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 from 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

Friday, May 27, 2011

Sex and Power

Schwarzenegger, Strauss-Kahn, and Power

Why power is so often spiritual poison.

by Sharon Hodde Miller
May 23, 2011

American news outlets have been aflutter with conversations and questions about the messy relationship between power and sex, catalyzed by the coinciding revelations about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sexual indiscretions. Although the two cases are categorically different — Strauss-Kahn is accused of assaulting a hotel maid, whereas Schwarzenegger’s misdeeds, though morally repugnant, are nevertheless legal — both men compel us to look closely at the potentially combustible mix of sex and power.
1169163887_a071a59db4.jpgSadly, Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger are only two of many powerful men to come before them. Following the likes of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and John Edwards, Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger perpetuate a sick pattern in which powerful men live as though the rules don’t apply to them. Given this trend, cultural analysts have been asking two key questions.

First, what is the cause of this pattern? Why are so many men in power sexual cads? And second, how should we classify these sexual relationships between powerful men and powerless women? When a woman is economically or socially dependent on a man, is the relationship every truly consensual?

On a recent episode of NPR's On Point, Time magazine executive editor Nancy Gibbs responded to these questions by citing a new study on the effects of power in a business setting. According to the yet-to-be-released study, “The higher they rose, men or women, the more likely they were to consider or commit adultery." Social scientists theorize that this trend could be due, in part, to increased opportunity, but they also suspect power breeds a particularly blinding arrogance that borders on entitlement.

As these scandals continue to appear in the news, it would be easy for Christians to stand at the edge and look down. After all, any ideology that divorces one’s public and private lives is bound to fail. Perhaps the American public (as well as the French one) is getting what it asked for.

Then again, Christians are really in no position to judge. Not only is it common to hear about the moral failures of pastors and other church leaders in positions of power, but a pervasive addiction to pornography among Christian men and women is also symptom of it. In a country of free information, free time, and virtually unlimited access to technology, many Christians help fuel an industry that exploits women who are often poor and sometimes underage. To be sure, that is an abuse of power.

How, then, should we respond to this turn of events? Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” Lincoln’s words, when read alongside the above cited study, remind us that worldly power is not a neutral entity. It has the potential to change an individual in the most fundamental ways. It can distort our vision by perverting the way we see ourselves and those around us. This means that Christians are to handle power with fear and trembling. Worldly power is not beyond the redemptive work of God, but it is a great seducer that has ruined the lives of men and women throughout history. We cannot be naïve to that reality.

Realizing that each of us is vulnerable to the trappings of worldly power, Christ offers Christians an important example. When tempted in the wilderness, Jesus rejected Satan’s offers of worldly power, opting instead for the invisible yet everlasting power of God. And in a scene that many theologians consider to be the clearest display of Jesus’ divinity on earth, Christ forsook his right to worldly power to hang on a cross instead.

f54ed7aa96de841f58e315d04938c6a3_1M.pngDoes this mean that Christians should not be people of influence? No. But it does mean that there is a crucial difference between the power of God and the power of man. The power of God does not create hierarchy and injustice. It does not require the trodding over of the weak for the exaltation of self. It is not threatened by the strengths of others and it is not a zero sum game. In the kingdom of God there is no scarcity of blessing and freedom. And the power of God does not require the slavery and subordination of others.

Christian theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer once challenged the believers of his generation with the indictment, “Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power.” Christians today do well to heed his warning. It is difficult to attain worldly power without being self-serving along the way. It is not impossible, but it is unlikely. That is why power manifests itself so similarly wherever it is found, both in the halls of national leaders and in our homes, both inside and outside the church, [and our public schools].

Let us therefore reject the lie that worldly power is more effective than sacrifice. It is tempting to accept the world’s way of doing things because power has proven effective. But as long as our measure of faithfulness is pure pragmatism and not conformity to Christ, we are sure to hear many more stories of men and women who fall victim to the powers and principalities of this world.