The other Abrahamic religions approach God through an Old Testament consciousness and depict Him as an incomprehensible, absolute, autocratic master. Well, okay, Christianity does that, too.

The problem is that such depictions are (or should be) irreconcilable and incompatible with Christianity and its emphasis on ...

If your Litmus Tests involve things likesincere and humble submission to the Pope or any other external authoritypooh-poohing the depth of evil revealed during events like the birdemicor insisting that everyone vote in the most important election ever to save civilization then you adhere to Litmus Tests that fail ...

I suggest this is a real phenomenon. You may say space appears to contract because technology has reduced distance while time seems to rush by because life has become so fast and rapidly changing, and I would not dispute that but I would also maintain that this is more than an impression because of our circumstances. ...

This afternoon I was in my study, which is full of bookcases, and one of the books caught my eye: The Small Golden Key to the Treasure of the Various Essential Necessities of General and Extraordinary Buddhist Dharma by Thinley Norbu. (One can only hope that the book is as well-written as the ...

I had two strange, rather detailed dreams last night, which I document here in case they should turn out to be significant:

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I dreamed that I was with a "friend," a man, whose identity was not clearly defined. We were outside and saw in the distance some kind of large carcass with carrion birds flocking around ...

Spirit is ultimate reality. It can be denied, but it can never truly be destroyed. If it could be destroyed, the material world as we know it would simply cease to exist for the simple reason that the material is a subcategory of the spiritual.

Whenever we perceive the material world as nothing more than the material ...

Healthism is one of the Litmus Test issues for Christians, in the sense that Christians need to be clear that there are more-important things than health and longevity, including survival.

Health cannot be the life-priority for Christians - if it is, they simply cease to be Christian.

This was the underlying ...

Optimism about this-worldly matters is all fine and well; however, it is by no means a Christian obligation, duty, virtue, or value. Being buoyant and cheerful about temporal matters may provide emotional, physical, and social benefits; however, such benefits do not necessarily benefit one’s spirit or ...

Every mortal life on this earth has-been and will-be a failure, whatever you do.

Of course!

This has been known since ancient days by whoever is most thoughtful and honest. So we should acknowledge this from the beginning!

And then...?

And then solve the problem - don't merely "cope" with it by some combination ...

On April 22, William Wright posted "Shushan!", which included a clip from the James Bond spoof movie Johnny English Reborn in which a Chinese man who apparently turns out to be a spy or gangster or something is wearing a nametag that says Susan, prompting English's sidekick to say, "Sir, I don't think he's a Susan." ...

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Having been tipped-off that the 2007 Halldor Laxness biography by Halldor Gudmundsson had been issued in paperback and Kindle; I bought myself a copy to re-read.

Although I did not much enjoy the biography, because Laxness was such a "high psychoticism" kind of genius as to make uncomfortable ...

I have just learned that Karl Wallinger, the Welsh-born musician, multi-instumentalist, and songwriter best known for his work with The Waterboys and World Party, passed away a little more than a month ago at 66.

In all honesty, I don't know much more about Wallinger nor the bands with which he was associated, but ...

"I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made men out of nothing: there is no nothing out of which to make anything: God is all in all, and he made us out of himself. He who is parted from God has no original nothingness with which to take refuge."

George MacDonald, Weighed and Wanting.

George ...

I would recommend reading Francis Berger's recent analysis of why the "Socio-Sexual Hierarchy" discourse is so abhorrent - especially among self-identified Christians.

Berger captures most of the many reasons why I find the whole thing so stupid, and embarrassing!

Embarrassing, because I don't think those who ...

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I recommend watching the (legiondary?) 1977 BBC adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth classic children's novel.

This comes from that seventies Golden Age of serious children's TV; which probably began with the 1969 version of Alan Garner's The Owl Service and perhaps reached ...

If, as Christians believe, love is indeed the most important "thing"; that, in some sense, creation is "made-from" love - then I can imagine the first stage as God's love of the (already-existing) Beings of reality.

A state in which these Beings are only-as very-slightly self-aware as babies or infants, and they ...

The cuckoos are calling, which means the poppies will begin blooming soon.

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Love is the major and ineradicable constraint on the Christian possibilities of this mortal life.

By which I mean that it is the intrinsic limitations of our ability to love in this-life; that mean "Heaven on Earth" is not just difficult but impossible

It is the limits of our ability to love that - to various ...

Last night I was once again creating a glossary to accompany an English reading assignment for my Taiwanese students. The article had to do with health, and one of the words I had to gloss was build. My students were already familiar with the primary sense of that verb, as in "build a house" (Chinese 建造), but this ...

Romanticism began in the middle to late 1700s, among a few - mostly upper class - individuals in Western Europe; and progressively spread in its influence through the general population of The West.

I regard this as a surface manifestation of a development of human consciousness, which is ultimately divinely ...

Those who promulgate or display an obsessive interest in things like sociosexual hierarchies tend to refer to whatever they criticize or oppose as fake and gay.

No real objection from me there; much of what sociosexual hierarchy adherents criticize or oppose is indeed fake and gay.

However, sociosexual hierarchy ...

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A sketch by JRRT of the building where he lodged at Stonyhurst

A brief but interesting account of a lecture from March 1946, by Tolkien in Stonyhurst school and discovered by Oronzo Cilli, is given over at my Notion Club Papers blog.

Yesterday, I saw a link on Synlogos to a John C. Wright post titled simply "Eautology," and I clicked just to see what the word was supposed to mean. On first seeing it, I mentally pronounced it as a homophone of otology, thinking the first element must be eau, the French for "water." I guessed the t was added for ...

I have often written about the Litmus Test issues of our time; those thin-end-of-wedges, those slippery slopes, those tips of evil-icebergs.

A Litmus Test is an issue that is linked to the agenda of evil; the strategy of Satan and the demons. The issue itself may seem to be minor, subjective, or in principle not ...

Many Christians and conservatives continually express deep concerns about the future -- more exactly, about the kind of world we will leave our children and grandchildren. Though I empathize with such concerns, I find most are limited in perspective and tainted by misguided notions of what the future means in ...

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The nightmare was always the same. Eleven years old, storming out of the backdoor of their old country house, running at full speed past the kitchen garden and into the lemon grove, then through the abandoned park and into the road that finally leads to the factory. Flames and fumes of green and ...

I stumbled across this recording and was immediately gripped, and deeply impressed, by its musicianship.

Once begun; I could not stop watching and listening.

Indeed, this may be the single most impressive playing of a piece by Bach on piano I have heard since Glenn Gould - although the interpretation is extremely ...

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Like many boys before the middle 1960s, I had a craze on railway trains, in particular steam trains - fuelled by the stories of anthropomorphic railways by the Rev W Awdry, and from watching the many "tank engines" working at the coal mine just opposite my Granny's house.

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But ...

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One reason that we are fed a relentless diet of dystopian books, movies and TV - i.e. why this theme is so lavishly funded by The Establishment; is that consuming dystopian fiction demonstrably has zero benefit in terms of prevention (but instead facilitates actual dystopias by psychological and ...