In Dostoevsky’s The Demons, the character, Kirillov, is insanely fascinated with freedom. He cannot bear the fact that he did not choose his own existence. Life is a “given.” In what must be seen as a parable of the radical thought of the 19th century, Kirillov determines to kill himself, […]

All the more reason today to know our Master’s manger, and to recognize that all that we have comes from Him. Oxen and donkeys know who their true benefactors are, and we should be at least as smart as they are. Let us give thanks to God, and know that all that we have and ever will have comes from Him.

In fact the church is not an institution, however many outward similarities to an institution it may possess. The term ‘ekklesia’ meant a gathering, an assembly. People assembled or gathered—that is, they left their homes to congregate in a particular place for a particular reason.

Human beings seem to be created with a longing for meaning. We not only experience the world, but want to make sense of it as well. That sense-making is a thread of continuity that joins every religious tradition in history.

A difficulty, of course, is that “God” has become the name assigned to a concept that is indeed an object of choice, one of many versions from which we select. The relation we have with such a “God” is not faith.

What we see in our present world is not the result of mistaken political decisions or failures of diplomacy. The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.

The church must become a place of radical rejection of the current insanity, a place where unpopular truth is spoken often and plainly, a place where words do not mean whatever we choose. There is no time to lose. Soon enough the lies of the prophets of immoralism will also sound in every land throughout the West.

Secularists would argue that Christology has nothing to do with our cultural constructs: such is the ignorance of our own foundations. Secular modernity is built on the foundation of a distorted version of Christianity. We are children who deny our parents, imagining that we have created ourselves.

We must admit that the Mosaic Law was not God’s final word to Israel, but rather but a step on the way to something truly final—a necessary step, but a mere step nonetheless. Mosaic Judaism and its Law were never intended as God’s final word to Israel. The Law was but a tutor to bring Israel to a better place.

When looking at the billboard with the large eye and the words, “Big Brother”, I cannot shake off a whole swarm of thoughts and associations. These are thoughts about the omnipresent God and walking before Him. They are thoughts about how a totalitarian state tries to imitate God and replace Him with itself.

We do not create relationships, nor do we have them. We are relationships and we either perceive this and pay attention or we do not. In as much as we do not, we begin moving towards non-existence – death. It is possible to be very quiet and yet be profoundly aware and responsive to our existence as relationship.

Some forms of Christian spirituality are built upon the false definition of joy as an emotion. For emotion can be induced, especially with music. Singing loudly and long can induce a kind of euphoria and a feeling of well-being, which is then equated with joy. In fact joy is not an emotion, and so can indeed be sustained.