Jack’s Winning Words 6/15/18
“My reason nourishes my faith, and my faith my reason.” (Norman Cousins) A little boy was asked to define Faith. “It’s believing what you know ain’t so.” That illustrates for some the problem with faith…believing something that seems unreasonable. It’s sort of like Thomas… ”unless I can see, touch, I will not believe.” We want to be sure, but that’s not always possible. Cousins’ words show that, in his mind. reason and faith can be compatible. I agree! ;-) Jack
FROM EDUCATOR PAUL: The Bible got a bad rap yesterday by our attorney General, Jack! This country is being torn apart and our government is doing things I never thought I would ever see in my lifetime. In the meantime, our politicians are arguing the difference between law and policy.
Sad times===JACK: I don't claim to be a Bible expert, but I know enough to see when it is being misinterpreted. I wonder if God is laughing or crying? ===PAUL: Sad Times for the soul of our Country.===JACK: In a politically United (Divided) States of America where even your "friends" are one one side or the other, I'm reminded what Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
FROM WALMART REV: Happy Father's Day this coming Sunday!!===JACK: Snopes says that the rumor is TRUE...More collect calls are made on Father's Day than on any other day of the year.
FROM ST PAUL IN ST PAUL: i once heard a great talk that clearly stated the difference between scientific fact and spiritual truth. the two are NOT the same. i could say much more on this topic but my day is full!===JACK: I have a friend who firmly believes from his study of the Bible that the earth is about 6,000 years old. I have another friend, a geo-physicist, who believes that the exact age of the earth cannot be calculated, but that it's probably billions of years old.===PAUL: i have a friend who found the jaw bone of a dinosaur in Wyoming some years ago on an archaeological dig. i assure you it is older than 6000 years. if you add up the numbers in the Bible, you might think the earth was created in 4004 BC (Usher's calculations) but that is just baloney.===JACK: Baloney originated in the 16th century in Bologna, Italy. Many people have a taste for it, both the speech and meat varieties.===PAIL: i like it with a little lettuce and mayo on sliced bread...
FROM BLAZING OAKS: Love the quote in your blog today, of Dickens, in 'Tale of Two Cities". That pretty much covers the state of our country and others, most of the time....Our country is more diverse than most, so more divided, usually. I'll never forget how uniformly the Japanese people seem to think, when I spent 3 weeks there, due to the fact that they encounter so few foreigners in their daily lives, to exchange views with. Now the world is so much smaller with all the instant communication available, that may have changed, some.Caught up on this week's WW, which were excellent to ponder...===JACK: Yes, I thought that the Dickens quote captured the American situation of today. There's a lot of hatred...and the middle ground could rightly be called, "No Man's Land."
1 comment:
I've been hearing homilies, 2 or sometimes 3 times a week at the Catholic church next door to our house and feeling immersed in their liturgy. My reason and my faith tells me that "there is something faithful to God going on there." From this exposure to Catholicism, I've also been doing a lot of reading and at the moment it's "Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation" by Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain. It's a kind of dense book for a person who sits in the pews and isn't any sort of leader in the congregation but I am finding the chapters on "Learning theology in the School of Christ," "Retrieving Sola Scriptura," "The Role of the Church's Confession in Biblical Interpretation," and "In defense of proof texting," to be refreshing and appealing to both my reason and my faith. No doubt, I'll be a more informed Bible study student when the classes at my Lutheran church start up again in the fall. The danger of what people like Sessions do in quoting the Bible in a limited way on current topics is that so many people generalize it to applying to all of us "strongly opinionated and aggressive Christians" and, anymore, not enough of us are in weekly Bible studies, not enough time and a false idea that there is nothing more to learn, to be able to know how to counter this current theological impasse in our country. In my opinion anyway.
S.H. in MI
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