totally want this

A Time To Reconstruct

Posted Jul 18, 08:10 PM | 2 comments | by Amy Moffitt | Link

by Jonathan Brink

As I stood in my cheap motel room pouring over the evidence one more time, I felt a strange question arise in my Spirit. “Who else is in the Garden?” At that moment I happened to be standing in front of a mirror, and I caught my own reflection. “Who else is in the Garden?”

“We are,” I said out loud, and mirrors don’t lie. Had we located the problem incorrectly? Did the story present another possibility? The answer was a resounding, “Yes.”

Where the traditional theories had always pointed outward, casting the problem away from humanity, the story actually pointed the problem back at us. The key phrase in the story was, “And they realized they were naked.” Naked was always true but their judgment of it had changed. Created in the image of God, humanity held the capacity to construct a reality different from God’s. We held the capacity to judge the self in a way that was untrue. How then does God convince humanity it is good, when it has convinced itself it is not good?

This new possibility opened up an entirely new way of seeing the story. The problem wasn’t with God. The problem was in me. I need evidence to the contrary. I needed evidence that would release me from my own captive judgments. I needed someone to take my place in my own retributive form of justice, one that could only see guilt.

The cross was not God sending his Son to satisfy the demands of Satan, or to appease his own sense of justice. The cross was God lifting his arms to the world and saying, “This is how far I will go to show you that my original judgment of you was true.” For the first time the Gospel could be framed as a ferocious love. God’s justice was found in the act of mercy. It made sense in a way that seemed to redeem the Gospel. And it was so simple.

I'm still wrestling with my own religious (a-religious) feeling and am not sure where I land on much of it but this is really well said

I am an introvert.

And, like my fellow introverts, I am sorely misunderstood.

Common wisdom says that America is a nation of extroverts and here, introversion is stigmatized. Parents worry about children who would rather play alone in their rooms than join the gang in the playground. Bookish teenagers are exhorted to break out of their shells. Adults are chastised if they would rather work alone than as team players.

Phooey.

I'm not shy, socially awkward or in any way (that I know of) socially inept. I don't hate people, I'm not unfriendly, I'm not stuck up, and I am perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation. I can even speak in public and do so fairly often. To meet me, you might think I'm extroverted.

LOOOVE!

So, aside from the fact that Paul is a friend and there he is with Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick ... the coolest part of this blog post is what Paul says about "Bidden or not, God is present". The first and only sermon I ever walked out on (with gusto) was when a pastor and my old "boss" said that if good isn't done in the name of Jesus, it's empty works. I find that one of the most offensive and limiting things to say about God.

I don't know what I think about Christianity as an institutionalized religion anymore...I'm giving it all a rest in my tired head and heart...but one thing I do know is that if I ever go back to church, I refuse to go to one that has the notion that nothing good comes from anywhere but Christians.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed the death of one American. An organization that works with children in Uganda identified him as Nate Henn.

In a post on its website, the organization -- Invisible Children -- said Henn was in the country working with Ugandan students. CNN could not independently verify the information.

Sending support and love to Invisible Children - an amazing organization.

My husband rightly suggested this story to me as one I would appreciate.

A grassroots effort to raise money to feed Haitian orphans. $10 is all it takes.

Gottman found that all couples -- those who are happily married into their rocking-chair years and those who divorce before they hit their fifth anniversary -- disagree more or less the same amount. He found that they all argue about the same subjects -- money, kids, time and sex chief among them -- and that for the average couple, 69 percent of those disagreements will be irreconcilable.

really good stuff