“’There is more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in all the creeds.’ And there is (as Butler pointed out long since, and as we shall have occasion to observe on many occasions during the course of this history), there is more doubt in honest faith, believe me, than in all the Bradlaughs and all the Marxist textbooks.”–Aldous Huxley, THE DEVILS OF LOUDON.
In David Mamet’s book on film directing, writing and producing, BAMBI VS GODZILLA, I found this from St. Francis, “Preach Christ constantly. Use words if you must.”
I posted that quote online to a flurry of objections from the folks who like to use words. Mamet understands what so many do not.
Read Luke 18:8. The strongest translation of that I read put it, “Do you think when I return I will find so much as one person believing?”
Organized Christianity in all its forms has more in common with the fruit of the tares than that of the wheat.
To belong to any group we have to sacrifice our soul.
The true church is not found in buildings made by the hands of man. The heavens are the throne. The earth is the footstool. No house man can build is big enough for God. There is a saying that goes back in time to the dawn: “The nearer the church/synagogue/temple the farther from Allah/The Buddha/God.”
Jesus commanded us to love one another as he loved us. That was his greatest commandment. It is the one most broken. I break it. You break it. We all break it. That said, it is the will of God that all men break it that all might be saved. Were any one one of us otherwise capable that one would damn all the rest. We all fall short of the mark. Preach Christ constantly. Use words only if you must.
Everything is unfolding exactly as Jesus told us it would. This is cause not for alarm but for joy. That joy when we express it leads others to ask why we are joyful when clearly, from the signs of the times we should not be. Then and only then are we to tell them the good news. Jesus taught that we should call no man father but God, no man master and no man teacher but God. John, in his first letter, wrote, “You have no need that any man should teach you for the spirit of Christ with which you were anointed is your teacher.” What we get in colleges, schools and universities (be they Bible or Secular) comes from men. Stay away from them.
“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.”–George Bernard Shaw.
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education,” adds Bertrand Russell.
“School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,”–Ivan Illich.
“We get three educations. The first is from our parents; the second is from our schoolmasters. The third is from life. The last makes liars of the first two.”–Montesquieu.
“I had wonderful teachers in the first and second grades who taught me everything I know. After that, I’m afraid, the teachers were nice, but they were dopes…I have a lack of ideology, and not because I have an animus against any particular ideology; it’s just that they don’t make sense to me…they get in the way of thinking. I don’t see what use they are…University and uniformity, as ideals, have subtly influenced how people thought about education, politics, economics, government, everything…We are misled by universities and other intellectual institutions to believe that there are separate fields of knowledge. But it’s clear there are no separate fields of knowledge. It is a seamless web.”-Jane Jacobs.
It takes faith to accept God alone as our teacher. Without that faith we are as dead as the systems we turn to. They are the barren fig tree.
Calvin had men burned alive. The Pope at least had those he had burned strangled first. The fruit of both if we do not think as they would have us think is death.
The price of belonging to any church, any group is too high. Not only that, it is a price not worth paying.–Reg Hartt
https://mikefrost.net/7-broken-men-john-calvin/
« “Do you believe the world is getting worse?” Nick Tosches: What we have lost. »