Perhaps the most radical act of resistance in the face of adversity is to live joyfully.
01412 – Radical Act of Resistance
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01383 – Mourners: Taking Action
Those people are not real mourners who say, "Sure, the world's in a mess, and I guess maybe I'm a bit guilty like everybody else, but what can I do about it?" What they're really saying is that they are not concerned enough about themselves or the world to look for...
01380 – Obedience to God
Who stands fast? Only the person whose final standard is not his or her reason, principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God--the...
01312 – Wisdom is Gained by Practicing
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting...
01269 – Public Good vs. Private Virtue
Public good doesn't automatically follow from private virtue. A person's moral character, sterling though it may be, is insufficient to serve the cause of justice, which is to challenge the status quo, to try to make what's legal more moral, to speak truth to power,...
01268 – Christian Rules, Freedoms, & Love
Rules at best are signposts, never hitching posts. Personally, I doubt whether there is such a thing as a Christian rule. There are probably only acts that are more or less Christian depending on the motives prompting them. But if we say, "Down with rules," we must at...
01267 – Faith and Obedience
For faith is only real when there is obedience, never without, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience. Since, then, we cannot adequately speak of obedience as the consequence of faith, and since we must never forget the indissoluble unity of the two, we...
01264 – Seeing the Need for Love
People are hungry for love. Are we aware of that? Do we know that? Do we see that? Do we have eyes to see? Quite often we look but we don't see. We are all just passing through this world. We need to open our eyes and see. Since we cannot see Christ, we cannot express...
01238 – Are We Receiving Jesus’ Words?
If the words of Jesus of Nazareth, for instance, strike us as comfortable and perfectly in tune with our own confident common sense, our likes and dislikes, our budgets, and our actions toward strangers and foreigners, then receiving the words of Jesus is probably not...
01206 – Watching & Discussing–but No Action
An analogy: You are responsible for fifty teenagers. So you gather them together and put them in the parish hall and tell them to dance. You go for a cup of coffee. You return and witness this scene, a typical one: four or five girls dancing in the middle of the hall,...