Here it is Photo Saturday again. I decided to use it to give you a glimpse of my new Chevy Sonic. I have had it over a month now and simply love it. This picture was taken as we entered Moab Utah. I thought the orange mountains were a good backdrop for my inferno orange car :) Continue reading My New Sonic…
I am going to jump ahead a little here so that I can put something into your mind before we tackle early church leaders. To illustrate my point I want to once again use a quote from The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox: Thus, it is now clear that the “official Christianity” that eventually emerged was only one among a range of “Christianities” that thrived during the earliest years. The distinction we still make today between “orthodox” and “heretical” movements did not exist. There was nothing inevitable or preordained about which version, if any, would predominate. It is very … Continue reading Official Christianity….
Maybe you read here that I recently bought a new Chevy Sonic to replace my twenty year old truck. Of course that also meant getting insurance for it. It turns out that since it has such a high safety rating that the insurance is actually cheaper than our four-year old HHR. I was certainly pleasantly surprised by that! But getting insurance got me to thinking about all those commercials we see about them on TV. It seems that every company claims that if you buy their insurance you will save $xxx a year in premiums. How can they all make … Continue reading About That Auto Insurance…
These very hot summer days are getting to me. In past years I have always rationalized having to endure the cold winter days so I could get some pleasant summer ones. I know last winter was probably the mildest one I have seen in at least twenty years so maybe these super hot summer days are in contrast to that. When I first rented a house in my bachelor days of the 1970s I hated having to mow the lawn. The lawn was no more than fifty by one hundred feet but it was the fact that I HAD to … Continue reading I Hate Crunchy Grass….
Should we still have ambition in our senior years or is this just a time to give that up? That is a question that has been dogging me lately. My wife, for the most part, has not had much ambition, at least by my standards, for the last twenty-five years. She is totally content to live her daily life in exactly the same very passive manner day after day. She does not see the need or desire to become involved in much of anything; she does not dream of things outside her usual daily existence. I on the other hand … Continue reading Ambition in Our Senior Years??
The Future of Faith (Cox, Harvey) As we have seen, these early Christian “historians” were neither critical nor neutral. They were not even historians. They were churchmen who aspired to become the leaders of the next generation of Christians. They were anything but disinterested, and they had an agenda that was not particularly hidden. Looking for a potent way to establish their own authority, they seized upon a very compelling idea. A historian is supposed to be a person that is critical of stated history but remains neutral as to the results. Some of the early church “historians” were as … Continue reading Early Church Historians…
While on vacation recently we ate at a five-star restaurant at Mesa Verde. When the meal came all the food was stacked in the middle of the plate. I know I frequently see that on the food cable channels but I never actually see people eat that food. I know the stacking is done because it is supposed to look better that way but how is it supposed to be eaten? Are you supposed to un-assemble it so that it can be eaten or are you supposed to somehow pick through the layers to get what you want? I don’t … Continue reading About That Meal….
The title of this post came to me as I was recently reading the book Falling Upward by Richard Bohr. In this book the author says each of us has two distinct parts of our lives. The first is making the container and the second is filling it with what we were meant to do. Although I don’t necessarily agree with some parts of this book the thought of having two distinctive parts of your life is thought-provoking for me. It just makes sense. How much of your life you spend building the container and how much filling it with … Continue reading It’s Hard To Make a Fine Wine When All You Have Is Sour Grapes….
Being that I have been on vacation for the last few weeks Photo Saturday took a back seat to my On-The-Road posts. I am starting them up again here. But this one is still from our vacation :) We spent a lot of time on the Colorado roads such as this one. I never tired of seeing the view…. Continue reading Oh the Rockies……
Just a quick aside to give you some words from a Sojourners email I recently received. We must all take to heart the words of Jesus in this matter. It shames me that this discussion is even necessary in our country: We have a genuine hope for a long term bipartisan solution and, in particular, a moral non-partisan commitment to protect the poor and vulnerable from being expendable in these fiscal debates. We should also say that Democratic budgets have not been models of fiscal responsibility and social justice either. But what the House budget is calling for is morally … Continue reading Aside – An Immoral Document…
Source: Insurers like that health law ruling sets their path – USATODAY.com. Companies are spending hundreds of millions on technology already to cut administrative costs, he said. Instead of buying individual health policies through agents who take up to 10% of the policy’s cost in commissions, consumers will buy coverage online or on the phone, he said, to help meet the law’s requirement that insurers spend 80% of premiums on health-care services. This is an article about how the private insurers are trying to cope with the new healthcare laws recently found to be constitutional by the Supreme court. One of … Continue reading Insurers like that health law ruling sets their path – USATODAY.com
We have filled a small corner of our mosaic of church history so I will soon be moving on to discuss some of the early theologians of the church. I am certainly not done talking about the ordinary people who made up the beginnings of the church but I wanted to try to have a small closure for now. I couldn’t find a better quote about that than this one from Harvey Cox in The Future of Faith: In the last few decades however, all these assumptions have proven erroneous. The following are now evident. First, there never was a … Continue reading A Small Closure….
We stick to the old American principle of only working when the boss is looking. – April 8, 1933 Will Rogers I’m sure this is as true today and maybe more so that it was in Will’s day only the techniques of not getting caught has changed. I read a statistic somewhere that said that up to 40% of a desk jockey’s time at the office now days is spent cruising the Internet, posting on Facebook, or ordering personal items on-line. When I retired twelve years ago I was surrounded by three computers all connected to the Internet but I … Continue reading When The Boss Is Looking….
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 