christopher spolar

“subversives in the face of totalism have always had to speak twice in the same utterance, once for the official record and once for the truth of bodily reality.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture

“This story begins wherever there is enough courage and freedom and daring and sensibility to acknowledge that the pain of ruthless exploitation is not normal and cannot be borne.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture

“The gentle art of being gentle—of kindness and forgiveness, sensitivity and thoughtfulness and generosity and humility and good old-fashioned love—have gone out of fashion. Ironically, everyone is demanding their “rights,” and this demand is so shrill that it destroys one of the most basic “rights,” if we can put it like that: the “right,” or at least the longing and hope, to have a peaceful, stable, secure, and caring place to live, to be, to learn, and to flourish.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Step-by-Step Basics of Christian Faith and Practice

“The narrative knows the way in which hungry peasants, in need of food from the monopoly, will pay their money, then forfeit their cattle, and then finally give up their land, because Pharaoh leverages food in order to enhance his power. In the end, the peasants are so “happy” that they asked to be “owned”:”
― Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks to Power: The Countercultural Nature of Scripture