Great Smile, Crushing Theology

Great Smile

In the Bible, God is seen as a Savior—someone who rescues people when they are at their worst, not when they are thinking positive thoughts. St. Paul met Jesus while he was still “breathing out murderous threats” against Christians. In Acts 27:20, St. Paul and St. Luke “abandoned all hope of being saved” in a storm at sea, before Paul comes to his senses and affirms God’s presence with him. In Matthew 26, Peter denied Jesus three times, just as Jesus went to the cross to save him (and everyone else). In the Old Testament, God chooses Israel not because of their greatness and strength, but because of their smallness and weakness.

So if you have total control of your mental outlook, and if you are able to always do the right thing, Osteen’s your man. However, if you are frustrated, tired, unable to do the thing you ought to do, I suggest you look to Jesus.

-  Read the rest of the Mockingbird's article, Osteen : Great Smile, Crushing Theology

Mike Lewis's graduation speech to Princeton

"...The book I wrote was called "Liar’s Poker."  It sold a million copies. I was 28 years old. I had a career, a little fame, a small fortune and a new life narrative. All of a sudden people were telling me I was born to be a writer. This was absurd. Even I could see there was another, truer narrative, with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady? Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm from which to write the story of an age? Of landing in the seat with the best view of the business? Of having parents who didn't disinherit me but instead sighed and said "do it if you must?" Of having had that sense of must kindled inside me by a professor of art history at Princeton? Of having been let into Princeton in the first place?

This isn't just false humility. It's false humility with a point. My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either...

...In a general sort of way you have been appointed the leader of the group. Your appointment may not be entirely arbitrary. But you must sense its arbitrary aspect: you are the lucky few. Lucky in your parents, lucky in your country, lucky that a place like Princeton exists that can take in lucky people, introduce them to other lucky people, and increase their chances of becoming even luckier. Lucky that you live in the richest society the world has ever seen, in a time when no one actually expects you to sacrifice your interests to anything. 

All of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may. But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't. 

Never forget: In the nation's service. In the service of all nations.

Thank you. 

And good luck."  

 - Mike Lewis, writer of "Moneyball", speaking to Princeton graduates

Wikipiphany

Is it true? - Matthew Parris, The Spectator

‘Faith’ means faith. Doubt is not faith. Faith is not seeking but finding. Real Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Jewish believers are being patronised by kindly agnostics who privately believe that the convictions of those they patronise are delusions. A lazy mish-mash of covert agnosticism is being advanced in defence of religion as a social institution. But ‘whatever floats your boat’ is not the wellspring of Judaic belief. The God of the Gap is not the God of Islam. Jesus did not come to earth to offer the muzzy comforts of weekly ritual, church weddings and the rhythm of public holidays.

As an unbeliever my sympathies are with fundamentalists. They seem to me to represent the source, the roots, the essential energy of their faiths. They go back to basics. To those who truly believe, the implicit message beneath ‘never mind if it’s true, religion is good for people’ is insulting. To those who really believe, it is because and only because what they believe is true, that it is good. I find David Cameron’s remark that his faith, ‘like Magic FM in the Chilterns, tends to fade in and out’, baffling. If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out.

As I get older the sharpness of my faculties begins to dull. But what I will not do is sink into a mellow blur of acceptance of the things I railed against in my youth. ‘Familiar’ be damned. ‘Comforting’ be damned. ‘Useful’ be damned. Is it true? — that is the question. It was the question when I was 12 and the question when I was 22. Forty years later it is still the question. It is the only question.

- Matthew Parris, on his article "Beware - I would say to believers - the patronage of unbelievers" in The Spectator

A Summary of Michel Foucault

1. Authorship is a modern idea.
2. We cannot know an author.
3. Therefore the author does not have authority.
4. Hence we need to interpret.
5. We cannot interpret the original author - so we can all bring our own interpretations.
6. I can bring any meaning I like. I can use the text however I like.
7. Everything in the world is a text - I can understand anything in the world however I like

From Marcus Honeysett's Meltdown

Arrested Development vs The Godfather

How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood

By Alyssa Bereznak

My parents split up when I was 4. My father, a lawyer, wrote the divorce papers himself and included one specific rule: My mother was forbidden to raise my brother and me religiously. She agreed, dissolving Sunday church and Bible study with one swift signature. Mom didn’t mind; she was agnostic and knew we didn’t need religion to be good people. But a disdain for faith wasn’t the only reason he wrote God out of my childhood. There was simply no room in our household for both Jesus Christ and my father’s one true love: Ayn Rand....

I don’t know exactly why [my father] sparked to Rand. He claimed the philosophy appealed to him because it’s based solely on logic. It also conveniently quenched his lawyer’s thirst to always be right. It’s not uncommon for people to seek out belief systems, whether political or spiritual, that make them feel good about how they already live their lives. Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish.

Needless to say, Dad’s newfound obsession with the individual didn’t pan out so well with the woman he married. He was always controlling, but he became even more so. In the end, my mother moved out, but objectivism stayed.

 From Salon Article, "How Ayn Rand ruined my childhood"