Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
—Romans 6:13

The world is a slave to sin. We are called to be slaves of God. The prince of this world is here and must be cast out. My master might come at any hour. I am not ignorant of his will.

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Christians—at least Christians who Sunday after Sunday read the Psalms—should know the question “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is not a question Christians should ask.
—Stanley Hauerwas, On September 11 and its Aftermath: Essays and Sermons Sermons After Tuesday: A Postscript

When words are taken in the wrong sense, Christ becomes anti-Christ.

As Christians we have been lazy in our speech habits and, in particular, in our sermons just to the extent we have failed to help one another name how our lives are caught in modes of life Augustine identified with the City of Man.
—Hauerwas, ibid.

More Hauerwas:

The recent debate about stem-cell research is a mirror of the action of the terrorist understanding of life: any means can be used to keep us from dying is the flip side of the view that any means can be used to kill people. For example, consider that Strom Thurmond (who is allegedly against abortion) thinks with stem call research he’s going to live to be 168, get married, and have another kid! It’s no wonder that South Carolina is one of the centers of the United States military bases. Why? Strom Thurmond. Of course that we do not know how to comprehend death for ourselves or other people has everything to do with our being so wealthy. . . .

I think the misery of the American public and the world in which we live can be seen nowhere better than in the suggestion (in many ways quite understandable) that we must take up our responsibilities as citizens and respond to the attacks by shopping. A people who cannot think of anything better to do than shop sounds like a people who are not quite ready to kill anyone. That’s just what I’m trying to suggest is the problem. A people who know nothing better to do than to shop turn out to be the most determinative killers, because at last something interesting has dropped in their laps, and they don’t know how to think about it. May the church and the university be accordingly judged.

Hauerwas, September 11: A Pacifist Response

I would amend this by saying that shoppers are not killers but may be quite willing to pay other people to kill for them. Question: what is meant here by “determinative”?

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Didn’t sleep last night. Kept blowing my nose despite taking Benadryl and ended up downstairs so M could get some sleep. Found it hard to breathe and took Albuterol at 4 a.m. This morning did not go to work and got some sleep in between taking phone messages for M. Went to the doctor’s in the afternoon. Met Dr. Dimitra Mitsani, who heard the wheezing and prescribed “DISKUS"” twice daily.

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Why are people looking at POP ART and Crosses?

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