How Loving Solves Social Justice

Transforming the social world - Dallas Willard

"That’s the secret of Jesus. You watch Jesus, and you see he never did “withdraw” and then “attack.” All of the time people wanted him to do it and in many ways, but he would not. Then to the body of believers he said, “This will show everyone that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” but he had already said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” So that’s the model. In that sense the transformation of the social world is at its heart the transformation of personal relations. That’s the key to transforming society in the larger arena. There is no cure for the social battles that we fight in our culture—and there’s so much grief around race, gender, and so forth—until you eliminate “withdrawal” and “attack” and replace them with “acceptance” and “help.” Once you do that and not just talk about it, these other issues will fall into place quickly. They will not fall into place at all unless it is done this way."

From "Renewing the Christian Mind: Essays, Interviews, and Talks."

Lies About Love

We talk like love comes naturally and we have nothing to learn. Same attitude about motherhood and fatherhood. Because we birthed a child we naturally could not have any level of incompetence, or lack of knowledge on the subject. We were born knowing how to raise chuldren.  

"Many of us believe loving well is learned automatically. 
We underestimate the depth of our bad habits and what is needed to sustain long-term... change in our relationships."
- Peter Scazzero. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality -

How Big Fire?

"How brightly

burns the flame of desire

for a love affair with God, other people,

the world?

- Elizabeth Dreyer -

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.”

Regreting Our God Talk?

"Good souls many will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God."

- George McDonald

Regreting Our God Talk?

"Many good souls will one day be horrified at the things they now believe of God."

- George McDonald

I Don't Know Where the Bulldozer Has Buldozed their Bones

"I am one of the few Holocost surrivers still left......  I am really moved that I have this opportunity to be here (pause), for my family. 

Because i don't know where the wind has blown their ashes. And I don't know where the bulldozer has buldozed their bones."

- Dr. Eva Olsson. 91 year old Holocaust Survivor speaking in Edmonton at the Rememberance Day Ceremonies.

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 

Resisting War As Christians

"If everyone was like you, brother, how good it would be! There would be no war, and no whites and no Reds!"

Arresting police officers after the trial of a "non-resistance" Christian who refused to take up arms and kill other men.

- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. 

When Women Do Not Choose Love

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."

- Mother Teresa

- Remembering When Mother Teresa Left Hillary Clinton in Stunned Silence on Abortion.
In 1994 Mother Teresa delivered a no-hold-barred pro-life speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of Clinton, her equally pro-abortion husband, then-President Bill Clinton, and Al and Tipper Gore.

Why Is Serving Drugery?

"If you don’t love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve. I didn’t love God because I didn’t know God."

-Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz 

Best Definition of Leadership

"A leader reminds people of their first love. A leader helps people remember the first time they heard the music."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Love Affair Religion

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair."

~ G.K. Chesterton

Travelling Without A Book?

"What! 

No star, and you are going out to sea? 

Marching, and you have no music? 

Traveling, and you have no book? 

What! 

No love, and you are going out to live?"

—Ancient French Proverb

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

Wildly Good Things Running Wild

"The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”

- G.K  Chesterton

When Good People Take Risk

"Thucydides tells us that during the plague at Athens those that most displayed their virtue perished with their friends that were ill, for they neglected their own lives in going to visit them."
- Plutarch's Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher. 

Study War No More

Down By The Riverside

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
I'm gonna study, study, war no more

I ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more
I ain't gonna study war no more

I ain't gonna study war no more
Ain't gonna study war no more
I ain't gonna study war no more

Let Strange People In

"Let all kinds of people into your life to see what loving them might do.Those who criticize how you live your life may not be against the Jesus we love and seek to follow. Don’t exalt yourself because God has given you more to see; instead, use it as a way to serve others so that they will have a chance to see it, too."

Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays

A "True" Christian?????

"In fact, that is my only definition of a true Christian. A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone."

-Richard Rohr