An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.
Institutions say they want change, but this is at best a schizophrenic desire. Change requires pain and nobody wants pain.
“Now therefore fear the Lord (T)
and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. (H)
Put away the gods that your fathers served (E)
beyond the River and in Egypt, (O)
and serve the Lord.” (S)
Joshua 24:14
Israel famously wandered in the wilderness for forty years. They were tested, offered as a sacrifice and refined with the holy fire of the Law of Moses. This “threshing” process appears at the centre of the Bible Matrix. It is pictured as the time of harvest (Pentecost – the giving of the Law), and as the burning eyes of the Lampstand watching over Israel (sun, moon and five visible planets). In the Covenant pattern it is the “Ethics,” the bit where God lays out the rules for success. Threshing is also a biblical euphemism for sexual relations. At this point, under the Lawful eyes of God, Israel is either shown to be a faithful bride or an adulteress. Is the fire of her desire true or “strange” (foreign). We can see this pattern in James 1:15. It is a sick parody of the Covenant process because it begins with a “false word.”
[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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“We steadily covet more than our humble (but beautiful) selves can ever contain.”A thought-provoking post from Matthew Jepsen. (Reproduced here with permission).
Below, Lewis articulates a contemporary rendition of Augustine’s “God-shaped hole”:
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“The Left might be godless, but the Right has only the form of godliness.”
Just chucking some ideas around here, so comments are welcome (especially from actual Americans.)
From the New York Times (April 2008)
U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man,
the one who had had the legion, sitting there,
clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. – Mark 5:15
Rich Bledsoe’s old blog is a goldmine. Here’s an excerpt from The Dysfunctional Family of the Gadarene Madman.
Bible Matrix blog
