Me with my friend the Jesuit scholar Jim Martin, in the office of America Media where he works for his church in New York. ‘A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND’ As a crucial national election season is just around the bend, it might be good to listen to the wisdom of some of our found fathers…. And before them, Jesus himself. While some have thought Abraham Lincoln came up with this phrase about ‘a house divided’... Read more
Our Hampton Inn hotel on West 55th St. was close to so many things, the theater district, great restaurants, Times Square, and MOMA– the Museum of Modern Art. We will do a separate post on the later, but here are some of the sites near where I stayed. Obviously New Yorkers have the good taste enough to know which are the best doughnuts, namely the kind that comes from N.C. There is an excellent genuine Turkish restaurant near my hotel... Read more
I went to NY to check out a site for our seminary to see if it could be an extension site for our school. But I also went to film a new documentary on Jesus for Fox streaming and the History Channel. But there was some time for some fun and so I got a free ticket to go see the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and I also made it to a jazz club called Birdland and a Neil... Read more
Without a doubt, hard rock has fallen on hard times, and you can in fact see the evidence in Hard Rock Cafes, and the Hard Rock Hotel in New York which was right across from my hotel in New York earlier this month. Just a tour of the memorabilia in this hotel tells some of the story. For example, here is Bob Dylan’s original and first guitar when he was playing in the folk clubs in NY in the 60s. ... Read more
“When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners,... Read more
Keith playing and singing Hey You Get Off of my Shroud Read more
“We are not, after all, defined by whatever longs and aspirations come out of our hearts, despite the remarkable rhetoric of our times [especially the LGBTQ+ rhetoric]. In the area of human well-being, that is the road to radical instability; in the area of theological beliefs it leads to Gnosticism (where you try to discern the hidden divine spark within yourself and then be true to it). Jesus himself was quite clear , following in the prophetic tradition: the human... Read more
We are all by now familiar with the famous reference in Ephesians 1.13-14 about the Holy Spirit and the seal which reads: “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a pledge/earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” The Greek word ‘arrabon’ does not mean ‘guarantee’. The King James quite rightly renders it as ‘an earnest’ something given in advance as a... Read more
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