Leadingchurch.com

“I Have a Character Issue – NYTimes.com” http://feedly.com/k/19Eqn2K

And she tries to help him. Powerful story. 

• The piece from TC
• The interview with Diane Sawyer where we see Antionette’s heart. 

It’s interesting how the analysis about how she could manage the outcome, but her words were that of self-disclosing empathy and love. Amazing!

Link

It is interesting how this statement begins with “you”. We have the problem in English that we don’t have a differentiated plural for “you”. It’s tough because these statements so easily slide into the God being our tool to pursue our own expressive individualism. 

http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html

Another entry in the millennial conversation.

From the WSJ book review on DG Hart’s history of Calvinism Unfortunately it’s probably behind a paywall.

Nice piece. Quotes

I don’t want to “exclude” the people who continue to draw boundaries and defend doctrines today. That would defeat my point here. In fact, I welcome diversity. However, the only practical way to be diverse is to be gracious about a diversity of beliefs.

I have beliefs and convictions about certain doctrines, but they pale in importance to experiencing Jesus day to day and sharing him with others, welcoming anyone who is thirsty.

And a comment.

It’s interesting that he lands on the experiential. Brings the Mark Galli piece to mind. 

Called to Love the Whore

The thin veneer of easy-grace-nicey-Americana assumes grace and generosity are natural, easy, and flow abundantly from our hearts with the tiniest prick of dainty admonition. It is the surfacy, plastic, unreal people that we imagine ourselves to be in our collective consciousness for which this is true. Real people are frightened, insecure, and touchy a lot of the time exerting real effort in public trying to both simultaneously “be nice” and “authentic”. Posting comments online, especially anonymously too often reveals both the truth about fearful ourselves and our plastic selves.

Extending grace to the ungracious, loving your enemy, speaking the truth, are all things that require deep maturity, strength and an existential foundation that is uncommon and costly.

We have blithely confused love with “wanting to be loved”. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13 is a crippling manifesto that exposes the fraud of the church and the rebellion of the world. The church is always both ground zero for grace and the scandal that it is.