Waiting For More and Nothing Else

During the Advent season, a lot of people try to relive or rediscover a sense of expectation and hope. They remember what it might be like to wait for the coming of God… the coming of healing, liberation, and salvation. For me, this whole year has been defined by waiting for God (it’s been a tough year, marked by many personal sorrows and losses which I have not written about here). Only, in my waiting for God, I’ve gradually learned to wait without much expectation or hope… I simply wait because there is nothing else that can be done by any of us. We’ve all tried our best and failed. Only God can save us, and even though God is nowhere to be found, we wait… because, at the end of the day, we are still in need of salvation.

[via On Journeying with those in Exile]

Lying about Santa: The Irrelevance of Proof to the Holiday Spirit

[via Religion Dispatches]

Accentuating the Real?

Whose responsibility is it to censor happiness?

Is it the voice or the ear? Or should the positive be censored at all?

{continue...}

[via Desperate for changing, starving for truth]

In Religious Dress

The Bible is a rich field of story and image, the most fertile bed of the imagination of the West. I have no problem with allegories and analogies drawn from Biblical models. But it seems to me a perverse misreading of the Bible to treat its stories as if they were themselves allegories of politics in religious dress.

I was once in a group of earnest young people wrestling with how to understand the mystical experience of God. One young man, not really in sympathy with the project, said it would be easy to find out: just go into the desert and fast for forty days. If you had a mystical experience, then it was real. This was such a perversely backwards way of understanding mysticism that we were left speechless. If you go into the desert and fast, but are not earnestly seeking God, you are not recreating the absolutely vital core of the desert mystics' experience. {full post}

[via Gruntled Center]

"Is The Meaning Lost?"

Halloween? Reformation? Which is it?

[vika Kevin Powell]

The New Atheism as Inadequate Theodicy

[via TheOtherJournal.com, HT: Rumblings]

Yes, Virginia, there is a St. Nicholas

[via GetReligion]

Accounting For Faith

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) dropped a bomb on a small segment of the church world in the United States on Nov. 6. But it has the potential of creating shock waves that may have long-term effects for many congregations in church-state relations, financial accountability and understanding of clergy income and taxes.

The ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Grassley requested the records of six megachurch ministries that happen to be television-based and generally identified with the "word of faith" prosperity gospel movement. The six pastors and their respective ministries and some spouses were requested to provide a variety of documents to the committee by Dec. 6. The ministers are Paula and Randy White, Creflo and Taffi Dollar, Joyce and David Meyer, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Benedictus (Benny) Hinn and Bishop Eddie Long. Since two of these ministries are located in Atlanta, the media of this city have been saturated with both reports and commentary on the issues involved.

As of the date of his deadline for response, each of the ministries has replied in some form with Creflo Dollar and Bishop Eddie Long announcing they will not comply unless subpoenas are issued. {continue...}

[via Ethics Daily.com, HT: For God's Sake, Shut Up!]

Need to keep track? Check out Televangelist Scorecard via The Wittenburg Door

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How Stressed...

Consider for a moment the effects that stress (and persecution would certainly qualify) has on the human body. The body functions most effectively under the just the right amount of stress. Too much stress or too little stress leads to pathology (dysfunction). It is true that certain aspects of the body are more active when the body is highly stressed but these same aspects can lead to major problems especially over an extended period of time. In fact one of the common effects of heightened stress is the tendency for the person or animal to give up (this helps to explain stress related depression). So then the question must be asked, "Does the stress of persecution make the individuals more likely to give up in the face of ongoing stress or are things like imprisonment and martyrdom actually an act of resolute determination?" Not only that, what can we say about the convictions themselves? We know that a brain that is under perpetual stress increasingly loses its capacity to reason and make accurate judgements of the stimuli present.

[via D'caffeinated Pickle]

In Those Times...

As we come towards another Rememberance Day this weekend, I am reminded of incredible heroes and sacrifices made when ordinary people rose to face extrodinary circumstances....My days may not present opportunity to storm German MG42 positions, and I might not have thousands of soldiers counting on me to knock out fortified artillery positions (as the soldiers in Band of Brothers did). Yet there are many battles to be fought, the battles for truth, love, and purity, and we all need our brothers (and sisters) in those times.

[via Allan Tan's Blog]

Why Christians should take Richard Dawkins seriously

[via The Heresy]

But Where's The Conspiracy?

Knights Templar win heresy reprieve after 700 years

[HT: ThinkChristian.NET]

My Need For Another’s Artistic Expression

[via daydreamer]

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

[via this comment, HT: this post]

What's the biggest surprise awaiting the Rev. Falwell in the hereafter? [read on]

[via slacktivist]

The Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts

[via denialism blog]

Too Much Truth?

[via You saved my life from a colorless one]

Apocalyptic in the Truest Sense

The new Nine Inch Nails album, Year Zero, comes out on Tuesday. It's a science-fictional concept album (probably the first such thing since David Bowie's Outside, though I may be wrong about that), and the story are of particularly interest for both its critique of conservative religion and its broader eschatological themes.

The nonlinear story has been unfolding in a viral marketing campaign (or "alternate reality game," or "interactive experience") made up of websites, mp3s, and toll-free phone numbers starting earlier this year, establishing the history and atmosphere of the dystopia in which Year Zero takes place. In a nutshell: 15 years from now, the United States has become both a police state and a theocracy. This government has used nuclear weapons on Iran, required all Muslims to register or face execution, and drugged the populace into submission with tranquilizers in the water supply. The Year Zero backstory takes a bleak view of the future of American religion, summed up by the logo of the "Faithful Civil Patrol" organized by the First Evangelical Church of Plano: a crucifix emerging from the barrel of a gun.

This type of dystopia is not the most original—it's reminiscent of the worlds of Katherine Kerr's story "Asylum" and the film Children of Men, just to name two. The medium in which it has been revealed is a novelty, though, and there's a definite thrill to be gained from exploring the sites, a sense of uncovering a mystery. This is especially true in the case of Year Zero's most interesting concept: "The Presence," a mysterious vision/hallucination of an enormous, ghostly hand descending from the sky.....

The Presence is a warning against our tribalism and selfishness. Year Zero is apocalyptic in the truest sense of the word: if we don't get our act together, it warns us, God will end the world for us. In this regard, there's something remarkably traditional about the eschatology of Year Zero. Though its political origins are the opposite of, say, Left Behind, its attitude towards the relation between God and sinful humanity is the same. We have strayed from the path of righteousness, it tells us, and we are blundering into divine retribution.

{the full post}

[via SF Gospel]

More Than I Can Bear Almost

On this day, during this week, it is particularly difficult to think that some revere a Bible translation in the way they revere the cross. The object of our salvation compared to the work of men. It is more than I can bear almost.

[via The Thinklings]

Rumors of Competition?

Procter & Gamble is NOT in league with the devil

[via Bible Belt Blogger]