81 years ago today
Today is the 81st anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.
Prior to the bomb exploding over St. Mary’s Urakami Cathedral on 11:02 AM, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan. The Nagasaki cathedral was the largest Christian cathedral in the Orient.
Unwelcome Truths for Church and State Concerning the Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945
Vainglory
I have heard Christians insist on concealing their gifts and talents for the sake of their humility. We must be careful that we do not bury our talent in the earth (see Matt. 25:14–30) in the name of false modesty.
Vassilios Papavassiliou, Thirty Steps to Heaven
But …:
So often we want everything we do for the Church, every good deed, every effort we make in Christ’s name, to be praised, announced, and publicized.
Ibid.
and …:
Vainglory puts us on stage, behaving as if we were professional actors, performing to win applause from people and to avoid having them walk out. It has its victims constantly checking on the responses they’re getting from the audience. All that matters is getting applause from those for whom they’re performing. They are keenly sensitive to the expressions of others toward them, and to what others may be thinking about them.
Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity
If you’re getting the feeling that vainglory is insidious, you’re right.
Far as the curse is found
One assumption I’ll invite you to rethink is the popular view that the locus of redemption is primarily individual persons. We will find that the redemption wrought by Christ stretches as far as the curse is found—which is to all of creation, including the natural world and the products of human creativity.
Robin Phillips and Stephen De Young, Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation
Traditioning until Christ be formed in you
I have had a rich experience in the work of nurturing the Orthodox way of life with converts. There are aspects that include teaching and nurturing a way of understanding and seeing – “traditioning” Orthodox doctrine. Of far greater and more lasting import, however, is something that only comes with time. I have seen this in myself as well as in others. I would best describe it as the movement of external forms into internal reality. St. Paul says this when speaking to a young Galatian community:
“My little children, I labor in birth again until Christ be formed in you,” (Gal. 4:19).
He can write to them, repeating the arguments and teachings that they have heard before, but nothing is settled until that life (which is Christ) is actually formed within them.
Our parish growth has been so rapid that yesterday we received a man and two of his young children, none of whom I’d met and whose names I didn’t know. It’s not the first time. So at the little reception afterward, I made it a point to sit with him, introduce myself and hear a bit of his story.
It turns out that he’s on the cusp of his 30th birthday, and apparently is in a military reserve unit. He went to the Chaplain and said “I’m becoming Orthodox, so update my records.” The chaplain asked if he wanted an exemption for a long beard, and this newbie, bless him, responded “No. I’m not looking for any accommodation. I just think this is where I’ll grow most spiritually.”
Like Christ formed in his heart, I think.
Philosophy vs. the evangelical ethos
Philosophers clearly must bracket (as they say) the distinctive elements of the evangelical ethos if they are to make progress as philosophers. That is, philosophers might approve of Christian activism, but their job is contemplation. They cannot afford to be intuitive about their intellectual commitments, for the essence of philosophy is excruciating self-consciousness about presuppositions and assumptions. Neither have the Christian philosophers practiced the populist or biblicist styles that defined much of earlier evangelical thought. Their work, by its nature, has always been relatively esoteric, and so not amenable to the populist politicking that looms so large for evangelicals in other intellectual spheres. The concerns of American Christian philosophers with the Bible have been general and historical ….
Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
If the shoe fits …
[E]vangelicalism is not so much a religion as a series of fast-moving personality cults.
Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God.
I wish someone other than Frank Schaeffer had written this, but when he’s right, he’s right, and I don’t plagiarize.
Only wonder understands anything.
St. Gregory of Nyssa
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on my favorite no-algorithm social medium.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 