SPQR

Thanks again for some good brain food. I read this a couple of times when i did not have time to comment...well, actually keep thinking about the quote from Campolo...and it keeps bugging me. If he is right, then much of my (and i am sure other reader's) axioms are not. I found the same problem when dealing with the words of Jesus...they do not fit my Christian up bringing. If Jesus is right when he said various things, from talking about demons or fasting, or when he made wine, he stepped on someone's Christian toe. When he laid out a worry free, non competitive plan to live by, it went, and still goes, against all of our axioms. I guess its that we don't trust his judgement that makes us not just do what he says, but instead, we take his commands and observations to extremes, as if that is the only thing he could have meant, and therefore we think kindness to single moms breeds (so to speak) promiscuity, and systematically helping poor and sick people breeds dependency. Instead of it being his way of furthering his kngdom here on earth. "on earth as it is in heaven"

I suppose atheists have an excuse to becontent with their tax dollars going 10X for war as for socially uplifting programs, but we Christians are stuck.

Did i ever tell you i used to ditch classes at Philmont to catch this radical sociology lecturer at Penn named Tony?

Really? Huh. Thought provoking. Classes began last week. Subsequently quiet from me on this blog.

You are gracious...HUH? That felt like a gentle put down(!) I wrote my comment while stopped at a fast food place that had internet, and didn't want to not reply[sic]. But I was writing on a little palm screen, and my thoughts were not as jumbled as they came out.

Restated:
1) you are like NPR, and ai appreciate your pulling interesting and provoking things together. I missed you over the summer, and appreciate your communicationg on this blog.

2) There is a knee jerk reaction in my ( whether genetic, or cultural, or because of the fall, I don't know) that makes me want to make Tony Campolo's comments, to an extreme, and therefore nullify them. But then I realised that I think I (we) do that to Jesus' words all along, and call it excegesis. But the face value simple things he said and did are extreme....but not absurd...If he is God. And so the wine wasn't grape juice in those days, and the demoniac wasn't merely bipolar, and we really are supposed to not worry about tomorrow, just seek the kingdom...what does that mean? WEll, read the rest of the talk in which Jesus said that. It does not include pension planning and mortgage insurance and investing in this present kingdom. It started by pretty much putting the Right of "pursuit of happiness" on it's head, in the beattitudes.

So we shouldn't be surprised, or even maybe outraged when a modern day AMOS, or ANDREW, or TONY tells us to reconsider what we are calling righteousness (again) Sadly, We are.

The fluidity of your post, Nat, came through in the suggestion to subscribe to the NY Times...another knee jerk for me. I think i have lived a bit isolated enough from main line evangelicalism, but have not yet felt kinship wiht the "liberal media" that my first reaction is to expect to disagree with people who I have somehow come into agreement with.

Its harrd being a pharisee!