Sleeper Awake

     We hear that Word in creation, where this God proclaimed that everything divinely created was good and that male and female had both been created in God's image. That "Word of God" fueled every human movement for justice from the fight to end slavery and segregation to the feminist movement to the peace movement to the gay and lesbian rights movement. That Word of God challenges the prejudice that grows out of our limited knowledge, our tribal identities, our economic systems, and our sexual fears.
     The Bible is the word of God in that it touches universal, timeless themes. The sense of being created for union with God, the sense of being alienated from that union, and the yearning to be restored to that union are in the depths of every human psyshe. Yet here they are external and objectified in the narratives of Scripture. The Bible is the Word of God when it captures in its remembered history archetypal and eternal truths that we can experience, enter, and live, even today.
     All of us know what it means to live in bondage to some power that is beyond our ability to manage and from which we cannot escape.  All of us know the meaning of exodus and deliverance. All of have, in some way, come out of our limiting bondage. We know what it means to wander in the wilderness and finally to arrive at the promised land. We know what it means to be fed on our journey with manna, that heavenly food, to be sustained with water that flows from a rock. We know what it means to receive the law, to yearn for the perfect life, to enter the darkness of death, and to believe that one can walk through even death without fear, for our faith story tells us that one has entered and conquered even death with the power of the love of God. We know what it means to live in a community where there are no boundaries, no barriers, and where everyone can communicate with everyone else without misunderstanding. We know what it means to yearn for a perfect world and to be empowered to work for that perfection until the Kingdom of God shall come.
     These are all biblical themes that enrich our lives. They are themes, however, that cannot be heard, heeded, or entertained until we are free to approach the sacred Scriptures with eyes, ears, and hearts that are not bound in the straitjacket of trying to impose a literal authority that has never been the essential truth of Scripture. The Bible is not literally true in a thousand details. But the Bible does touch the deep wells of truth, and to those deep wells it calls us again and again.
— John Shelby Sprong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, pp. 75-76.

     Religion almost inevitably tries to take our anxiety away from us by claiming that which religion can never deliver — absolute certainty. If religious systems succeed in giving us certainty, they have surely become idolatrous, for the ultimate mystery and wonder of God cannot be reduced to a particular language or captured in the concepts of any human being.  The Christianity that I advocate and follow does not rob me of my humanity by making claims of either inerrancy for Scripture or infallibility for papacy or sacred tradition. My religion does not reduce God to an idol of its own creation. It does not give me certasinty or even security. Rather, in my religious system I meet a God in Jesus who calls me deeper and deeper into my humanity — part of which is a constant quest and journey into truth.
— John Shelby Sprong, Ibid., p. 170.

We are all strong enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
— The Maxims of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, #19, Constantine FitzGibbon (tr.).

There would be few pleasures if there were no self-delusion.
— Ibid., #123.

No man should be praised for his goodness if he lacks the strength to be bad: in such cases goodness is usually only the effect of indolence or impotence of will.
— Ibid., #237.

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.
— Ibid., #276.

Humility is the true touchstone of the Christian virtues: without it we retain all our faults, which are simply concealed through pride that would hide them from others, and often from ourselves.
— Ibid., #358.

Fate never appears so blind as to those whom she passes by.
— Ibid., #391.

One should treat one's fate as one does one's health; enjoy it when it is good, be patient with it when it is poorly, and never attempt any drastic cure save as an ultimate resort.
— Ibid., #392.

In our torments to achieve happiness it is the appearance that we pursue rather than the reality.
— Ibid., #510.

It is far easier to extinguish an initial desire than to gratify all its successors.
— Ibid., #511.

Men should be studied more closely than books.
— Ibid., #521.

Each man criticizes others for those defects which others criticize in him.
— Ibid., #607.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves?
— Ibid., #617.

We enjoy seeing through others: we do not enjoy it when others see through us.
— Ibid., #622.