The End of Religion As We Know It

REFLECTION QUOTES

“[Philip Seymour Hoffman] hated what he was good at. It tormented him. I think he wanted to be so good, but it was such a difficult place, I guess, to get to. It had to all come from the inside.”

~Anton Corbijn, Dutch photographer and film director,
on the now late lead actor of his latest film


“You don’t have to be a sociologist to know that we live in a culture of asphyxiating ‘performancism.’ Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly with our performance. It casts achievements not as something we do or don’t do but as something we are (or aren’t).”

~Op-Ed in The Washington Post (10-17-2013)

“Jesus did not come with sword in hand but with nails in hand. Not to bring judgment but to bear judgment.”

~Edmund Clowney (1917-2005), American theologian

“Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth, which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from…an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle…. Those who do not know that this great myth became Fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied. But Christians also need to be…reminded that what became Fact was a Myth, that it carries with it into the world of Fact all the properties of a myth. God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than [myth], not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting in our theology.”

~C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

“…eternal life…consists in the enjoyment of God Himself: for we should hope for nothing less from Him than Himself, since no less is his goodness, by which he communicates good things to the creation, than His very essence.”

~St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1275)

SERMON PASSAGE

Colossians 2:16-23 (NASB)

16 Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day— 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

20 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” 22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? 23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.