find a home?

the Bram Cools  song with the Shane Claiborne samples, finally…

shalom

Bram

C.S. Lewis on theocracy

I know I’m not writing much myself here on my english blog, and mostly quoting and putting up music lately. My excuses for that. It’ll probably change sometime in the future when my inspiration returns.

I found this quote from Lewis very interesting (from ‘a reply to professor Haldane’, in ‘of this and other worlds) He is writing against a professor that is critical of him, and that seems to be more communist in his thinking.

I don’t always agree with Lewis on politics, mainly because he tends to have a medieval hierarchic way of looking at things, but his rejection of a theocracy in favor of democracy here is very interesting.

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled powers over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since hè dimly knows hè is doing wrong hè may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us indefinitely because hè torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme – whose highest real claim is to rea-sonable prudence – the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication.

what do you think?
shalom

Bram

Michael Gungor Band – God is not a white man

someone posted this song today on facebook, and I instantly loved it…

here are the lyrics:

White Man
Words and music by Michael Gungor and Lisa Gungor

God is not a man
God is not a white man
God is not a man sitting on a cloud

God cannot be bought
God will not be boxed in
God will not be owned by religion

But God is love, God is love, and He loves everyone
God is love, God is love, and He loves everyone

God is not a man
God is not an old man
God does not belong to Republicans
God is not a flag
Not even American
And God does not depend on a government

But God is good, God is good, and He loves everyone
God is good, God is good, and He loves everyone

Atheists and Charlatans and Communists and Lesbians
And even old Pat Robertson, oh God He loves us all
Catholic or Protestant, Terrorist or President
Everybody, everybody, love, love, love, love, love

Oh, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
Yeah, I say God is love, God is love, and He loves everyone
La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
Stop the hating, please just stop the hating now cause God is love
Oh, whoa, la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la

I had never heard of Michael Gungor before, but he seems very interesting.  Check out his website and read his blog. Here is a post where he talks about the particular song. Very intelligent guy!

peace

Bram

Charles Fort on Darwinism

The fittest survive.

What is meant by the fittest?

Not the strongest; not the cleverest–

Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.

There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.

“Fitness,” then, is only another name for “survival.”

Darwinism:

That survivors survive.

from ‘the book of the damned’ (1919)

some George MacDonald quote

A bit of text from old George MacDonald, from an ‘unspoken sermon’ (the whole book in txt) called ‘justice.

Very interesting read… Reminds me of some ‘emergent’ discussions…

Our business is not to think correctly, but to live truly; then first will there be a possibility of our thinking correctly.One chief cause of the amount of unbelief in the world is, that those who have seen something of the glory of Christ, set themselves to theorize concerning him rather than to obey him. In teaching men, they have not taught them Christ, but taught them about Christ. More eager after credible theory than after doing the truth, they have speculated in a condition of heart in which it was impossible they should understand; they have presumed to explain a Christ whom years and years of obedience could alone have made them able to comprehend. Their teaching of him, therefore, has been repugnant to the common sense of many who had not half their privileges, but in whom, as in Nathanael, there was no guile. Such, naturally, press their theories, in general derived from them of old time, upon others, insisting on their thinking about Christ as they think, instead of urging them to go to Christ to be taught by him whatever he chooses to teach them. They do their unintentional worst to stop all growth, all life. From such and their false teaching I would gladly help to deliver the true-hearted. Let the dead bury their dead, but I would do what I may to keep them from burying the living.

Very confronting, isn’t it?

Shalom

Bram