Category: Scripture

• Conspiracy Theorists and Intelligent Design

  1.  The uncritical attribution of malignant design I know a man who is paranoid.  I don’t mean he is sometimes anxious that others are out to get him, or that he is occasionally dramatic about threats.  No, he is paranoid, which means he observes a phenomenon, and then projects onto the unseen backstage of that…

• The Mind Puzzles, The Feelings Feel, The Heart Wants

  I’d like to save you some time. Here’s a list of perpetual arguments, the ones that have been going on long enough that everyone should have figured out the debate is not actually progressing. Neither of the two antagonistic parties ever wins. This is a shortened list, you probably have heard other versions of these:…

• Psalm 131: Willing To Listen

  Thomas Merton claims that silence is our admission that we have broken communication with God and are now willing to listen. From today’s lectionary (BCP) Psalm 131 I Have Calmed and Quieted My Soul A Song of Ascents. Of David. 131:1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too…

• Roman 8.3-7

  The experience of victory in the NT hinges on something like “attention to the matters of the Spirit”.

• Pomegranates in the Tabernacle

  The little carved pomegranates in the desert tabernacle, described carefully by God in Exodus, give us a liberating theory of “Christian” art.   The little fake fruit are there, apparently, because it’s a dry and spare land and, well, they are fruit.  And they’re pretty.   We are never taught that they “stand for” something else more…