Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

142 Days Homeless with God


by Max Andrew Dubinsky

“Why do you think we are reluctant to fear God?” Dave asked two weeks before I was scheduled to leave. I sat back in my chair, a room full of young faces engaged in a Bible study looking back and forth at each other for the answer.

I responded. “I’m reluctant to fear God because I do not know God.” This was not so much a statement as it was a world-wrecking fact. Suddenly it was all so clear. Oh shit. Maybe I’m no going to Heaven after all…I grew up in the church. I’ve been saved three times. I serve at my local church. I give money to the homeless when I have a spare dollar. I attend Bible studies. I lift my hands in the air during worship. How do I not know God?

142 days ago the only God I knew resided inside the four walls of the sanctuary. The God I knew was safe, kind, and only present on Sundays.

“Do you realize what you are doing here?” Mel asked. I was on my way out. Church was over. I needed to catch the bus. But Mel had heard what I was doing. That I was going in search of faith in America. Believing God was calling me across the country on March 1st even though I had no computer, no money, and no car. “You’re being the very faith that you’re going in search of.” She reached out, touched my arm, and smiled.

“I don’t think God is going to give you a car until March 1st,” Christina said. I was sweating this whole thing because I was leaving in less than a week, and I’ve never been great at distinguishing between God’s voice and my own raging inner monologue. I still had no wheels. “God doesn’t give us anything before we actually need it. If He said you were supposed to leave March 1st, then who is to say someone won’t slam on their brakes when you step outside that morning, get out of their car, and hand you the keys?”

I got the car the night before I left. I failed my smog test, couldn’t get it registered, and two hours later the battery died. The next day on the road, my car broke down in the middle of the desert four hours into the trip.

Without missing a beat, I got out and started walking.

It wasn’t until later that night when I finally arrived at my campsite at the Grand Canyon, and saw it was buried 9 feet deep in snow that I realized God was letting these attacks happen not because I wasn’t supposed to go, but because He just wanted to see how far I was willing to take this thing with Him.

Over the last 142 days I have traveled 12,560 miles.

That’s 426 cups of coffee.
279 fast food meals.
36 tanks of gas.
35 different cities.
24 different beds.
8 different couches.
6 motel rooms.
4 air mattresses.
3 breakdowns: 1 car, 2 mental.
2 life-changing God encounters.
And 1 love story.

I spent my first few weeks on the road aimless and without purpose. I desperately wanted to work for God. What exactly was I searching for again? Was I supposed to give a dollar to every homeless man? Preach the Gospel to everyone I meet? Or just look good in my boots and new jacket?

I looked in the mirror. I began to hate what I saw.

Until a woman named Amanda in Florida told me, “I speak to myself the way God would speak to me. When I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see, would God tell me that I’m ugly or fat? No, he’d tell me that I’m beautiful. Because I am. I am beautiful.”

Until Nick in Spokane said to me, “Max, maybe this trip isn’t about you. What if God sent you across the country to change the life of one man? One individual who might never know God if you didn’t cross paths with him. Or to simply bring someone back to Him? I like to think the God we serve is just big enough to orchestrate that.”

It was time to stop working for God, and to start working with Him.

A few weeks later I paced out front of Barnes and Noble, and called a close friend and mentor of mine back in LA. I’d met someone. And I’d fallen in love. This might slow the trip down. She was beautiful. Smart. Hilarious. She spoke to my potential, and was crazy in love with Jesus. I wanted her to come with me. “Lauren is coming with me on the road,” I said to Steven. “We are getting a lot of heat for being two single Christians traveling together. What am I supposed to do?”

“What are you trying to do?” Steven asked. “Are you trying to gain readers and please everyone? Or are you trying to lead a charge?”

Are you leading a charge today? Or trying to make everyone around you feel comfortable?

This world needs shaken. It’s time to turn this place upside down.

In Tampa, sitting outside in the thick, Florida air, Amanda took a final drag on her cigarette. She had finished telling me stories of addiction and sacrifice. Stories about a woman who has died twice and is still here to talk about it. “I finally fear God,” she said. “So now I am finally getting to know Him.”

142 days later.

I’m 7 days away from my return to LA.

“It’s time to give the people the ending they deserve.”

I’ve driven though the ghettos of Chicago. The canyons in Utah. The mountains of Denver. I’ve hung out with the homeless in Savannah. I’ve seen tornado damage, and spoken to cancer victims and survivors.

And I’ve been questioned about the God I serve. I’ve been asked if there is a Hell and if Heaven is a real place. And how can a God who loves us let such tragedies befall us.

God never promised to reveal why there is so much suffering in the world. He never promised to reveal why things happen. So stop looking for answers and satisfaction. The world is so eager to say, “See! You’re wrong! God doesn’t care. Otherwise He would have prevented this!”

Yet by saying there is evil in the world, we claim there is a moral giver.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked. “Spirits? Demons?”

“We’ve had to perform exorcisms before,” Alexa said sitting on the steps of the State Capital building in South Carolina. “Cast out demons. Whatever”

“If there’s evil in this world, that means there’s got to be some good lurking around here somewhere, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of evil?”

And there is also life. There is so much life out here.

But we get so consumed with ourselves that the moment we believe God has failed us individually, we believe he has failed us all.

If God doesn’t exist for me, He doesn’t exist for you either.

You lose your faith because you are only looking for it in your life.

Today I can tell you this: Even when I feel as though God has failed me, I know He has not failed the world.

We would never lose our faith again if we took the time to see it in everyone else’s life.

Alexa looked at me and smiled. “It’s time to go home, Max. I saw it the moment you walked in that you were done and tired. You could have gone home the first week you were on the road. What you said changed my life all the way over here on the edge of the east coast. Go be with Lauren. She’s been patient enough. Go home. Get some rest. It’s time for the next adventure.”

I pulled the car over on the side of the road. I opened the passenger door and got down on my knee. I kissed Lauren and told her, “3/4 of our relationship has been in this car. We’ve laughed and cried in here. We’ve fought in here, and rejoiced in here. We’ve shared secrets and retold stories. We’ve fallen in love in here.” I pulled out a ring. “So it seems only appropriate that I ask you to marry me in here too.”

The next adventure…

It’s hard sometimes. Living on the road. Some days feel more like running than living. It’s hard to wake up and it’s hard to go to sleep. I desperately want my own four walls. To sleep in a bed that belongs to me. I want to step into a familiar shower. Some days I feel so lost because I don’t have a home.

“But look around you,” the father of the family I was having dinner with in Texas said. “You say that you’re homeless. Look at how you have spent the last 6 months. You have created a home everywhere you have been. You now live in a community that stretches all across America. You have so many people who are for you. And a God who has never left you.”

The father looked at us from his end of the table and smiled. “No. You’re not an orphan. Not anymore.”


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