faith^(9/8)

Deconstruction with Larry Wall

Below is the full response from Larry Wall, the creator of the Perl programming language, to a question about faith in God. I’ve taken it wholesale from butnotlost.blogspot since ya never know when it’ll disappear. I’ve put italics around my favorite parts. Q: I remember reading at some point that you are a Christian, and there have been suggestions that some of your early missionary impulses (a desire to do good, help others) are perhaps part of the zeal you have put into Perl over the years.…

How to pray for my family

It’s my sense that many Christians in the United States are confused about our social location. We believe that we’re living in Israel. As Israel’s prophets confronted the kings of Judah with a call for Torah living, so we are convinced that the American Church’s role is to call for a national return to Torah. We’re mistaken. We do not live in Israel, we live in Babylon. We are not Isaiah, we are Esther.…

Surrender is an act of defiance

I tend to be allergic to the word “surrender.” I don’t think I’ve ever joined in singing that old hymn “I Surrender All.” It’s my own hang-up–whatever–but I’ve been meditating on Jesus' victory over the powers of darkness through his surrender unto death and it occurred to me that surrender isn’t always a passive thing. Perhaps sometimes it’s passive, but it’s also sometimes militant. Surrender of myself to the Lord is an act of defiance.…

The Risk of Birth

This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late. That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn- Yet here did the Saviour make his home. When is the time for love to be born?…

Generosity evidences faith in God's provision

Those who place their trust in Jesus to pardon them on the day of judgment must place that same trust in him to provide for their basic needs today. It won’t do to say, “Jesus will rescue me from future judgment,” while one’s current attitude is “I must rescue myself from poverty and need.” Might it be possible that those who will not rely upon Jesus to save them in the present age demonstrate that they have no real faith in Jesus' salvation at the judgment?…

Hopefulness is adversarial

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Issue #190

The great secret of the spiritual life is that you already know the little steps

The great secret of the spiritual life is that you already know the little steps, even if you don’t know the big ones. You don’t need to know the big steps to take the little steps.

Stages of faith development

How does a person’s faith develop over the course of their lives? In broad categories, what distinct stages might a person move through in their development? These are the kinds of questions that Faith Development Theory tries to answer. Jessie Cruickshank offers a three-part video series (Part 1 here) where she explains the six stages of faith development. She does a ton of work making James W. Fowler’s research coherent and applicable to disciple-making.…

What Christ Said

I said, "Let me walk in the fields." He said, "No; walk in the town." I said, "There are no flowers there." He said, "No flowers, but a crown." ---- I said, "But the skies are black, There is nothing but noise and din." And he wept as he sent me back; "There is more," he said, "there is sin." ---- I said, "But the air is thick, and fogs are veiling the sun.…

The opposite of sin can only be faith and never virtue

The opposite of sin can only be faith, and never virtue. (Quoting H.A. Williams)

Anything Jesus did in his lifetime is available to us too

We were not meant to be any more restricted than Jesus was during his sojourn with us here on this earth. If we take seriously that during the time of his Incarnation he was truly man, truly human as we are, than anything he did in his lifetime is available for us, too.

Catholic devotion to the blessed virgin

Protestants are uncomfortable about several doctrines of the Catholic Church and even willing to renounce the entire organization as heretical. The way that Mary, and to a lesser extent any saint, is spoken of has been most uncomfortable in my experience. The language used for the Blessed Virgin often matches biblical language used to describe Jesus. The sum result is that most Protestants believe the Catholic Church holds Mary in equal standing with Jesus, as though they’re two divinely equal beings.…

Light in the cosmos

I’ve been journeying with Madeleine L’Engle among the stars, trying to grasp the majesty of the heavens and yet hold confidently to God’s intimacy with humanity. Listening to Silicone Boone has given lyrics to much of my own experience. I’m enjoying these today: Charged and luring where you fly Are you the flicker of a sign and wonder Or just some great misfire - (Silicone Boone, Diamond) The stars have long been a portal into the wonder of God’s power and majesty, but the mysteries we’ve uncovered from their light complicate our notions of God’s handiwork.…

Spiritual formation

If you’ve read my writing about Jesus' prayer, “your kingdom come”, you have a glimpse into what transformation could look like. Jesus' teaching transforms individual lives when put into action. When allegiance to his teaching spreads through a community, it produces transformation on a societal scale. What tenents should a team who yearns for community transformation follow to witness fruit? This is the question I propose, and to which I shall attempt to enumerate an answer.…

Finances expose faith more than words

Jesus taught often on finances, and his examples and parables often used money to make his point. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (ESV, Mat 6:21) he summarized after teaching about where your wages are stored for safe-keeping. Upon witnessing a poor woman donate a penny to the temple, he remarked, “[she] has put in more than all” (ESV, Mat 12:43). Any person with an income tells others what they believe by the way they spend it.…

After this(1) there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate(2) a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids–blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years(3). When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?…

And Joshua the son of Nun sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there. And it was told to the king of Jericho, “Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land.” Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who entereed your house, for they have come to search out all the land.…