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

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

When Religion Makes People Worse


This statue of Jesus crucified is included in a collection of
the fragments from Reims Cathedral in France, on display
at the National WWI Museum at  Liberty Memorial in Kansas
City, Mo., on May 2, 2014. The museum holds the most
diverse collection of artifacts around the world. | Religion
News Service photo by Sally Morrow


Christians, Conflicts & Change: When religion makes people worse
http://religionnews.com/2016/04/05/religion-makes-people-worse/
by David Gushee
April 15, 2016

Religion can do a great job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a great job helping believers relate kindly and justly to other people. And religion can do a great job stiffening the will of believers when they face unjust suffering for their faith.

I was taught these things when I studied Christian ethics, and they continue to motivate me in my work as an ethics professor today.

But hard experience has me seeing the negation of these claims more than I did at the beginning of my journey.

Now I see that religion can sometimes do a very poor job helping believers discern right from wrong. Religion can do a very poor job helping believers relate kindly and justly to others. And religion can easily persuade people that the rejection they are receiving for their hurtful or ill-considered convictions is martyrdom for God’s Truth, leaving them even more entrenched in their destructive beliefs.

My two key teachers in the field of Christian ethics in the 1980s were the Baptist Glen Stassen of Southern Baptist Seminary and the Lutheran Larry Rasmussen of Union Seminary in New York. These men knew each other and shared many common scholarly interests that shaped me as well. These included the Nazi period in Germany, the extraordinary life of the scholar-pastor-resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the challenge of overcoming racism, and the fight against the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.

Both men modeled and taught me an essentially hopeful vision about the role that Christian convictions can play in making Christians more faithful and society better. They taught a faith that had learned very deeply the lessons of the Nazi period; that honored Dietrich Bonhoeffer for standing fast against Nazi seductions when so many of his fellow Christians surrendered their souls; that resisted America’s own racism; and that rejected the idea that more nukes would make the world safer.

My own dissertation focused on that small minority of Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. I sought to discover what kind of character, motivations, and faith shaped these people who risked their lives when their neighbors were standing by indifferently. I have spent much of my career attempting to teach what I have sometimes called a “rescuer Christianity,” as over against a “bystander Christianity.”

But now as a wizened old veteran of the fight, I struggle with discouragement sometimes. It is not just that many Christians fail to live up to the clear demands of Christian discipleship. It’s that we can’t even agree on what those demands are. We all say we believe in Jesus, but what we make of that belief is so irreconcilably different that I am not sure that we are in any meaningful way members of the same religious community.

I should have seen this more clearly all along. After all, could it really be said that a Dietrich Bonhoeffer who died resisting Hitler shared the same religion as the “Christian” men who murdered children in Hitler’s name? What was the religious commonality between white Christian KKK members and black Christians fighting for an end to segregation and lynching? And how much do pro-torture, Islamophobic Christians have in common with those who take the opposite path?

A faith that stands with the crucified ones of this world is very different from a faith that does the crucifying. The question becomes not whether you say you follow Jesus, but which Jesus you follow.

Worst of all has been my discovery in recent years of versions of Christianity that actually make people worse human beings than they might otherwise have been. Here churches, pastors, or individuals interpret Scripture or faith in such a way that they do harm they would not do if they were just good old-fashioned pagans. I never anticipated that I would think: “If we could just keep people out of (this version of) church, they would be better people.”

Christian leaders often puzzle over why Christianity in America is declining so badly. Here’s a reason: some highly visible versions of Christianity are so abhorrent that reasonably sensible people want nothing to do with Christianity or the people who practice it.

The same, of course, holds for abhorrent versions of other religions. But that’s their problem, and this one is mine.


Were the Titles of the Gospel on #Sillyboi?





by James F. Mc Grath
May 18, 2016

You may think I’m a “silly boy” for writing about this. But when Sarah Bond recently wrote a blog post about the ancient Greek use of a tag (sillybos) to indicate the author and title of a work on a scroll, I felt I needed to blog in a bit more detail about the possible implications of this practice for the study of the New Testament, which Bond mentioned briefly. Not that this has not come up before. But one will often hear people outside of the academy (and occasionally even within it) speak about the “anonymity” of the New Testament Gospels as though this were something surprising. The placement of a title at the top of the first page is something relatively new. It goes along with the development of the codex, since in a scroll, you wouldn’t want to have to unwind it all the way to see what it was. And so tags were used. Even in codices, whether a title would be included, and if so whether it would be at the start or end of a work, varied for a long time.

And so it seems to me unsurprising that the Gospels lack titles of the kind modern readers expect. Would the earliest version of Mark ever have been written on a scroll? It is impossible to know (Francis Moloney thinks so, and so too does Ben Witherington). But at the very least, its author would have been more used to reading scrolls than codices, and might therefore have expected any designation for his literary work to go on a tag rather than someplace else.

It is probable that the Gospel of Mark would have been known initially as “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” with the author certainly known to those who first read the work. The Gospel of Matthew would have been known as Βίβλος γενέσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (“The Genesis/Genealogy of Jesus Christ”). The author of the Gospel of John may perhaps have hoped that his work would be confused with that other, already famous “In The Beginning,” and so actually have had the evangelistic purpose some have detected in the statement of purpose in John 20:31. With the composition of these other works in the same vein, however, it became natural to refer to them in a similar way, with the author being the point of comparison between them. The fact that the first of them highlighted the word Gospel at its start would then explain well why the titling followed Mark’s lead. And given that it is the conclusion of modern scholarship that Mark was written first, but that this was not the historic view of the order of the Gospels, the convergence of modern scholarship on the order with these ancient considerations about the titles is perhaps noteworthy.


(I’m pretty sure no one ever called the Gospel of Luke ΕΠΕΙΔΗΠΕΡ ΠΟΛΛΟΙ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησινπερὶ τῶν πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων… And that too is something worth talking about, since it begins in a manner that does not make for easy reference. Might it have been referred to as ‘The Things Concerning Which You Were Instructed’ or perhaps ‘In the Days of Herod the Great,’ the words which follow the introducion?)

When groups tended to use a small number of books (and in those times, very few individuals or groups owned large collections), shorthand ways of referring to them would be preferred. Even today one can find numerous examples of this.

For those who’ve been wondering ever since they read the title, the Greek word σύλλαβος is supposed to provide the origin of the English word syllabus. But in fact, the word for a tag on parchments was σίττυβας, and it seems that “syllabus” therefore derives from a transcription mistake that was made in a Greek word, or a Latin word derived from it. You can read in various places online about the debates regarding the term – and how to make the plural of “syllabus” in English if it is neither properly Greek nor properly Latin.

See also my earlier two posts on the question of whether the Gospels were originally anonymous:



As you’ll see in the first post, we have actually found a “flyleaf” or attached tag indicating the title of the Gospel of Matthew. We know from the history of literature that the ways works were referred to could change over time.

What do you think the relevance is of this ancient practice of “tagging” literature (with what we today would call “metadata”) for the question of the titles and authorship of the New Testament Gospels?



Sunday, May 1, 2016

Deconstructing "Evangelicalsim"




"Today, some are making an idol out of “evangelicalism.” They are doing that by insisting
that it is a closed system, exclusive of all but themselves and those who think just like them -
always the same (impervious to change and development), absolutely and objectively true
(unbiased, without perspective) and bounded by identifiable boundaries (propositional truths)
impervious to outsiders or new ideas and established by “the received evangelical tradition."

- Roger Olson


I found early on when doing the hard work of Christian deconstruction that after completing its project - such as the one Roger Olson is referencing today - that it is always spiritually healthy to then provide a Christian reconstruction as bridge from the apophatic (what God is not) to the cataphatic (what God is). That it would be spiritually healthy for me to discern both my background and the effects of my background upon my faith - both in the negative and in the positive. To take an "internal inventory" if you will, of my beliefs, and to determine, if possible, where necessary change must come.

More importantly, this task took me by surprise when after over a dozen years of Holy-Spirit burden I became overwhelmed by God and fell into a black pit of despair requiring a personal brokenness for a period of time before then yearning for release. And when delivered by the hand of God, He had formed within me a new purpose, a new mind, a changed heart, and renewed determination measured in passion and insight. It was both a God-thing and a me-thing where God took my mind, heart, will, and spirit, and re-oriented myself towards a gospel filled with Jesus and no longer a form of Jesus as expressed by a hardened religion that had absorbed me without my notice. And yet, this idolatrous form of Christianity needed breaking, and when done, was broken, and I was released into a clearer light of day than I first had possessed in my earlier adult years.

 It was a process which took its time with me (by my count, approximately eleven months). And it was within this personally difficult process or space that the truth of Jack Caputo's statement became true:

"The truth will set you free,
but it does so by turning your life upside down."

- John (Jack) Caputo


However, if I were to tarry too long in this land of loss and positive criticism then I would miss the beauty of Christ in the lands of renewal, reclamation, and reconstruction. That it was my responsibility to also speak of a better form of Christian faith and theology then what it had become these past several decades. And so I have. As best as I could. With what I had. More specifically, I became burdened to speak of a postmodern, post-Christian faith emphasizing some of its newer discoveries over the past several decades. Discoveries such as presenting:


  • a "weak (sic, non-dogmatic) theology" that is more open (and less closed) within the best traditions of the church; or,
  • a faith that allows for the Spirit of God to presage our hearts and minds again in the forms of mystic Christianity (ala Richard Rohr, Stanley Hauerwas, et al) which stands amazed and wordless before the presence of a Holy God; or,
  • recognizing an "anthropological hermeneutic" inadvertently laid upon Scripture which we bring upon the interpretations of God's revelation in the Bible through our self-oriented (existential) needs, wants, prejudices, and bigotries; or even,
  • when discovering a ground-changing philosophical basis other than the Western Analytical tradition I grew up within. An over-used tradition steeped in a "mathematical, syllogistic, formula-based theology" when describing God (systematic theology) or His work (Christian essays). One known as a (Hegelian-based) Continental Philosophy (cf. Postmodern Christianity) which would emphasize God's revealed story as a salvific (meta)narrative wrapped around the nucleus of a Radical Christianity which tore at the idols of modernal Christian religion.


And so then, in today's post, submitted by a true-to-form religious evangelic theologian steeped in church history, Dr. Roger Olson, we can hear again of this newer movement writhing within the deep halls of both evangelical and liberal Christianity. And, of course, I use the descriptive word "liberal" in its best sense of "reconstructing" a Jesus-centric Christian faith - not a biblio-centric, nor a closed dogmatic faith, nor even a sectarian creed-based Christianity. But a faith that leads out with Jesus even as the best bible-centered, weaker dogmatic, and confessional creeds do over the church's long, controversy-filled, history. One that lifts up God's revealed self-incarnation in the flesh, Jesus, as our Sovereign Lord and Savior, who came to save us from our sin and suffering. Who offers real hope in the "lands of the midnight sun" underwhich we turn-and-spin seeking truth-and-knowledge through the grand auspices of love, compassion, forgiveness, and service.

As such, the take-aways from today's discussion is the rebalancing of what an evangelic faith can be with Jesus at its center. To not over-judge a beneficial (evangelical) movement largely taken heist by the idolaters of its faith having crept in and demanded a more sectarian, secular form of its best self. To understand that a postmodern Christianity has come to re-right its 20th century predecessor by emphasizing both the negatives and the positives of its evangelical heritage in the best that it has to offer through its more progressive, liberal forms of revelation. That in the end, this rebalancing act (one which Peter Rollins calls a "magic act") will remove the idolatry we have brought to a godly faith by supplanting it with God Himself rather than with our unrepentant selves. To do this we must declare Jesus by speaking of Him and His resurrection through newer words and ideas which will lead us out of our present darkness. Words and ideas which will perform their necessary work of a postmodern deconstruction and reconstruction. Words hearkening to the old words of the Apostle Paul who declared we must deliver over the "old man" to death in order to allow the Holy Spirit to place within our hearts and minds and souls "the new man in Christ." And this I had proposed to do by the merciful hand of God - and have done to the best of my ability - within the pages of this blogsite. To the glory of God, and to His Son. Amen and amen.

R.E. Slater
May 1, 2016
edited May 10, 2016




* * * * * * * * *



Deconstructing "Evangelicalism"

by Roger Olson
April 29, 2016

Recently I had the privilege of hearing George Marsden speak. Marsden is widely considered the “dean” of evangelical historians. That is, he practically pioneered and led in the study of the history of the evangelical movement. He taught at Calvin College, Duke Divinity School and retired from the University of Notre Dame (where Mark Noll succeeded him). Marsden helped many of us, in our callow years as budding evangelical scholars, distinguish between “evangelicalism” and “fundamentalism.” The lecture I heard, just recently, was about C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity—a phenomenon that continues to grow in influence and not only among evangelicals.

Hearing Marsden, and meeting him for the first time, reminded me of an essay I wrote a few years ago that never was published. If I posted it here, I have forgotten that. So here it is:

“Deconstructing Evangelicalism”

What is “deconstruction,” anyway? Well, I’ve been reading a lot about that and it turns out it’s not at all what I had been told. It’s not “destruction” but rather has a positive agenda–to expose idols for what they are and help institutions and movements (etc.) improve themselves by becoming more open, more just and more flexible.

A basic presupposition of deconstruction is that all ideologies are idols because they usurp the place of God (for Christian deconstructionists) and/or claim to be what no human system can be–totalizing, monolithic, all-encompassing explanatory schemes that function as God (for secular deconstructionists).

According to Peter Rollins (How [Not] to Speak of God) (depending largely on Christian philosopher Merold Westphal) there are at least two principles of deconstruction: the principle of finitude and the principle of suspicion. These, along with some other possible deconstructive principles, serve as critical tools for exposing idols.

Today, some are making an idol out of “evangelicalism.” They are doing that by insisting that it is a closed system, exclusive of all but themselves and those who think just like them - always the same (impervious to change and development), absolutely and objectively true (unbiased, without perspective) and bounded by identifiable boundaries (propositional truths) impervious to outsiders or new ideas and established by “the received evangelical tradition.”

Of course, few evangelicals would put it this way, but one can easily detect this notion of evangelicalism by reading some of its self-appointed spokesmen.

My intention is not at all to critique authentic evangelicalism, although it is always improvable, but rather my intention is to deconstruct the concept of evangelicalism being promoted by some conservatives.

My first deconstructive move is to demonstrate the aporia of a movement with boundaries. I’ve written about this here before, but it bears repeating. Evangelicalism is a movement and a movement, by definition, cannot have boundaries. Thus, it is simply ridiculous to think of or to talk about evangelical boundaries. Evangelicalism would have to have a magisterium [a centralizing synod-like body] to have boundaries; it has no magisterium. It [the evangelical movement] is a people’s movement stemming from the Reformation, the Pietist renewals, the first and second Great Awakenings, the conservative reaction to liberal theology (early fundamentalism) and dissatisfaction with fundamentalism. Evangelicalism has always been tremendously diverse. All within it have similiar concerns and interests, but the moment you try to put your finger on something that could serve as a boundary (rather than a center of attention and interest) it slips away because someone within the movement has already violated it!

Along the same lines (exposing an aporia of this concept of evangelicalism): evangelicals have always valued the Scripture principle stemming from the Reformation (sola scriptura). They have interpreted it in many different ways, but it stands at the center of the movement (which is a centered set but not a bounded set). Yet, many of those promoting this new, narrow, almost idolatrous notion of evangelicalism seem to violate sola scriptura even as they identify it as a boundary of the movement. They violate it by solidifying tradition and raising it to a level of authority functionally equal with Scripture.

Real affirmation of the Scripture principle manifests in openness to correction of all systems and traditions from Scripture itself. Where that openness is missing sola scriptura is receiving only lip service at best.

Moving on to the deconstructive principle of finitude: Evangelicalism is historically allergic to idolatry of any kind and yet idolatry appears wherever and whenever something finite, human, is elevated to God-like status. Anything treated as immutable, absolute, incorrigible, all comprehensive, completely objective and exclusive of insights from others (beyond God’s own self-revelation) is an idol. No theological system or doctrinal confession or tradition can be any of those things because they are all finite creations of humans. That is not to say they are false; it is only to say they are less than absolute and, if they are to avoid idolatry, must be held open to correction. Thus, to the extent that people treat evangelicalism as a regime of truth incapable of improvement through criticism and correction it is becoming an ideology rather than an expression of the gospel and therefore an idol.

What about the principle of suspicion? Anyone who has been intimately involved in studying and participating in evangelicalism for a long time can easily see that there is tremendous gain to be had in terms of power, prestige and even money by controlling evangelical thought. Some evangelical spokesmen (always self-appointed, of course) jockey for status as pontiff of evangelicalism in public opinion. Such people sometimes change their views in order to gain greater support. Whole groups of evangelicals attempt to throw others out of the movement by marginalizing them, often by misrepresenting their views. (I can prove that has happened to me and I know of others to whom it has happened in the most cynical ways.) Evangelicalism has become respectable and prosperous and worldly in terms of power and prestige and whoever has the ability to convince the movers and shakers of evangelicalism (administrators, publishers, etc.) that he is its true representative wields great power. Evangelicalism began (at least in modern times) as a movement of the margins. In some circles it is in danger of becoming a movement of elites who delight in marginalizing other evangelicals to prove they have the power to do it.

Finally, I will add the principle of obligation to the “other”–the principle of alterity [a state of being different. "Otherness"]. Postmodern deconstructionism elevates obligation to the “other”–the outsider, the outcast, the invisible–as a primary ethical norm. Ideologies are belief systems that create otherness and thrive on exclusion under the guise of providing an all-encompassing explanatory scheme. Evangelical theologian Miroslav Volf writes about “willingness to embrace” the other–a Christian version of postmodern Jewish philospher Levinas’ obligation to the “face” of the other.

In the aftermath of the 20th century–a century of genocidal ideologies–we all need to be careful not to create or embrace or follow new ideologies that exclude and refuse even to hear the voices of those who do not fit in or who disagree. These days conservative evangelicalism is a monologue, a choir singing only in melody without harmony, a movement aiming at conformity.

Not long before he died I corresponded with conservative evangelical theologian (to many the “dean of evangelical theologians”) Carl F. H. Henry about inerrancy and other matters of concern. I mentioned to him that evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch, in his developing Foundations series, denied inerrancy except in the broadest sense possible. Henry dismissed Bloesch as a “mediating theologian” by which he clearly meant “not evangelical in true sense” (as defined, of course, by Henry). Anyone who knew Bloesch knows what a great evangelical spirit he was.

Rather than practicing hospitality through dialogue and consensus-building, today’s conservative evangelicals are too concerned with excluding people. In some cases this lack of value placed on alterity borders on violence. Not physical violence but spiritual abuse which is another kind of violence.

The upshot is that today’s self-appointed (but very loud and influential) establishment evangelicalism is in danger of turning the liberating evangelical movement that is gospel-centered, generous and loving into an ideology and thus [into] an idol. There is the danger of God being effectively pulled down out of transcendence and made into a prisoner of a propositional system (and perhaps even a servant of a political agenda).

The great German pietist Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf often said that whoever puts Christianity into a system kills it. He didn’t mean, of course, that doctrine is bad. He was a great defender of basic Protestant orthodoxy, but he recognized the grave danger of giving too much importance and power to human systems of thought that imprison the Spirit of God who always transcends our humanly constructed houses of authority.


Sermons from Elder D.J. Ward, Lexington, Kentucky



“On Christ Alone” — Elder D.J. Ward


The death of Christ was an accomplishment, and our works cannot add to Christ's death. In this video, Elder D.J. Ward, the late pastor of Main Street Baptist Church in Lexington, K.Y., powerfully reminds us of the sufficiency of Christ's death for all who turn to him in repentance and faith.



"Jesus Paid it All" - Elder DJ Ward




"Because of God's Choice" - In Memory of Elder D.J. Ward




" GOD Is Sovereign" - Elder D.J. Ward










Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Christianity's New Atheism




Not long ago I went through a transformative period which I deemed my "atheistic stage" of faith. Having grown up in a Christianity that positively affirmed itself while denying so many "worldly" attitudes and practices I bore a critical Christianity towards "the other" rather than towards my faith or my church fellowship. In fact, this kind of Christian faith had become its own death knell in my life which eventually collapsed and in its deconstruction rose again as another kind of Christian faith than the one I had grown up with and was so familiar or comfortable around its religious constructs.

The curious thing I discovered was that in this phase of "unknowing" or "deconstruction" it proved to be a period of lament and grief for me as much as it was a period of questioning the directions/answers I was taught to believe. This lament was a dark time of soul searching and lasted for most of a year before it left its beneficial affects upon both my soul and my outlook of what Christianity could be and not what it had become. This was a paradox.

Another paradox was the closeness of God I felt to me. Like Job of old I never felt His presence to have left my soul regardless the deep trauma of soul-searching I was undergoing. Rather, God was closer than ever before. But what did leave me was my own positivistic belief structures which refused to question itself, so strong its borderlands of strict dogmas and religious folklores which I had intermixed with a truer form of Christian faith than I was holding. In essence, as deep as my grief and lament was, so was God's presence in my life as I wrote of my dissatisfaction with my church, its pulpiteers, and outcome-based theology of hate, violence, and judgment.

For myself, as with so many others, if a Christian faith was to be true it had to be built up upon the better elements of humanity - its courage, its searching honesty, its non-discriminatory forms of ministry and outreach. At its core it needed a loving God working through an evil world and pliant forms of clay-based Christians or humanity seeking for a better world than what they saw in mankind's many sociological or political institutions.

And so it wasn't long before I became acquainted with a new kind of atheism which would allow for an agnosticism and a kind of anti-theism as well. One which was questioning, discovering, and falling into the camps of the "nones and dones" of the church. Perhaps then I was one of these individuals because I certainly was "done" with the form of church I had grown up with. And perhaps I was also part of the "none" crowd though for me it was more in the form of rehabilitating my Christian faith rather than jettisoning it altogether.

Which is also where I believe many so-called agnostics, atheists, and anti-theists are today... not so much stripped of a spiritual kind of faith, but of a disillusionment with the world and its debilitating faith structures. If so, they and I have a real bond of fellowship in this regard and it has become one which I have been exploring through the length and breadth of this blogsite. One which would distill my faith to its very essence. To its pith. To its central cores of Christian belief by rejecting its more pagan street-forms and folklores which so many within the church would claim as biblical when they are not.

But I have also noticed amongst this brave new world a reluctance to re-enter into any kind of positivistic statement of doctrinal belief, structure, or assent. To be honest, as a (postmodern, radical) theologian I am not built this way. Though I have been stripped of what I thought were the essences of my Christian faith, they were, in the final analysis, unnecessary and harmful hinderances to entering into the way of Jesus who demonstrated to us God's fellowship with the pagan, the unholy, and the despised. It was this "humanitarian" view of Jesus that drew me over against the church's ill-perception of His pharisaical outlook upon the world of mankind. An outlook that had become in the church's doctrines and dogmas more brutal, unkind, full of hell and despair, and hateful to all elements of humanity that seemed less worthy of God.

This unkind/shallow/legalistic/inhuman form of Christian teaching had to die for me. It had to be thrown into its own pit of despair and flames of eternal torment. For me to continue in the Christian faith was to become like unto its own spiritual hell that God helped me to escape through deep grief and lament in my life. Of burying that part of Christianity which was unworthy of Himself. One which held to another form of Christianless Christianity become lost in its more popular forms of bigotry and bullying, hatred and aspersion, callousness and without mercy, forgiveness, or compassion. And once accomplished, God then burdened me to re-teach the "better forms" of Christian doctrine which would allow for more alliance with postmodernity's new atheism than it did its stricter, more classical forms of faith and belief. A faith which questioned itself first and foremost above all else. That critically reassessed what it was saying and doing before feeling assured of itself.

However, it appeared to me that it wasn't that the Spirit of God had to throw out the entire Christian faith I had learned through the church and its kindred souls of fellowship over the long years of my life. But to recognize and remove that part which had become unspiritual, unkind, unbiblical. More so, to allow in a new kind of "uncertainty and doubt" of self-examination which would better help both me and the church in the years ahead when coming to Christian teachings amiss of soul or heart. Thus, for me, I felt driven to re-teach theology in its better, more healthier forms, while also allowing contemporary society's newer insights from science, philosophy, and epistemology to help me re-create a postmodern, contemporary presence/witness of Christianity. One that was both post-secular and post-Christian in its reflection and dictates.

So then, I was tasked by the Spirit of God to realize (or re-create) a postmodern, radical Christianity which would reach out in a fundamentally uplifting way through its many avenues of witness and discussion to the nones and the dones while disturbing the unpeturbed, unquestioning, and settled of my faith. To more kindly embrace the former while making uncomfortable the latter.

Rather than denying the legitimacy of new atheism's unbelief in its "religious" sphere of rejecting all forms of knowing and belief, I wished to embrace its healthy skepticism of religion by reforming my own epistemology to be more open, more radical, more accepting of "the other." When done, a new form of Christianity had arisen which can accept "positive forms of unknowing or denial" which may be both spiritually constructive and more personally healthy in the lives of both the believer, the unsure, and the disbeliever.


Why? Because much of today's more popular forms of Christian belief has been rejecting and assertively judgmental upon the language of agnosticism and atheism. Fearing it - rather than accepting it - in the transformative experience of the existential and phenomenological experience of the church and its congregants. Yes, the worlds of unbelief can be a strong starting point for the one willing to question faith and yet, paradoxically, finding God beyond the church's institutionalized forms of its societalized God and "Christianized" belief structures which have more in common with the pagan than with the truly biblical. 

In a sense then, all epistemologies must first be broken down or deconstructed before they can be reborne or reconstructed. The nones and the dones are a part of Christianity's narrative story of postmodern angst and dissettlement to its older forms of commonly accepted practices and beliefs. But it can ironically become a place for revival when first throwing off all Christian pretentions to the real and the true that are actually unreal and untrue. Which are sandier foundations of belief than truly biblical foundations. As such, the language of the church must adjust for this postmodernal occurrence lest it clings to a poorer form of itself in action and belief.

Lastly, it is all too easy for postmodernal Christians holding this elevated sense of epistemology to fall into a form of Christian asceticism. I think of the followers of Richard Rohr who has been so helpful in reclaiming the spiritual side of Christianity by espousing a Socratic kind of "unknowing" when conflicted by biblical claim, verse, or teaching. However, as a postmodern, radical Christian, I am discontent towards this kind of "unknowing" and am burdened to elevate Scripture onto a Jesus-plane of gospeling so that even in its uncertainties we can be certain of God's love, guidance, and hope.

Christian asceticism, like stoicism, is not where I want to live. I can appreciate its monkish outlook on life, its forms of "walking softly upon this earth," and its claims of never being sure. But in another sense, as a Spirit-led teacher of God's Word I must "unearth" its truths, doctrines, and verities lest we simply fall into a kind of naturalistic faith whose hope is in hope itself and not in the Living Creator God of the cosmos come to redeem us from sin and shame.

And so, I hope to not only teach God's Word, but to teach it in a humble and kind fashion full of grace and truth while always questioning my self and my teachings so that each in its turn might be ever learning, growing, and reaching out to as much of mankind as possible. This is a Jesus thing. Its what I would expect of God's embrace of the world when He came to this earth to expose Himself to its sin and evil. Who died for us in order to bring redemption's healing to our hearts and souls. Who has transformed Himself through the insurrection of the Cross that both He-and-we be resurrected into the newness of life promised us through God's fellowship with us and with one another in spiritual solidarity with the divine, the holy, the gracious, and deep mysteries of His healing Personage.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
April 26, 2016
edited April 27, 2016




Reference Material - Wikipedia

New Atheism is the journalistic term used to describe the positions promoted by atheists of the twenty-first century. This modern day atheism and secularism is advanced by critics of religion and religious belief,[1] a group of modern atheist thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises in government, education and politics.[2] In England and Wales, as of 2011, census figures showed a decrease in respondents citing belief in Christian religion, while the non-religious are the largest growing demographic.[3]

New Atheism lends itself to and often overlaps with secular humanism and anti-theism, particularly in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies."

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Emerging Church - The emerging church is a Christian movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that crosses a number of theological boundaries: participants are described as Protestant, post-Protestant, evangelical,[1] post-evangelical, liberal, post-liberal, conservative, post-conservative, anabaptist, adventist,[2] reformed, charismatic, neocharismatic, and post-charismatic. Emerging churches can be found throughout the globe, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. Some attend local independent churches or house churches[3][4][5] while others worship in traditional Christian denominations.

Proponents believe the movement transcends such "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal," calling the movement a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue. Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. What those involved in the conversation mostly agree on is their disillusionment with the organized and institutional church and their support for the deconstruction of modern Christian worship, modern evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.

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Progressive Christianity is a form of Christianity which is characterized by a willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity, a strong emphasis on social justice and care for the poor and the oppressed, and environmental stewardship of the Earth.

Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to "love one another" (John 15:17) within the teachings of Jesus Christ.[1] This leads to a focus on promoting values such as compassion, justice, mercy, tolerance, often through political activism. Though prominent, the movement is by no means the only significant movement of progressive thought among Christians (see the 'See also' links below).

Progressive Christianity draws on the insights of multiple theological streams including evangelicalism, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, pragmatism, postmodernism, Progressive Reconstructionism, and liberation theology.[2] Though the terms Progressive Christianity and Liberal Christianity are often used synonymously, the two movements are distinct, despite much overlap.[3]

Some characteristics of Progressive Christianity, though none be exclusive to it, are:

  • A spiritual expressiveness, including participatory, arts-infused worship as well as a variety of spiritual disciplines and practices such as prayer or meditation.
  • Intellectual integrity and creativity, including an openness to questioning and an insistence upon intellectual rigor.
  • Understanding of spirituality as a real affective and psychological or neural state (see Neurotheology)
  • Critical interpretation of the scripture as a record of human historical & spiritual experiences and theological reflection thereupon instead of a composition of literal or scientific facts.
  • Acceptance of modern historical Biblical criticism.
  • Acceptance (although not necessarily validation) of people who have differing understandings of the concept of "God", such as pantheism, deism, non-theism, as a social construct, or as community.
  • Understanding of church communion (the Eucharist) as a symbol or reflection of the body of Christ.
  • An affirmation of Christian belief with a simultaneous sincere respect for values present in other religions and belief systems. This does not necessarily mean all Progressive Christians believe that other religious traditions are as equally valid as Christianity, but rather, that other faiths have certain values and tenets that everyone, including Christians, can learn from and respect.
  • An affirmation of both human spiritual unity and social diversity.
  • An affirmation of the universe, and more immediately the Earth, as the natural and primary context of all human spirituality [as versus a heaven-mindedness].
  • An unyielding commitment to the Option for the poor and a steadfast solidarity with the poor as the subjects of their own emancipation, rather than being the objects of charity.
  • Compassion for all living beings.
  • Support for LGBT rights and affirmation, including, but not limited to, support for same-sex marriage, affirmation of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals as authentic Christians, affirmation of trans identity, and LGBT rights in general.


* * * * * * * * * *


More people than ever before are identifying as atheist, agnostic, or otherwise nonreligious, with potentially world-changing effects. | PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS BERGIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX



The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion/

As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks.

by Gabe Bullard
April 22, 2016

You don’t usually think of churches as going out of business, but it happens. In March, driven by parishioner deaths and lack of interest, the U.K. Mennonites held their last collective service.

It might seem easy to predict that plain-dressing Anabaptists—who follow a faith related to the Amish—would become irrelevant in the age of smartphones, but this is part of a larger trend. Around the world, when asked about their feelings on religion, more and more people are responding with a meh.

The religiously unaffiliated, called "nones," are growing significantly. They’re the second largest religious group in North America and most of Europe. In the United States, nones make up almost a quarter of the population. In the past decade, U.S. nones have overtaken Catholics, mainline protestants, and all followers of non-Christian faiths.



There have long been predictions that religion would fade from relevancy as the world modernizes, but all the recent surveys are finding that it’s happening startlingly fast. France will have a majority secular population soon. So will the Netherlands and New Zealand. The United Kingdom and Australia will soon lose Christian majorities. Religion is rapidly becoming less important than it’s ever been, even to people who live in countries where faith has affected everything from rulers to borders to architecture.

But nones aren’t inheriting the Earth just yet. In many parts of the world—sub-Saharan Africa in particular—religion is growing so fast that nones’ share of the global population will actually shrink in 25 years as the world turns into what one researcher has described as “the secularizing West and the rapidly growing rest.” (The other highly secular part of the world is China, where the Cultural Revolution tamped down religion for decades, while in some former Communist countries, religion is on the increase.)


And even in the secularizing West, the rash of “religious freedom bills”—which essentially decriminalize discrimination—are the latest front in a faith-tinged culture war in the United States that shows no signs of abetting anytime soon.

Within the ranks of the unaffiliated, divisions run deep. Some are avowed atheists. Others are agnostic. And many more simply don’t care to state a preference. Organized around skepticism toward organizations and united by a common belief that they do not believe, nones as a group are just as internally complex as many religions. And as with religions, these internal contradictions could keep new followers away.

Millennials to God: No Thanks

If the world is at a religious precipice, then we’ve been moving slowly toward it for decades. Fifty years ago, Time asked in a famous headline, “Is God Dead?” The magazine wondered whether religion was relevant to modern life in the post-atomic age when communism was spreading and science was explaining more about our natural world than ever before.

We’re still asking the same question. But the response isn’t limited to yes or no. A chunk of the population born after the article was printed may respond to the provocative question with, “God who?” In Europe and North America, the unaffiliated tend to be several years younger than the population average. And 11 percent of Americans born after 1970 were raised in secular homes.

Scientific advancement isn’t just making people question God, it’s also connecting those who question. It’s easy to find atheist and agnostic discussion groups online, even if you come from a religious family or community. And anyone who wants the companionship that might otherwise come from church can attend a secular Sunday Assembly or one of a plethora of Meetups for humanists, atheists, agnostics, or skeptics.

The groups behind the web forums and meetings do more than give skeptics witty rejoinders for religious relatives who pressure them to go to church—they let budding agnostics know they aren’t alone.

But it’s not easy to unite people around not believing in something. “Organizing atheists is like herding cats,” says Stephanie Guttormson, the operations director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, which is merging with the Center for Inquiry. “But lots of cats have found their way into the 'meowry.'”

The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, continues Sunday, April 24, at 9/8c, and will take viewers on a trip around the world to explore different cultures and religions on the ultimate quest to uncover the meaning of life, God, and all the questions in between.

Guttormson says the goal of her group is to organize itself out of existence. They want to normalize atheism to a point where it’s so common that atheists no longer need a group to tell them it’s okay not to believe, or to defend their morals in the face of religious lawmakers.

But it’s not there yet.

Atheism’s Diversity Problem

The Center for Inquiry in Washington, D.C., hosts a regular happy hour called Drinking Skeptically. On a Wednesday in late March, about a dozen people showed up to faithlessly imbibe, and all but one were white.

“Most of the groups I’ve seen have been predominantly white, but I’m not sure what to attribute that to,” says Kevin Douglas, the lone African-American drinker, shrugging at the demographics. He came from a religious family in New York and struggled internally with his skepticism until shortly after college. The only time he mentions having difficulty with others accepting his atheism was when he worked in Dallas, Texas, and race, he says, had little to do with it.

But more typically, “there is pressure from our [African-American] community,” says Mandisa Thomas, the founder and president of the Atlanta-based Black Nonbelievers, Inc. This pressure stems from the place religion—Christianity in particular—holds in African-American history.

In the abolition movement churches “became a support system for blacks. It became almost the end-all be-all for the black community for a number of years,” Thomas says, adding that the Civil Rights movement was dominated—she says “hijacked”—by religious leaders.

“If you either reject or identify as a nonbeliever, you’re seen as betraying your race,” she says.

Thomas is an outlier among nonbelievers for another reason. She’s a woman.

The secularizing West is full of white men. The general U.S. population is 46 percent male and 66 percent white, but about 68 percent of atheists are men, and 78 percent are white. Atheist Alliance International has called the gender imbalance in its ranks “a significant and urgent issue.”


The Privilege of Not Believing

There are a few theories about why people become atheists in large numbers. Some demographers attribute it to financial security, which would explain why European countries with a stronger social safety net are more secular than the United States, where poverty is more common and a medical emergency can bankrupt even the insured.

Atheism is also tied to education, measured by academic achievement (atheists in many places tend to have college degrees) or general knowledge of the panoply of beliefs around the world (hence theories that Internet access spurs atheism).

There’s some evidence that official state religions drive people away from faith entirely, which could help explain why the U.S. is more religious than most Western nations that technically have a state religion, even if it is rarely observed. The U.S. is also home to a number of homegrown churches—Scientology, Mormonism—that might scoop up those who are disenchanted with older faiths.

The social factors that promote atheism—financial security and education—have long been harder to attain for women and people of color in the United States.

Around the world, the Pew Research Center finds that women tend to be more likely to affiliate with a religion and more likely to pray and find religion important in their lives. That changes when women have more opportunities. “Women who are in the labor force are more like men in religiosity. Women out of the labor force tend to be more religious,” says Conrad Hackett with Pew. “Part of that might be because they’re part of a religious group that enforces the power of women being at home."

In a Washington Post op-ed about the racial divides among atheists, Black Skeptics Group founder Sikivu Hutchinson points out that “the number of black and Latino youth with access to quality science and math education is still abysmally low.” That means they have fewer economic opportunities and less exposure to a worldview that does not require the presence of God.

Religion has a place for women, people of color, and the poor. By its nature, secularism is open to all, but it’s not always as welcoming.

Some of the humanist movement’s most visible figures aren’t known for their respect toward women. Prominent atheists Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have awful reputations for misogyny, as does the late Christopher Hitchens. Bill Maher, the comedian and outspoken atheist, is no (nonexistent) angel, either.

The leaders of Atheist Alliance International, Dawkins Foundation, and Center for Inquiry who I talked to were all well aware of the demographic shortcomings, and they’re working on it: All of the leaders I spoke to were women.

Even people who are white, male, and educated may fear the stigma of being labeled a nonbeliever. A white dentist at the CFI’s Drinking Skeptically event didn’t want to go on the record out of a fear that patients wouldn’t want an atheist working on their teeth.

“We have this stigma that we’re combative, that we’re arrogant, that we just want to provoke religious people,” Thomas with Black Nonbelievers, Inc. says. She’s working on changing that, and increasing the visibility of nonbelievers of color, too.

Thompson believes the demographics of nones don’t accurately reflect the number and diversity of nonbelievers; it just shows who is comfortable enough to say they don’t believe out loud. “There are many more people of color, there are many more women who identify as atheists,” she says. “There are many people who attend church who are still atheists.”

Several atheist and humanist organizations have launched advertising
campaigns aimed at making skeptics more comfortable not believing.
PHOTOGRPAH BY ANNE CHADWICK WILLIAMS/SACRAMENTO BEE/MCT VIA GETTY

Expanding the Ranks

What’s sometimes called the New Atheism picked up in the mid-2000s. These were years of war, when Islam was painted as a threat and Christianity infused U.S. policy, abroad and domestically, most visibly in faith-based ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage.

In the U.S., many state legislators are still using a narrow interpretation of Christian morals to deny services to gay people and appropriate restrooms to people who are transgender.

But the national backlash to religious legislation has become faster and fiercer than ever before. Europeans seem set on addressing Islamophobiaand the forces that could create tension with the “rapidly growing rest.”

And compared to past campaign seasons, religion is taking a backseat in this year’s U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump is not outwardly religious (and his attraction of evangelical voters has raised questions about the longevity and the motives of the religious right). Hillary Clinton has said “advertising about faith doesn’t come naturally to me.” And Bernie Sanders is “not actively involved” in a religion. Their reticence about religion reflects the second largest religious group in the country they hope to run. Aside from Ted Cruz, the leading candidates just aren’t up for talking about religion. The number of Americans who seek divine intervention in the voting booth seems to be shrinking.

For all the work secular groups do to promote acceptance of nonbelievers, perhaps nothing will be as effective as apathy plus time. As the secular millennials grow up and have children of their own, the only Sunday morning tradition they may pass down is one everyone in the world can agree on: brunch.


Saturday, April 16, 2016

A Farewell Requiem to Modernal Christianity




Like the dead body being carried around in the video below, once beloved, now lifeless, it is unable to provide nourishment, care, or love as it once did. Even so has the last remnants of modernal Christianity's living corpse become to the postmodern church whose fellowship lives and ministers in a post-Christian, post-secular age of anarchy and revival. As the video indicates, a radical Christianity must give final honors and respects to its predecessor but in the end it cannot continue to carry around its dead corpse become un-nuturing, un-productive, and incapable of reaching out to the "fields white unto harvest" in the name of our risen Lord and King, Christ Jesus. It is time for the church to grow up and embrace its newest era producing effective works of humanitarianism across the world in the name of Jesus. To let go of old, unproductive doctrines and proceed effectively to the exit aisles of yesteryear's Christian dogmas, unhelpful folklores, and closed bibles. Here's to the years ahead and the significant impact God's living body may have unto the glory of God forever and ever. Amen.

R.E. Slater
April 16, 2016

*health update. I have just returned from yet another stay in the hospital nearly succumbing to a pervasive infection that lit up my body to a point that I wasn't sure I might make it. The medicines and procedures used on me revived my body but it will be several more months until the infection in it will be tamed (but not eradicated). As much then I am saying goodbye to a previous life I had known and/or to the sickness yet gripping my body. Prayers as you can. Thank you.




Plainsong's Cure & Disintegration
[Embracing Anarchy and Revival for today's postmodern church]




"Plainsong" was released in 1989 off the british rockband,
The Cure's Distintegration album. The Cure's "Plainsong"
off of their "Disintegration" album. Track 1/12.

Lyrics:

"i think it's dark and it looks like rain" you said
"and the wind is blowing like it's the end of the
world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the
cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for
a second.

"i think i'm old and i'm in pain" you said
"and it's all running out like it's the end of the
world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the
cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for
a second

sometimes you make me feel like i'm living at
the edge of the world like i'm living at the edge
of the world "it's just the way i smile" you said