[When] asked if he wanted to do market research, [Jobs] said, “No, because customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” I’ve said this same thing in regards to the structure and style church worship services. If people haven’t been shown or taught a different way, how can they be expected to desire [...]

“Every once in a while, I find myself in the presence of purity—purity of spirit & love—and I always cry. It always reaches in & grabs me.” Steve Jobs

“Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew the composite character of a building as an entity. …Art is not a ‘profession.’ There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. … Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture [...]

The words of Thomas Merton “It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us from tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying His entire creation long ago. People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On [...]

So last Fall when everyone was reading and reviewing Scot McKnight’s book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, I didn’t really pay attention. It all seemed like hype. Surprised when everyone’s year-in-reviews came out putting this book at the top of their list for 2011, I duly noted it as a need-to-read [...]

To continue in my reflections of John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus, here’s another related thought from him: A Jew did not become a Christian by coming to see God as a righteous judge and a gracious forgiving protector. The Jew believed that already, being a Jew. What it took for him or her, [...]

Why does eschatology always push us to the end of time? What if we could develop an eschatology which didn’t need us to posit it as outside of history? Wouldn’t this be more of a Jewish way of understanding salvation and the messianic? In John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus I was lead to a [...]

apropos of last night’s primaries… “There is no reason to despise democratic elections; the point is only to insist that they are not per se an indication of Truth—on the contrary, as a rule, they tend to reflect the predominant doxa determined by the hegemonic ideology…There can be democratic elections which enact an event of [...]

“What makes capital exceptional is its unique combination of values of freedom and equality and the facts of exploitation and domination: the gist of Marx’s analysis is that the legal-ideological matrix of freedom-equality is not a mere “mask” concealing exploitation-domination, but the very form in which the latter is exercised.” Žižek from First As Tragedy, [...]

I’ve put off this review for a while. I first read Peter Rollins‘ Insurrection some 6-8 weeks ago. I have thought about its contents since, but I wanted to read it a second time before I put my thoughts to the page. In general I have really enjoyed the thoughts of Lacan and Žižek rolled together with [...]