Sincerity

"Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others." Francois de la Rochefoucauld Ironically, I found this quote in a newsletter I receive. It's one of the most insincere pieces of marketing hype I have ever …

Known By God

Christ is risen! In Gal 4: 9 Paul says, "… now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God …" "Modernity" is the period of time that stretches from the Enlightenment until recently, when our (that is, us humans) confidence in all things human began to be shaken. …

The Manner in which God Accepts Us

Christ is risen! Here's a wonderful quote for Bright Week: Justification is not about how individual sinners can find salvation; it begins as a statement of the way in which God accepts all who believe the gospel. From N.T. Wright, discussing the context (Gal. 2) in which Paul first mentions justification by faith, in a …

Trampling Down Death by Death

Pascha! Happy Pascha! Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen! Once again we are reminded that God's normal operation in creation is to win by losing. He trampled death by death. He didn't  overwhelm it with strength. He didn't send 10,000 angels (as the old hymn reminds us). He submitted to the enemy (death) and …

The Services of the Bridegroom

We have reached Holy Week on the Orthodox calendar. Today was Palm Sunday. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights are the Services of the Bridegroom. They are services of expectation, and more importantly, attentiveness as we prepare for events of the passion. Today is Easter on the Western Calendar, and so most American Christians are already …

Personal Authority and the “Amen” of the People

I received a private email about my last essay from a friend who didn't want his name connected with the Antiochian debate. He took me to task for ignoring the voice of the laity in this debate. He made a fair point that requires more than a passing comment. I will begin by saying that …

By Whose Authority?

I have been reading the Gospels during this season and was struck by how scripture is used by both Jesus and the religious leaders. (This is not a formal exegetical study; I'm simply reporting my overall perception based on a season of spending some time in the Gospels. I might be totally off base here.) …

Spring Yard Work

We have some trees that tend to keep their leaves well into the winter, so I generally clean up the leaves in the spring as soon as the lawn dries. That's what I did this week. There were so many I took them to the land fill. (More like a "land hill" than a "land fill" -- they put them on the top of a ridge, so no doubt the neighboring corn fields get the leaves.) I had to weigh in and weigh out. The scale bill said I had 460 lbs of leaves from my yard. That's dry leaves, btw. I had waited long enough so they were no longer soggy. FYI, 460 lbs of dry leaves barely fit into a pickup bed. In fact, they don't fit into a pickup bed. Six of the bags were stuffed in the extended cab.