful than death."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

She Ruins Tea Well

“There are many ways to ruin a cup of tea, and she’s mastered all of them."

- Statement a Prince Edward Islander said. Dave Wheale -

“Tea was the great social lubricant, and a cup of tea was a cup of delight. To refuse a cup of tea was just as big an insult as not being offered one.”

Cantankerous Leadership

My mom said something.

"You can lie down for people to walk on you and they will still complain that you're not flat enough." Live your life.

- unknown -

Kind To God?

"Am i as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me?"

- Oswald Chambers. My Utmost For His Highest

"This is what the Lord says: “‘I remember the devotion of your youth..." Jeremiah 2:2 (NIV)

We Are Our Enemies Devil?

"Suppose on reads a story of filthy atrocities (done by their enemy) in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.” --C. S. Lewis

Not Coercion of Critics, Moral Integrity

"In an op-ed piece in the paper, Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol calls on the Muslim world to ease its concept of blasphemy.

"Rage is a sign of nothing but immaturity," he says. "The power of any faith comes not from its coercion of critics and dissenters. It comes from the moral integrity and the intellectual strength of its believers.""

Speaking To My Chatacter

"Another time, my dad gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I told my dad he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said that "whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when l have the means to says something about mine".

I never forget that."

- Josh Wolcott

Personal Pluming As Pride Abates

"And just as in vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard and threadbare cloak, and transfer their training to the mind, and are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in their intercourse with everybody else...."

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher. 

A Better Life For You and Me

" You realize that it's a mistake to aim for a better life, if it comes at the cost of worsening someone else's. So, you get creative. You decide to play a more difficult game. You decide that you want a better life, in a manner that will also make the life of your family better. Or the life of your family, and your friends. Or the life of your family, and your friends, and the strangers who surround them. What about your enemies? Do you want to include them, too? You bloody well don't know how to manage that. But you've read some history. You know how Amity compounds. So, you start to wish even your enemies well, at least in principle, although you are by no means yet a master such sentiments."

- Jordan Peterson: 12 Rules For Life 

Where She Pinches Marriage

"The Roman who was taken to task by his friends for repudiating a chaste wealthy and handsome wife, showed them his shoe and said, "Although this is new and handsome, none of you know where it pinches me.""

- Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. First Century Greek Philosopher.

Silence Is Rarely Regrettable

"For silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech. And that is, I think, the reason why the ancients instituted the mysteries that we, learning therein to be silent, might transfer our secrecy to the gods to human affairs. And no one ever yet repented of his silence, while multitudes have repented of their speaking. And what has not been said is easy to say, while what has been once said can never be recalled."

- Greek Plilisopher Plutarch. 1st cen AD. Priest of Apollo and Guardian of the Oracle of Delphi.

Bad Temper Stalin Leadership Character Lacking?

"Lenin made a completely correct characterization of Stalin. He pointed out that it was necessary to consider transferring Stalin from the position of [Party] General Secretary because Stalin was excessively rude, did not have a proper attitude toward his comrades, and was capricious and abused his power. " 

- Nikita Khrushchev. Speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Conssequences. 1956

Vladimir Ilyich said: “Stalin is excessively rude, and this defect, which can be freely tolerated in our midst and in contacts among us Communists, becomes a defect which cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of General Secretary. Because of this, I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man who, above all, would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely, greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc.”

- Nikita Khrushchev. Speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Conssequences. 1956

Give Holy Friendship

"Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.” 

~ Eugene Peterson 

God- Be In My Head

Written in the 13th century in Sarum England.

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my end, and at my departing."
~ Sarum Primer

Lord Where There Is Hatred May I Bring Love

Lord make me a channel of thy peace,
that where there is hatred I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant
that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand than to be understood;
to love than to be loved;
for it is by forgetting self that one finds;
it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.
~ Malcom Muggeridge. "Something Beautiful In God"