"Let’s approach people with love and service, but let’s not be afraid to hurt their feelings if it means getting across the powerful message of God’s grace." (link)
Very needed this point. Especially where we live. Spiritual commitment to Christ has to outweigh fear of reprisal from man. Fear of rejection often keeps one from speaking up. That qualifies as denying the Lord who bought us.
Swimming with the current makes one believe he is a strong swimmer. Swimming against the current makes the swimmer strong, even though he may not feel that he is strong.
Taking a cue from the poetry and hymns of Scripture, I see my poetry, in part, as an evangelistic effort. Entering the midst of worldly people, even in order to bless, one hears and sees what one would rather not. I imagine our Lord Jesus had to tolerate some unpleasantness from the publicans and prostitutes he worked with. Not to mention from the religionists and his own disciples. So I’ve joined a social-networking poetry site with some unsavory pieces there and, for example, a segment on erotica. Here’s where I’d appreciate your feedback.
A tad longer piece than usual on TFR, but I trust you'll find some nugget to adorn your faith.
Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth. —Ruth McKenney
... many of us would hasten to agree with her statement.
But she was wrong.
Man has a nobler function. Defending truth is good and necessary, but does not lie at the peak of the scales of those greatest purposes that man could adopt.
Read my debut article on Weylan Deaver's Biblical Notes magazine: click on the tiny link above.
What we have in the United States today is not an ideological battle, or even a cultural war, but something larger and deeper: a true clash of irreconcilable philosophic views, not just about abortion, but about truth. One of those views encompasses all that is best in the Western tradition from antiquity until now, including the findings of science, and the other holds that everything that is essential to human betterment in the modern world began during the Enlightenment, and everything preceding that was obscurantist, credulous, and bloody. From the mad-dog attacks of the New Atheists to the absurd mental gymnastics of Justice Harry Blackman in Roe v. Wade, from New York Times editorials to movies and TV dramas, the strategy is always the same: create a climate of doubt about the possibility of objective truth, discoverable by reason; corrupt the inherited intuitive wisdom by which the people have always lived; construct and then promulgate through mass-media entertainment a philosophy that puts an end to all philosophy, destroying civility in its broadest and deepest sense. Define, deride, delegitimize, deconstruct, then destroy.
And not only in the U.S.