Open Letter to Brian McLaren:

Well, I'm writing to you because I was checking the calendar this month and I noticed that 23 Jan 2011 was just around the corner -- in fact, it's this Sunday. Now, for me personally, that's when the reminder for my mother's birthday pops up, but the reason it came up on my Outlook was that it turns out that this Sunday will be the expiration of a 5-year moratorium you put into motion back in 2006.

Jesus walks into a bar and tells the bartender, "Gimme a wine glass and fill it with water, please..."

"When we intend to pray for goodness, let all our thought and desire be contained in the one small word "God." Nothing else and no other words are needed, for God is the epitome of all goodness.... Immerse yourself in the spiritual reality it speaks of yet without precise ideas of God's works whether small or great, spiritual or material. Do not consider any particular virtue which God may teach you through grace, whether it is humility, charity, patience, abstinence, hope, faith, moderation, chastity, or evangelical poverty. For to a contemplative they are, in a sense, all the same.... Let this little word represent to you God in all his fullness and nothing less than the fullness of God."

Any practioners of this or Hesychasm (mentioned in the yoga poll) or any suchlike out there? Or are these practices too close to the meditations of the eastern religions for comfort?

Because a generalized love of liberty doesn't distinguish tea partiers from other Americans, liberals have been free to speculate on the "real" motives behind the movement. Explanations so far have spanned a rather narrow range, from racism (they're all white!) to greed (they just don't want to pay taxes!) to gullibility (Glenn Beck has hypnotized them!). Such explanations allow liberals to disregard the moral claims of tea partiers. But the passion of the tea-party movement is, in fact, a moral passion. It can be summarized in one word: not liberty, but karma.

For all the jokes, however, it appeared [Stephen] Colbert was there [testifying before a House subcommittee] for more than comedy. When asked by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) why he was interested in farm workers, the comedian suddenly turned serious.

"I like talking about people who don't have any power," he said. "And it just seems like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don't have any rights as a result. And yet we still invite them to come here, and at the same time ask them to leave."

Colbert, a practicing Catholic who occasionally teaches Sunday school, quoted the biblical passage about helping "the least of my brothers," adding: "Migrant workers suffer and have no rights."

Perhaps it is proof of the supernatural truth of Christianity that heresy tends to snowball into things that have vast consequences.

I believe in God the Father Almighty,Maker of heaven and earth:And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of sins; the Resurrection of the body, and the Life everlasting. Amen.

Look at what happened when people began denying the one communion of saints. Finding that the Church was not named by name in the Hebrew Bible, some folks imagined that the Jews might have some kind of eschatological fate separate from the Church.

This break in the unity of the communion of saints led to further breaches in unity. No more single Second Coming; the Church gets a separate second coming and the Jews get a third coming. No more single Last Judgment; they too come in a series of multiple judgments. The Bible is shattered, treated like a jigsaw puzzle that believers must piece together.

Eventually this heresy led to a floridly psychotic interpretation of history. Omens of the End Times were seen in current events. The foundation of the Jewish state in Palestine was invested with cosmic significance. Because we have been blessed through Israel, the heretics transfer this blessing to the current Israeli government and all its oppressive works, which, though not the worst that's ever been, are nothing we should smile on. Because war is found in prophecy, the heretics turned their back on Jesus blessing the peacemakers. Instead, they teach us to look forward to wars, especially Middle Eastern wars, for they are omens that Christ's return is imminent. Peace is the language of the Antichrist, according to the heretics. The Antichrist is a single person, a satanic Messiah, and he might be the talking head on the TV, or the King of Spain, or the prime minister of Vanuatu, or your next door neighbor.

When Jesus does return, these people will appear before Him and say, "Look at what we brought you! War, tyranny, and paranoia! Aren't You proud of us?"

Astounding that such a small matter of apparently arcane theology started a snowball rolling that led to the construction of an entire belief system that Christians ought to regard with disgust and dismay and that it has deceived many believers.

what is everybody reading this summer?

me? when i'm not reading emperorbma or PineHall at theophiles.org, i've been taking another swing at Jaroslav Pelikan, through whom i've discovered that i would probably have been a Marcionist sympathizer had i been around back in that day. and Montanus possessed a certain charm, too... lucky for me it was all settled by the time i came on the scene...

but anyway, what are you reading?