Refractions and Reflections

A couple of my Facebook friends shared this article yesterday, wherein Matt Moore describes how for years he plead with God to make him straight. Though I do not affirm his moral conclusions on the matter, I think it is a thoughtful post, and in fact quite gracious (from a Conservative viewpoint) to those who may be in the Church and experiencing same-sex attraction - it doesn't discount it or degrade them for their plight. Moore concluded, however, that his prayers to God were based not on a desire to be "right" with God, but on a desire to "fit in" or be found acceptable to other Christians. He cites the Romans 1:18-26 anti-homosexuality clobber text and states, "Homosexual desire – and all other sinful desire — exists in the hearts of people because worship of God doesn't. ...So why didn't God answer my prayer to rid me of my homosexual desires? Because homosexual desires were not my main problem. They were a problem, for sure. But the root of...

I've been reading the book Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber . My phone says I'm on 144 of 206, so I plan to finish it tonight, but I had to stop a few pages back and write out some thoughts. On page 139 Nadia is talking about Matthew 3:17 - 4:1, where God names Jesus "Son" and "Beloved" and then immediately Jesus is tempted by the devil in the wilderness, and she says, "Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, 'If you are the Son of God...' he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God.   "So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question. Identity is like the tip of a spool of thread, which when pulled, can unwind the ...

---1--- Nelson Mandela passed away today. I am embarrassed to admit, I don't know much about him. I know he was a president of South Africa, and I think he had something to do with ending apartheid. I intend to remedy this lack of knowledge!! However, I did come across this awesome quote from him: ---2--- I'm on Book 7 of Harry Potter. Early into it, Hermione explains to Harry and Ron what she has discovered about horcruxes and how to destroy them: "But even if we wreck the thing [horcrux] it [a division of Voldemort's soul] lives in," said Ron, "why can't the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else?"  "Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being."   Seeing that Harry and Ron looked thoroughly confused, Hermione hurried on, "Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn't damage your soul at all."  "Which would be a real comfort to me, I...

His last name was Erasmus. I imagine you’d prefer to be known by your last name, too, if your first name was Desiderius. But actually, he chose his name for himself! He had been born Gerrit Gerritszoon, which is Dutch for Gerard Gerardson. His parents died while he was still a child, and he spent six years being educated in a monastery. Later, as an adult, he was a Greek professor at Cambridge. In 1516 he published his annotated Greek New Testament – one of the first ever. He was reviled within the Catholic community because he criticized abuses within the Church and called for reform (though he was a priest and remained a Catholic his whole life). The arising Protestants, too, treated him hostilely, because he interpreted Scripture and Early Church Fathers from a humanist, rational perspective, but still rejected the idea of “faith alone” and retained a respect for traditional faith and the authority of the pope.    Erasmus was not fully accepted by either side of the Chur...