Archive for June, 2009
Death is a Terrible Price to Pay
Posted on 29. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
This past week two popular icons died, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Two newspaper pictures of them prompted this rumination on death. In both there is death even while there is life. Michael’s face over the years became more a mask than a face. And it bore uncanny resemblance to a skull. Farrah’s picture shows a once-lovely woman with a taut semi-smile and eyes that are not smiling at all. There is no emotion, no sparkle, there is this bleak sorrow, and a terrible emptiness.
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Torino Grande
Posted on 24. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
Grand Torino, the car, is a metaphor for misplaced priorities, squandered opportunities–a shiny steel coffin filled with regrets. Walt’s (Eastwood’s) estranged sons wish they could connect with their father, but they can’t and they know down deep they will never be able to. But Walt loves his 1972 Gran Torino. He lavishes the love on it he withheld from his children. Not the greatest of life choices. But the message it delivers is that even at 75 you are not too old to make attempts to “redeem the years that the Locust’s have eaten,” to quote the Bible. And the confessional may not be a bad place to start.
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Paul and Rob at Mars Hill
Posted on 23. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
Paul appropriates what is good in the Athenian belief system. He does not jettison all of paganism as evil. Nor does he contend that they must burn down the temples, the scrolls, the ancient writings, nor stop dancing, or enjoying the plays, or the feasts. He recognizes that there is much truth embedded in culture. So he affirms what he can. This is where Rob Bell and Paul can properly be compared. But they diverge dramatically in their motivation for the affirmation. and in what they say immediately afterwards
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UP (The Pixar movie)
Posted on 19. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
Patty and I went to see Up and we found ourselves walking out of the theater raving about it to each other. It is, hands down, my favorite Pixar. Better even than Toy Story which set the standard but lacks the poignancy of Up. To put it bluntly, Toy Story did not make me cry. Up did–twice.
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Joy is the Meaning of Life
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
The bottom line is not despair or dutiful struggle, or even battle against the powers–it is joy. And despite the idolatrous reduction of life to sex or death and, most currently, ironic despair, there is great ground for hope for as Peter Kreeft observes “decadently apocalyptic ages elicit saints. Suffering elicits courage, compassion, heroism, and martyrdom.”
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Jesus of Nazareth (Pope Benedict XVI)
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
This is the best book about Jesus I have ever read. Pope Benedict has written about Jesus brilliantly and insightfully. But, what won me over was His love for the Man he was writing about. This book taught me, corrected me, inspired me and illumined the life of Jesus for me in ways I cannot recall that any other book about Jesus has. It made me love (as well as honor) Jesus more. As a supericilious Protestant, it also humbled me.
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The Gods Aren’t Angry
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
If God is not angry then He cannnot be God. Nobody really wants a God who is so loving that He must overlook and ignore blatant and persistent evil. If anger is antithetical to love then the death of Jesus makes no sense, nor, for that matter, do His repeated angry verbal exchanges before His death.
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A Generation of Martyrs: Suicide Bombers in Reverse
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
By choosing to follow Jesus (”take up the cross”) we joined a long train of faithful disciples who accepted the shame of the cross and drank the bitter cup, like their Master, to the dregs. The symbol of the cross points us to the reality that this battle we are in will cost us our lives one way or the other. And we are called to die, daily, and that, at least, means we must lay our lives down, like Jesus did, for life of the world. We do not take life–we give ours, freely, as our Lord did.
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A Cry For Justice
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
What remains with me is the sound of clapping. I go to Uganda with my wife and some friends and come back with the sound, not of grief but joy, and gratitude, and an honor that is so weighty it could crush your bones. You even start to walk a little hunched over. Maybe you’re just bending down to place your hands on their mostly bald heads and maybe you just are starting to cave in under the pressure. You reach out and hold the thin brown hand and smile back at the face that is shining with delight and at a smile that is sometimes so bright that you can barely look directly at it for very long. It can burn your eyes with its brilliance and as I blink my eyes I wonder if what I’ve really seen is Jesus.
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A Necessary Tension
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
The encouragement by many current teachers to fearless engage in the world is laudable. It is a necessary corrective to the fundamentalist tendency to flee from or demonize culture. However, I think it is not very helpful to teach that we are to feel at home, “safe” in this world; i.e. that true holiness reduces the Christian’s tension in and with the world. According to the NT, our primary identity with regards to the world remains “stranger”, “alien. We are still to be in the world but not of the world. That very biblical and very healthy tension is essential and should not to be lessened or sneered at, even if it is done ever so ironically.
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Jesus On Jihad: Part 6
Posted on 17. Jun, 2009 by Tim Stoner.
What turned the adoring crowd into a frenzied, blood-thirsty mob? Perhaps more to the point, why are the religious leaders, the entire Sanhedrin no longer paralyzed by fear? The conspiracy’s success depended upon avoiding the public eye. Jesus must be ambushed by subterfuge, and the trap must be sprung in total secrecy. The crowd must not, under any circumstances, be alerted to the capture of their hero, at least not until the conspirators have set the stage and created the image of failed charlatan, a powerless pretender–a fraud.
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