Do Piece — Community (Barth)

They crucified him with the criminals.

Do you know what this implies? Don’t be too surprised if I tell you that this was the first Christian fellowship, the first certain, indissoluble, and indestructible Christian community.

Christian community is manifest wherever there is a group of people close to Jesus who are with him in such a way that they are directly and unambiguously affected by his promise and assurance.  These (alone) may hear that everything he is, he is for them, and everything he does, he does for them.

To live by this promise is to be a Christian community.

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Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

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And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

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What I Recalled Watching Netflix

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Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

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Random

Drudge Report

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Greater Love Blah Blah Blah

Do we doubt locals thanked them for their service? I’m not equating the two. They were wrong; glad we crushed them. Only noting it’s likely they thought as much about such things as we do, which is to say not much. German citizens who believed their leaders, loved their country, watched their sons get on

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Hey Babe, Wanna Increase My Downline?

This wouldn’t be the first time someone “posted” a “blog” on their “website” while having nothing to say. Well, not nothing exactly, but certainly not being sure exactly what he wants to say. But then that’s part of what a blog is, or was. Or maybe that’s just the bad kind; definitely it’s the old

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The Simple Art of Murder (Excerpt)

Raymond Chandler In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not

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The Country for Old Men

Walter Hartwell White is going to hell. Whatever else happens — whoever dies in the shootout, no matter what-all happens in the final three episodes, whatever he’s planning to do with the ricin recovered from his burned out house — that’s a fact. In fact, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that was the point, one which

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Pas De Duh

Is ballet a sport? The question is asinine in at least two ways. Of course it is, whether one is asking does it qualify as one or simply based on the assumptions implicit in the question itself. To put it as stupidly, would a Ferrari fit in my garage? Is Rivendell a better deal than

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Too Old For This

You know the line. Usually spoken by an ersatz Bruce Willis type, it is well past cliché, sliding in safely but awkwardly beyond its years to self-parody, as predictable as the pablum in which it appears. [And note, I like every other Die Hard movie.] And yet, here I am: Too old for this. I

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Giant in the Land

Dallas Willard revised his affairs yesterday, moving to the headquarters of the Kingdom of the Heavens to live slightly nearer to God, whom he spoke of, served, embodied. The life he continues to live today. Unceasingly infused, this life was and is. For these ideas and Our Lord were everywhere in what Dr. Willard said

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