The Traveller: Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Reformation Sunday

Quotes

George Orwell
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Stephen Biko
"The oppressors' most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed."

Kevin A. Carson
"Ideological hegemony is the process by which the exploited come to view the world through a conceptual framework provided to them by their exploiters."

C. Spurgeon
“While I regarded God as a tyrant I thought my sin a trifle; But when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast."

Madeleine L'Engle
"Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous."

Troy Wisdom
"The truth needs no defense; it only needs witnesses."

Mark Horne
"There is no pleasure as exquisite as being told by someone with more income than you have ever had in your life that your politics are wrong because you don't have solidarity with the poor."

JRR Tolkien
"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

Augustine of Hippo
"What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits."

Mark Horne
"The Bush-Obama killing continuum shows that there are no reformers; each successor builds on the power grab of the predecessor."

Robert A. Heinlein
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

BECAUSE IT STARTS WITH THE TRIVIAL LIKE THE ABOVE, BUT LEADS TO THE FOLLOWING:

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."

Neal Stephenson
"The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things....From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. "

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Reformation Sunday

The Confession:

Lord God! Eternal and Almighty Father, we acknowledge and confess before your holy majesty, that we are poor sinners, conceived and born in guilt and in corruption, prone to do evil, unable of ourselves to do any good, who, by reason of our depravity, transgress without end your holy commandments. Therefore, we have drawn upon ourselves, by your just sentence, condemnation and death. But, Oh Lord! with heartfelt sorrow we repent and deplore our offenses. We condemn ourselves and our evil ways, with true penitence beseeching that your grace may relieve our distress. Be pleased to have compassion upon us, 0 most gracious God, Father of all mercies, for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord! And in removing our guilt and our pollution, grant us the daily increase of the grace of your Holy Spirit, that acknowledging from our inmost hearts our own unrighteousness, we may be touched with sorrow that shall work true repentance, and that Your Spirit, mortifying all sin within us, may produce the fruits of holiness and of righteousness well pleasing in your sight. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The reassurance:

What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." The words, "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:3, 23-25)

Q&A on the eternal matter at hand:

Q. How are you right with God?

A. Only by the true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God's commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.