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Names and describes the re-entry problem - but doesn't suggest a valid Christian solution

Back at the beginnings of this blog I wrote a rather heart-felt post derived from what author Walker Percy termed "the re-entry problem":

What is not generally recognized is that the successful launch of ...

Today we're doing rambling theological speculations instead of sync. A change is as good as a rest.

In Joseph Smith's 1842 summary of Mormon beliefs, the second thing he mentioned -- second only to belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost -- was this:We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not ...

Over the last hundred and fifty years, and especially since the end of the Second World War, Western societies have systematically dismantled the protective devices that guarded them from collapse. Standards, rules and cultural norms that prevented them from internal rot and damage from external sources have been ...

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Artist's impression of a Liberal Christian priest about to perform the "Taizing" ritual

Various "Liberal Christian" churches around here are openly advertising so-called Taize services*.

I have become convinced that Taize is a crudely-obscurationist French translation of Tazer; and that this ...

my wife was telling me yesterday that it's funny how whenever i get into something new very strongly, like music, or gardening, or now fiction, whatever, my instinct is to encourage people to do the same. not just be more creative in general, but specifically. i guess idealistically i believe it would be better for ...

The so-called doctrine of free will has very little to do with authentic freedom. On this, I side with Berdyaev, who identified the free will doctrine as a means through which to make man accountable for evil in the world: “that doctrine was invented to find a culprit, someone who could be held responsible and ...

Here’s a random sync. Earlier today I needed, for something I was writing, an example of a historical figure known for his cruelty. Not wanting to draw from the hackneyed 20th-century rogues' gallery of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and company, I briefly considered Vlad the Impaler and then thought, What about Genghis ...

The Romantic Christians stress the importance of family and love. But on the other hand, they negate all parental instincts to protect and secure worldly happiness for children. And then they claim God is a parent. Seems incoherent to me.

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Love and worldly power go hand in hand.

The above is a comment from ...

not entirely at least

on the other hand

even if in spite of

precisely so

and even then again

however in fact

nevertheless indeed

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It's remarkable that mainstream orthodox traditional Christian theology has been wrestling with the "problem" of explaining evil for the entirety of its recorded history*.

Officially the origin and presence of evil has long-since been explained, to the complete satisfaction of theologians; who cannot understand why ...

This morning, I woke up an hour before my alarm, with a simple melodic motif in my head as if left over from a dream. Wanting to jot it down before it evaporated but not being musical enough to write out a tune by ear, I tapped it out on a piano app and scribbled down the names of the notes: D G B A B E D.

I ...

Thinking about "Rub-a-dub-dub" made me think of a bit of doggerel I wrote when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old. It was inspired by a 12th-century carving that was supposed to represent an angel appearing to the three wise men in a dream but actually looked as if the angel was rolling them up in a rug. Here's a photo of ...

“Turnum outknaves all three” sent me back to my 2023 dream post “Narrative Reasoning,” which begins with a quote from Turnus and ends with a green book that I at first took for a Quran. As I reread that post and its comments, my attention was arrested by a comment from WanderingGondola that said (ellipsis in ...

My understanding of the international scene (which is, in this respect, a macrocosm of what is happening in many individual people); is that most of the populous nations of the world aspire to totalitarianism; but the leadership class of some powerful countries (Western civilization especially) have gone "beyond" ...

As I was contemplating "Rub-a-dub-dub" this morning, I spontaneously reinterpreted the last line, "Turn 'em out, knaves all three," as "Turnum outknaves all three" -- meaning that Turnum (accusative of Turnus, the Rutulian king whose death brings the Aeneid to an abrupt end) is even more of a knave than the butcher, ...

It is one of the more obvious lessons of life experience that prolonged engagement with some kind of evil environment almost-always has a corrupting effect on people - and consequently on groups including nations.

While theoretically avoidable, in practice is seems almost inevitable that dealing with evil and with ...

What's the use of Jesus in my actual, daily life, here-and-now?

This question needs an answer that is simple and clear enough to be comprehended and grasped whole - or else it will be ineffectual.

But also, of course, the answer must be true - not some kind of incoherent answer; nor one that will soon be ...

Look in any spiritual textbook and it will tell you about humility and self-abnegation, particularly if it is a Christian one. Humility is an important virtue that shows one is not dominated by the ego or separate self which is a materialised expression/distortion of the soul. Self-abnegation likewise indicates that ...

Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to puzzle out the meaning of "The plant is the three pages just starred by an asterisk," followed by an asterisk and then the italicized word or name Gloria. (See my post "Gloria.") I read that on a page that was itself marked with an asterisk, but I quickly decided that that ...

I had planned to spend the bulk of today removing fiberglass insulation from the attic, but I couldn’t find my N95 respirator. Not wanting to run out to the store to buy a new one, I decided to don an old birdemic cloth mask I happened to stumble upon in my workshed.

The N95 respirator is marketed as effective ...

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,Jack jump over the candlestick.

Jack be be rapid, Jack be fleet,Jack jump over the slab of meat.

Jack be hastened, Jack be sped,Jack jump over the loaf of bread.

When I dream, I dream about books.

Last night (July 7-8), I dreamt that I was walking through the corridor of a Mormon church, accompanied by a girl of four or five who was wearing a fancy white dress that made me think that, even though it’s not a Mormon thing, she was there for her First Communion.

In the ...

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The archetypal modern senior manager: heroic, far-sighted, at the cutting edge... A corrupt, mediocre, spiteful, psychopath

Bonald has come up with a convincing proximate explanation for the current AI-dolaltry; that seems to fit with the short/ medium term self-interest of the senior managerial ...

I have long been fascinated by the machinations of the Google search engine - who also own the platform on which this blog is published.

At present, I mean a few minutes ago; this blog seems to be delisted by Google - so that searching my name in quotes for the past week gives no return - zilch. I don't exist.

By ...

Some of the Chinese names for Western countries are quite poetic.

The United States is called 美國, which means “the beautiful country.”

The United Kingdom is called 英國, which means “the heroic country.”

France is called 法國, which means “the country of law.”

Germany is called 德國, which ...

no one cares if you only do one of anything.

every "ancient tradition" was invented in the nineteenth century. now it's time for us to do it.

that i know, there are no Guenon fan girls. but there are plenty of Steiner fan girls. (someone told me since that this was the case from the beginning). so the latter is ...

Because of the nature of human consciousness, we inhabit a world where perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc are irrelevant; because what counts as perceptions, facts, common sense, evidence etc is shaped by our assumptions and interpretations.

So, most people most of the time (and, apparently, some people ...

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Zdzisław Beksiński - Untitled (often referred to as one of his cruciform paintings). ​Once someone has absorbed the assumptions of mainstream modern materialism, he cannot believe in Heaven - and, much worse, he does not even want it to be true!

The above comes from a ...

When I dream, I dream about books.

I dreamt I was in a listening room at a company that manufactures high-end audio equipment, which in real life is owned by a family I have known and worked with for years. I put an unmarked vinyl record on the turntable, and out of speakers worth as much as a small house came what ...

It is strange to a modern mind, but makes obvious sense if this is the creation of a good and loving God; that our innate understanding of the world, which we spontaneously experience as young children, often (and ideally) seems to be more coherent than any of the others which come to replace it.

In other words; a ...