Author: readerjohn

I am a retired lawyer and an Orthodox Christian, living in a collapsing civilization, the modern West. There are things I'll miss when it's gone. There are others I won't. I tend to write about both.

Sunday Respite

Yesterday, the cold rainy weather went away. So when not singing one of three Church services or raking leaves, I went for a bike ride.

And thus it came to pass you almost got nothing today. But then I thought “why shouldn’t I make everybody feel bad about wasting their life by showing them what Lafayette’s Chaconne Klaverenga has done with just 18 years thus far?”:

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Bon appetit!

Having become tedious even to myself, I’m Tweeting more, blogging less. View this in a browser instead of an RSS feeder to see Tweets at upper right.

I also have some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Maybe if I link to it, I’ll blog less obsessively about it.

Fish’s Formulation Foot-Faults

The New York Times’ Stanley Fish also takes up the Hosanna-Tabor case, argued last week in the Supreme Court, and disappoints in doing so.

It’s not so much that he gets the answer wrong – I’m not sure he does, because I’m not sure what his answer is – as that he falls for sloppy formulation of the question and in so doing misinforms and muddies the water. Continue reading “Fish’s Formulation Foot-Faults” →

Standing Advice

The following “goes without saying” – until I change my mind, at least.

Deep Sanity

  • All these things which are going on now, as well as all subsequent things, God will come with His broom and sweep them away in a manner known to Him. So, don’t worry. Let us commend ourselves and each other and all our lives unto Christ our God. (Elder Epiphanios)
  • Some fundamentals that we easily overlook:
    • The love of God that has been poured out to us in Christ Jesus is so strong that no conceivable hardship can separate us from that love. (Romans 8: 35-39)
    • Everything that happens to us is organized by Divine Love for our benefit, even if we can’t understand how. (Romans 8:28; Matthew 10:29-31)
    • In response to this love, we are commanded to replace anxious thoughts with a moment-by-moment awareness of all that is lovely, noble and good. (Philippians 4:6-8; 2 Thessalonians 5:16-18; Luke 12:29)
  • Repent. Acts 2:38. This is ongoing advice. You don’t repent just once.
  • To be deep in history is to cease being Protestant.
  • You cannot comprehend God. If your religion “makes perfect sense,” it’s almost certainly heretical.
  • Lex orandi, lex credendi.
  • Culture normalizes (which is a sort of variant on lex orandi …)
Economics
  • “The consumer society is in fact the most efficient mechanism ever devised for the creation and distribution of unhappiness.” Lord Jonathon Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain.
  • If it’s “too big to fail,” break it up into harmless little pieces.

Church and State

  • “The designation of the religious and the political is itself a political act.” (William T. Cavanaugh)
  • “Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men in whom there is no salvation.” Psalm 146:3.
  • American Exceptionalism is bad politics and, worse, bad theology.
  • Culture war ≠ spiritual warfare.
  • “It’s a complete absurdity to believe that Christians will suffer a single thing from the expansion of gay rights, and boy, do they deserve what they’re going to get.” (The Law of Merited Impossibility, discovered by Rod Dreher)
  • At some point, conservatives within the churches will realize that when liberals call for “dialogue,” what they really mean is “we talk until you give us what we want.” (Rod Dreher)
The Culture

You can consider it part of every blog.