I am very close to finding God.
Selections
This Far, But No Farther: Paul’s Radical Ecumenism in Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
The Bad Seed
The Bible we have is a book in one volume, and so we read it as if it's a book in one volume. But it's really a whole bunch of books, and gospels, and pieces of poems, like a Lutheran hot dish, which is why we have Protestantism.
“we medicate the mysterious, and in relieving suffering, take its meaning away”
The truth, in many cases, doesn't matter. What matters is what is believed.
The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Our story starts in the 13th century, with a man named Simon Stock. He will eventually become a saint (though he may never have existed, which is a trick some saints do; and then again, he may have absolutely existed, since parts of him are scattered throughout Europe, with some bones in Bordeaux, a tibia in Kensington, and part of his skull that he no longer needed, resting in Aylesford), but he isn't when we meet him, on 16 July 1251, experiencing a vision of the Holy Mother, a brown scapular in her hand, and a promise that anyone wearing it would be delivered from Purgatory (if to Purgatory they were sent) on the immediately subsequent Saturday, which was the Holy Mother's day to run errands, selecting the not-yet-holy who sported the divine object.
A.N. Wilson is Not Good
Wilson isn't...gay? Enough? I mean, all Englishmen are gay, and everyone in England is an actor who has appeared in EastEnders or played Miss Marple (or both), so these gay Englishmen who perform heteronormativity are just really good at disappearing into the role. Except Wilson.
Mike Bevel 