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

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Relevancy22 Progress Report (August 2011)



Progress Update - August 2011

The line of thought found within various articles on this site must necessarily correlate readily with other articles and topics found within this blog. As such, I will offer several introductory points of observation to help guide readers or by editing theological references at various points within the discussion of a listed article. I do not intend to do this in every article that is presented on this website, but will do so every now-and-again as a reminder to the reader to utilize this blog's content in-total and not simply in piecemeal fashion by blithely picking-and-choosing here-and-there subjects.

As such, this website is being built with a thoroughness in mind that will help in the cross-examination of various theological subjects in rigorous and systematic fashion. Consequently, please use it as a growing theological compendium to spur further study and exploration on subjects beyond this site's content. Hopefully each article will be inter-related as much as possible to the last and succeeding articles as can sometimes be seen demonstrated between unrelated titles.

Overall, relevancy22 is meant to be a capable guide but not an exhaustive guide. To this end I have listed other blog authors that require reading and examination, many biblical tools and resources, some church ministry sites as well as mission sites that may be directive or helpful. These of course cannot be exhaustive but are meant as compelling guides by faithful Christians dedicated to the witness, demonstration and service of our ancient faith that we call Christianity. Whose liturgies and doctrines can be overwhelmingly complex to the uninitiated novice seeking to grow in Christ and his Word. Some of the limitations on this site will be in ministry and individual practices, how-to's, methodologies and other practicums. However, this is because this site is primarily dedicated to the theological understanding and expression of Scriptures and then secondarily to areas of devotion, inspiration and practice.

This then is the purposes of this blog. It was started initially for family and friends, then to young people and disciples whom I have mentored over the years, and now wish to extend to a greater global audience than I have presently been able to do. There are gaping holes in this blog's presentation that with the passage of time may be filled. Ultimately, it may become a website or a web journal instead of a web blog but my skills for such a technological feat do not serve to that end nor does my volunteer time allow for such a project.

Further, my passion is for biblical theology, not systematic, not topical studies. But for now it is amiss as I work to establish a biblical understanding and foundation that presents a Christianity that I and many others currently understand it presently must be. Too, this site needs additional contributors and correspondents beyond myself but for now I rely on the blogger community that I have come to know and trust. And lastly, it has served to allow me to express both the positives as well as the negatives of contemporary Christianity and rightly so.

For the Christian faith is an expression of our personal relationship between Jesus and ourselves, the God of the bible and mankind, in rich fellowship with our Savior and Lord through His Word, and in the fellowship of born-again believers as a living communion. But as too often the case, Christianity has sadly become merely an animated religion filled with rules and church dogmas, dead traditions and unloving judgments, hiding the fullness of salvation, of life and love, that Jesus has called us into through His person and His atoning work on the cross. This cannot be and it is to that life that this web journal is dedicated to re-discovering and re-building through examination of the words and statements made by Christian leaders, spokesmen, organizations and advocates held against the lens of God's Word.

Finally, in all things may we pursue God with the loving fervor and witness that he has instilled within us, as a community of believers, in witness and testimony with the time that we have left. Be at peace and may God go with you.

- skinhead