Is God & Christianity Beautiful?

"Over the years, the questions I’ve heard from the people around me have moved steadily in the direction of whether or not Christianity and its God are  "desirable" Are they not only true, but also good and beautiful? This current emphasis fits right in with the task of cultural apologetics. Paul Gould says in his book "Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World. 

"These three universal longings, for truth, goodness, and beauty, can serve as fitting starting points for a cultural apologetic…. Humanity was made to be nourished on them."

 - Amy K. Hall Stand To Reason

You Get White Cross Then!

"The second point of special interest for us is the way in which the Romans sometimes used crucifixion as a way of mocking a victim with social or political pretensions. "You want to be high and lifted up?" hey said in effect. "All right, we'll give you 'high and lifted up'". Crucifixion thus meant not only killing by slow torture, not only shaming, not only issuing a warning, but also parodying the Ambitions of the uppity Rrebels. They wanted to move up the social scale? Let them be lifted up above the common herd, then - on a cross! When the emperor Galba was governor of his native Spain, a man condemned to crucifixion objected that he was a Roman citizen. Galba's response was to make his cross higher than before and to have it painted white, signifying his high social status."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began 

Dance And Drum Depression Healing

"The Rwandan prescription for Depression: Sun, drum, dance, community. “We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy, there was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again. Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave.” 

~A Rwandan talking to a western writer, Andrew Solomon, about his experience with western mental health and depression."

- underthebluedoor.org

The Rabid Bite If A Boy

"“But why married, Lise? What makes you talk of such a thing? It’s quite out of place and perhaps the boy was rabid.” 

“Why, mamma! As though there were rabid boys!” 

“Why not, Lise, as though I had said something stupid! Your boy might have been bitten by a mad dog and he would become mad and bite anyone near him."

- Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov.

(Conversation between Madame Hohlakov and daughter Lise)

The contrmplative mind is a different mind that does not read the moment in terms of us and them, right or wrong, black or white, gay or straight, catholic or protestant. It  just,  "It  Is". You can see what detachment from your own ego that necessitates. Let each moment be what it is without pigeonholing it. Without putting in in some catorgory, up or down, in or out, with me or agaianst me. If we don't learn this.....  nothing will change..... Even our church; utterly divided between liberals and conservatives. Both convinced that the other has nothing to tell them, which is NEVER true. And, of course, the contemplative mind is the only one who can know that becuse they do not divide the field of the moment."

- Richard Rohr

"I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What I was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. .... I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back."

- Donald Millar. Blue Like Jazz

"Most people have not been offered a different mind, only different behaviors, beliefs, and belonging systems."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now

The participatory revolution. That is a word Bruner Barnhart used. That religion is not an experience of observation - of something over there - and if you understand it, and you agree with it, and you affirm it, then you are saved. 

We can't  get by with that anymore because it isn't true. It just isn't true! Religion as attendance, religion as a spectator sport watching the right theatre pieces, watching the right sacraments observed validly is, somehow, of itself, going to transform you."

- Richard Rohr.

“It’s hard to find people who write about God from a position of commitment but still sound as if they’re being human and honest, not running every word through the filter of religious subculture."

- John Ortberg. Forward of Blue  Like Jazz. 

Breathing Christian Sectarianism

"We didn't know that God was this accesable, did we? We didn't know that God was as available as the breath. And, to remind you, there's not a catholic and a protestant way of breathing. Did you know that?"

- Richard  Rohr

What Is THEOLOGY?

Sara Maitland has defined theology as … “(1) the art of telling stories about the divine and “(2) the art of listening to those stories.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

"Why does this huge, sprawling, tactless book sit there inscrutably in the middle of our cultural heritage ... frustrating all efforts to walk around it?"

 - Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Northrop Frye, The Great Code (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), xviii–xix

What Has Lighting The World Cost You?

"As a child in the 1950s, I heard a story at a holiness revival meeting in New York. It seems a certain missionary, home on leave, was shopping for a globe of the world to take back to her mission station. The clerk showed her a reasonably priced globe and another one with a lightbulb inside. “This is nicer,” the clerk said, pointing to the illuminated globe, “but of course, a lighted world costs more.” What has lighting our world cost you lately?"

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Unasked Question

"I confess I am quite put out of countenance by the example of the slave of Pupius Piso the orator. He, not wishing to be annoyed by their prating, ordered his slaves merely to answer his questions, and not say a word more. On one occasion wishing to pay honour to Clodius who was then in power, he ordered him to be invited to his house, and provided for him no doubt a sumptuous entertainment. At the time fixed all the guests were present except Clodius, for whom they waited, and the host frequently sent the slave who used to invite guests to see if he was coming, but when evening came, and he was now quite despaired of, he said to his slave, "Did you not invite him?" "Certainly," said the slave. "Why then has he not come?" said the master. "Because he declined," said the slave. "Why then did you not tell me of it at once?" said the master. "Because you never asked me," said the slave."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher. 

Unity is Just A Christian Talking Point

"Scilurus, the king of the Scythians, left eighty sons, and on his death-bed asked for a bundle of sticks, and bade his sons break it when it was tied together, and when they could not, he took the sticks one by one and easily broke them all up: thus showing them that their harmony and concord would make them strong and hard to overthrow, while dissension would make them feeble and insecure."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Few Words

"... so Laconian oratory has no rind...

for example, what the Lacedæmonians said to Philip, "[Remember] Dionysius at Corinth."  And again, when Philip wrote to them, "If I invade Laconia, I will drive you all out of house and home," they only wrote back, "If."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher

Excessive Fish and Women

I laughed out loud!

"....  as Demosthenes tells us; and that Philocrates got a large sum of money, and spent it on women and fish..."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher

Two Legs To Flee A Talker

"... according to the wise Aristotle himself. For he being bothered with a talkative fellow, and wearied out with his absurd tales, and his frequent question, "Is not this wonderful, Aristotle?" "Not at all," said he, "but it is wonderful that anyone with a pair of legs stops here to listen to you." And to another such fellow, who said after a long rigmarole, "Did I weary you, philosopher, by my chatter?" "Not you, by Zeus," said he, "for I paid no attention to you." For even if talkative people force you to listen, the mind can give them only its outward ears to deluge, while it unfolds and pursues some other thoughts within;..."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Talkativeness

"Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen......

For their ears can certainly have no passages leading to the brain but only to the tongue. And so while other people retain what they hear, talkative people lose it altogether, and, being empty-headed, they resemble empty vessels, and go about making much noise.  If however it seems that no attempt at cure has been left untried, let us say to the talkative person, "Be silent, boy; silence has great advantages; For their ears can certainly have no passages leading to the brain but only to the tongue. And so while other people retain what they hear, talkative people lose it altogether, and, being empty-headed, they resemble empty vessels, and go about making much noise. If however it seems that no attempt at cure has been left untried, let us say to the talkative person, "Be silent, boy; silence has great advantages;" two of the first and foremost of which are hearing and being heard, neither of which can happen to talkative people, for however they desire either so unhappy are they that they must desist from it. For in all other diseases of the soul, as love of money, love of glory, or love of pleasure, people at any rate attain the desired object: but it is the cruel fate of talkative people to desire hearers but not to get them, for everyone flees from them with headlong speed; and if people are sitting or walking about in any public place,  and see one coming they quickly pass the word to one another to shift quarters."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

Flying Praise

"They say the gadfly attacks bulls, and the tick dogs, in the ear: so the flatterer besieges with praise the ears of those who are fond of praise, and sticks there and is hard to dislodge."

- Plutarch. Morals. 1st Century Greek Philosopher 

A Tickling Freedom?

".... so these flatterers do not use a genuine or serviceable freedom of speech, but merely a winking and tickling innuendo."

- Plutarch. Morals 3157

Breezy Christianty

"My power is faint and low

Till I have learned to serve;

It wants the needed fire to glow,

It wants the breeze to serve...."

- George Matheson Hymn

Hysterical Christians

"There are Christians who have hysterical reactions, as if the world would have slipped out of God's hands.... But we believe in history; the world is not a roll of the dice going  toward chaos.....

Take away the sadness from our faces. We are not in a game of chance...."

- Father Luis Espinal. Assassinated March 22, 1980 in La Paz, Bolivia, by paramilitairy forces. One of his last writings.

A Church That Understands Culture

“...... "the destiny of the world” hinges on “the Church’s dialogue with the cultures of our time.....
A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not fully lived out.”


- Polish Pope John Paul II on establishing the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982

A Leader With A Compass & Magnet

Leader - "....a person with a magnet in his heart and a compass in his head” ?

- Howard Hendricks

Something The Bible Never Claims

"Theologian John Baillie once remarked, “The New Testament does not say, ‘You shall know the rules, and by them you shall be bound,’ but, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch.  2.0

Let God Out Of The Bible.

“Amanda” was a six-year-old Sunday school student, the daughter of a county sheriff. On “Presentation Sunday” at her local church in Boulder, Colorado, she was given her very own Bible. During coffee time in the fellowship hall, a member of the church congratulated her and asked if he could see her Bible. “OK. But don’t open it.” “Don’t open it? But why shouldn’t I open it?” “You’ll let God out.”
 Open the Scriptures.
 Let God out."
- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Fragile Books

“If writing is put on to parchment it can last for a thousand years, but how long will printing something on paper last? At the most a paper book could last for two hundred years.”

- Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim, denounced printed books in 1492.

The Bible Says It Your Way It Seems

"Three equivalent words drive today’s hearer up the wall when debating moral and ethical issues: “The Bible says.” People know how bureaucracies of church, state, and corporation—which are in love with labels and have lost track of people—filter what “The Bible says” into forms favorable to themselves."
-Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Argued Bible

"There is something terribly wrong when we argue about the Bible more and enjoy it less."

—Clark H. Pinnock

A Crucifixion Fetish Magic

"People could be affixed to crosses with ropes, but Nails seem to have been more common. Indeed, the nails that might be retrieved after a crucifixion were sometimes used in magical or medicinal potions, suggesting that some may have regarded the whole event as possessing, at some prearticulate level, a kind of dark potency."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began

The Massive Crucifixion

"The real life Spartacus, who led a major slave revolt, met his end about a hundred years before Jesus. Many died in the final battle, about six thousand of his followers were crucified all along the 130 so miles of the Appian Way from Rome to Capua (inland from Naples), making it roughly one cross every forty yards (Appian, Civil Wars 1.120)

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Theology Stories

Sara Maitland has defined theology as … “(1) the art of telling stories about the divine and “(2) the art of listening to those stories.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

The Scripture Manger

God has given spiritual navigators a compass: the Scriptures. The Scriptures point us to Christ. They enable us to locate the North Star. They are not Christ. They are not what we worship. But the compass points us to our life work—following Christ. 

"The Scriptures are the manger in which Christ is laid." —Martin Luther

Salty Baptism

"Salt was such an important symbol in the early church that when someone was baptized, a pinch of salt was placed on the new believer’s tongue. Purified in Christ, we are called to be a purifying agent in the world."

- Leonard Sweet. AQUACHURCH 2.0

"Search blessed salt"

Doomed At Age Seven

"I was doomed to go to hell by the time I was 7. I had been told that if you smoke cigarettes and drink beer, you’re going to hell. And by 7, I was gone."

Former Methodist Willie Nelson

Make Holes In The Darkness

"Robert Louis Stevenson, who was very ill as a child, recorded a childhood incident in his diary. He was seated by a window at nightfall, watching a lamplighter light the street lights below. His nurse came into the room and asked him what he was doing. “I’m watching a man make holes in the darkness,” 

- Leonard Sweet

The Bee Fertilizes The Flower It Robs

Charles A. Beard. He was once asked by one of his students whether he might be able to put the lessons he had garnered over a lifetime of historical study into a few brief maxims. Beard compiled and offered these four brief sentences: 

a. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power. 

b. The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine. 

c. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. 

d. When it is dark enough you can see the stars.20

"Sometimes I feel like the most liberal person among conservatives, and sometimes like the most conservative among liberals. How can I fit together my religious past with my spiritual present?"

- Philip Yancey. Soul Survivor.

Mango Tree Missionary

"Jeff insists that more good conversations, more transactions, and more organized system. His point is that ministry in Africa happens more effectively at the mango tree level than in any sort of organized “church planting” or “discipleship” or “evangelism” model."

- Marla..... who lived with and observes the movements of  Heidi Frazee Jeff Frazee in some often forgotten place in French West Africa.

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

No Myth Pulsates Life - Einstein

“You accept the historical existence of Jesus?” 

“Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

- Albert Einstein (Interview with Albert Einstein in The Saturday Evening Post 1929)

Jesus In All Cultures

"Sighting Jesus in Every Culture First, Jesus the Christ remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. But our experiences of Christ depend on our personal and cultural coordinates. Jesus is not an alien force, a nonnative source, or an import that comes into a culture. Jesus is an indigenous illumination of what is already there.

Some years ago, the distinguished southern churchman and theologian Albert Mollegen was lecturing to a group of laypeople in Virginia on the topic of “Revelation.” It was loaded with technical distinctions and sophisticated analysis. At the end, the professor entertained questions from the audience, and a bewildered and slightly defeated woman arose and said, “Dr. Mollegen, how does God speak to you?” The great man thought about that for a moment, and then abandoned his professorial demeanor. “In English, ma’am. With a Tidewater accent.”

Jesus transcends every known culture. God comes to the Chinese in a Chinese accent. Jesus appears to the African in a Swahili cadence. Jesus appears to the American Indian in a Shoshone beat. Jesus appears to a West Virginian in an Appalachian accent. All cultures share in the pre-Incarnation mystery. Even the culture of first-century Palestine couldn’t contain but one look at Jesus—there is not a single story of Jesus, but four basic stories, with multiple stories within those stories. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended, he became the exalted Christ, a universalized presence and power. He did not take his Jewishness with him into heaven. In the garden with Mary, Jesus says “touch me not” or “do not hold on to me” (John 20:17). In other words, Mary, I’m not what I used to be. Things are different now."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Fathering As Revival

"I want the fast burn of revival but what will change history is the slow burn of fathering"

~ Lou Engle

Love Affair Religion

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

~ G.K. Chesterton

Where Is Missions Focus

"One of the key influences on my thinking has been that of the missiologist Bishop Lesslie Newbigin. He reminded us that the key focus of the church’s mission is not the church but the world."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

What Is A Christian

"Christians are people who live at the speed of light—the light of Jesus:"

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Does It Smell Like Jesus

"A biblical spirituality is relationship driven. It begins and ends with Jesus: does it sound like Jesus? see like Jesus? taste like Jesus? touch like Jesus? smell like Jesus?

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

Wish We Would Seek Jesus

"Would that more churches had etched on their pulpits the words that admonish everyone who steps into the crow’s nest of one West Virginia church: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0

My Doggy and Kitty Jesus Relationship

"Christianity is a relationship religion. The core relationship is a relationship with Christ. Everything depends on the administration and management of that relationship. However, some of us are more careful about maintaining and managing relationships with our pets than our relationships with Jesus, God-made flesh."

- Leonard Sweet. AquaChurch 2.0