Let’s see what kind of memes our lefty friends are spreading today: Let’s take the points one at a time: Why is “Christian” in scare quotes? Christians of conscience who don’t want to participate in the absurd and sinful farce of gay “marriage” are not really Christian? So now non-believers are reading us out of our own religion? While we’re at it: it’s gay “wedding.” #thereIfixeditforyou Why is Christian lowercase? I can’t image it’s for any other reason than as a... Read more
Some people seem to be misunderstanding this post. I can defend Geller’s right to say whatever she wants and still criticize the way she does it without being some kind of apologist for jihad. This is something the libertarian secularists don’t seem to get because they don’t understand religion. I don’t think Geller does either. Let me offer some examples of things I would and wouldn’t say and do. Example 1: I believe Mohammed is a false prophet, and so... Read more
You don’t get to choose the guy in the trench next to you. The nasty miscreants of Charlie Hebdo would not be my choice for allies, nor would the objectivist idiot Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs. Unfortunately, they seem to be the only people placing themselves in the line of fire in the cultural war against radical Islam. I don’t like this type of cheap provocation. I don’t particularly care when people mock my religion because I know they do... Read more
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” Romans 8:26 “It is very important to for us to realize that we do not know how to pray. If we think of prayer as something that we can—or worse, that we should—master and become proficient at, we are in danger of seriously falsifying our relationship with God.”... Read more
Here’s the official logo for the upcoming Year of Mercy: My first thought was: Why does Jesus have two heads? Is it theological statement on his two natures? Is the other head supposed to be Rosy Grier? Then I realized that the mustard colored thing draped across his shoulders isn’t a stole or something, but a man, and Jesus appears ready to body slam the dude into the mat. I think I saw King Kong Bundy do this to Doink... Read more
There are many ways through the dark valleys of depression, and prayer must be one of them. The problem is that the depressive often cannot even stir to perform regular prayer. Simple tasks become a burden. Prayer routines fall by the wayside. Commitments are left undone. And with each little failure, the walls close in tighter and the sufferer sinks deeper. Perhaps one way through the dark valley is to follow the trail laid down by our ancestors with the... Read more
I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. –Tennyson– My brain is a treacherous organ. I’ve made my living from it for almost a quarter century, yet it has a defect that makes this hard sometimes. The defect is mental illness, and it’s been with me my whole life. Usually, it behaves itself. Lately, it hasn’t been. It comes in cycles,... Read more
Will Duquette completes the ora et labora circuit by adding a How I Work to his How I Pray entry. Here’s a little bit: I use Evernote for storing general notes I’ve got no better place to put—ideas for blog posts, for example. I’ve drafted a fair number of blog posts in Evernote as well; it’s conveniently available no matter what device I’m using, and then I can copy the post into WordPress. Although, one of the reasons I’ve been... Read more
My paper “The Word in Creation: The Ratzingerian Critique of the Historical-Critical Method and Its Application to the Creation Accounts” is up at Homiletic and Pastoral Review. Two of my preoccupations during my master’s studies were Creation (particularly the Augustinian understanding of Genesis) and the theology of Pope Benedict. This paper was where the two converged thanks to Ratzinger’s little masterpiece In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, which allowed me to explore his approach to Biblical... Read more
Today’s infographic comes courtesy of Translation Follies. It purports to illustrate Numbers 11:31, in which the Lord sends quail in abundance to the Israelites. Some Bibles, including the NAB, do indeed translate the passage as “at a depth of two cubits upon the ground.” Even the fairly literal NASB adds an italicized deep in the passage. The Hebrew, however, roughly works out to “about two cubits the surface the land,” without mentioning depth. (The Septuagint uses the Greek ἀπό, which means “away... Read more
God and the Machine
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