Notes and insightful quotes
From the archives, so to speak...
"The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live." (Wolfhart Pannenberg)
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On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?... It is madness to wear straw hats and velvet to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return. (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk)
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The father of modern education said that teaching should mold Christian character.
March 28, 1592: Czech theologian Jan Comenius, educator of the Bohemian (or Moravian) Brethren, is born in Nivnice, Czechoslovakia. As today, the region was tormented by warfare, and Comenius believed the only way to bring peace was through education. He designed a plan for educating every province and country, which he presented in The Great Didactic(1632). Education, he believed, should be more than just learning facts and languages (as was the case in his day), it should mold Christian character and should be marked by observing the physical world. He is called "the father of modern education."
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Look at the shifts from a Journal/NBC poll 25 yrs ago/1998-2023:
Patriotism is very important: Dropped from 70% to 38%.
Religion is very important: Dropped from 62% to 39%.
Having children is very important: Dropped from 59% to 30%.
Community involvement is very important: Dropped from 47% to 27%.
Money is very important: Rose from 31% to 43%.(Axios AM)
What is this telling us about...us?
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Nobody's perfect?
"When he said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder – in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad….
"If we let Him – for we can prevent Him, if we choose – He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of couse, on a small scale). His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, bk 4, chs. 8,9)
Just eight minutes? I bet they were thrilled.
March 28, 1937: Billy Graham gets his first opportunity to preach when his teacher John Minder unexpectedly assigns him the Easter evening sermon. Graham tried to get out of it, saying he was unprepared, but Minder persisted. Desperately nervous, Graham raced through four memorized sermons, originally 45 minutes each, in eight minutes.
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Question: “What is the greatest miracle of Christianity?”
Not the virgin birth. Not the calming of the waters. Nor the resurrection. Not even Pentecost. E. Stanley Jones, the old Methodist missionary, reminds us:
"Here is the central miracle Christianity: Christ. The central miracle is not the resurrection or the virgin birth or any of the other miracles; the central miracle is just this Person, for he rises in sinless grandeur above life. He is life’s Sinless Exception, therefore a miracle." (E Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road)
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It has been said that for all Christianity has going for it palatable doctrine is not one of those things., Christianity embraces seriously unpalatable doctrine for those wanting the “better life” of comfort, ease and predictability. Deny yourself? Take up your cross? Follow Jesus to pain?
Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist, imagined Paul consulting a public relations strategist with an idea for a campaign to promote the gospel. Told he would need a symbol of some sort, Paul says he does indeed have one – “I’ve got this here cross.”
“You can’t popularize a thing like that. It’s absolutely mad!” laughed the public relations expert.
"But it wasn’t mad. It worked for centuries and centuries, bringing out all the creativity in people, all the love and disinterestedness in people, this symbol of suffering; and I think that’s the heart of the thing….The only thing that really teaches one what life’s about – the joy of understanding, the joy of coming in contact with what it really signifies – is suffering, is affliction.”