Linkathon!
May God bless the hell out of you…
Christians, stop being political jerks…
Truth, justice, and the torturing of tolerance…
Most white evangelicals don’t want to live in a religiously diverse country…
Can there be a church without doctrines?
Was the Protestant Reformation a radical revolution?
We need a Savior more than a state…
Christianity and climate change…
Integrity and the future of the church…
My father taught me how to love the exvangelical…
Tolkiens theological speculations…
What will keep us from building a church in the ruins?
Lessons from the Reformations pamphlet war…
Letters of the St. Nicholas league…
Churches pay back stimulus funds…
The Tolkien link is very good. I highly recommend people read the Silmarillion, which has been called the Old Testament to the Lord of the Rings’ New Testament. You might wonder why bother with fantasy fiction, but while Tolkien hated the idea of allegory, his books are very applicable as companions to our lives in Christ. So many are bogged down in politics, theology debates, etc. Tolkien is so refreshingly Christian, even though Christ is never mentioned, as the idea is his stories pre-date the Incarnation. It’s all about moral courage and beauty, and as we know, beauty will save the world.
There’s a group of Christians who are interested in what they are calling “re-enchanting” the world. They are not talking about magic; they are talking about living in the reality that the world is filled with spirits (good and bad) and Saints, and they are present all the time, not remote. Sacramental Christians already believe that a miracle occurs every Sunday morning at Communion. This is so much more appealing than wrangling about politics (I am guilty) and theology (also guilty).
Tolkien’s writings, in ways you might not expect, are a very helpful bridge from the dreary materialistic/rational/logical/enlightenment world all around us to the world where God and his angels and Saints dwell.
“….. as we know, beauty will save the world.”
Say what? How?
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness….
Reading “My father taught me how to love an evangelical.. ”
It brought back the most poignant memory i have of my husband’s passing….
3 am as the funeral home drove down the driveway, i looked out the living room window to see my son, a Marine, standing out there in the dark snapping a smart salute to his father as he was transported down the hill – he didn’t know anyone was watching, just a salute to his good, hard nosed dad.
I never told him i saw him…. Perhaps i should.
Xenia, thank you, but are they the means or the result?
Beauty can change lives. Especially if folks realize the Author of it all!
I mean, there have been conversions in Japan due to the influence of Bach.
Philip Yancey in his new memoir cites beauty as one of 3 things that delivered him out of a toxic Christian upbringing and seeing God as a punitive Judge.
Nature and music can be reflections of beauty.
I’m having a hard time quantifying it — doesn’t make it any less true, though.
Where there is Christ, there is Truth, Beauty and Goodness.
Where there is Truth, Beauty and Goodness, there is Christ.
Thank you, Xenia. Beautifully stated!
Xenia
The platonic triad! Aquinas based his whole Summa upon it…
Xenia, Lovely comments. Before I became a Christian, I would stare at a flower, or a sunset and I would think to myself, ” There really MUST be a God” – even though I wasn’t raised to believe there was by my upbringing. Today I still feel God’s presence especially keenly when I am in the midst of great natural beauty.
“The flowers are fragrant by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
That’s a line from an Orthodox hymn, the Akathist of Thanksgiving, “Glory to God for All Things.”
The 2nd-last link is the same as the one before it.
fixed