Status Updates From De verloren kunst van de he...

"Television presenters now seem to be required to warn viewers that spectacles on the evening news may be distressing, giving them the chance to close their eyes or switch to another channel lest they see yet more disturbing footage from war-torn Syria or Yemen. We have become expert in refusing to allow the suffering of the world to impinge on our cocooned existence."

"Crucial to the traditional approach to scripture was the requirement of the altruism and compassion rooted in the right hemisphere. These are qualities that are sorely needed in our world today. At the root of many of our problems, global and national, is an inequality that, for all our good intentions, modern society has been unable to assuage."

"He predicted that the people admitted to the Kingdom of God would not be those who had the correct beliefs but those who had given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, who made the stranger welcome, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited those in person."

Lots of churches are failing this. Maybe Quakers are okay. That would be nice if all those things were all of our goals.

I came out of a tradition where the English translation of the Bible is the inspired, inerrant exact word of God and prophets were predictors of the future, conveyors of the direct communication with God. Armstong presents an intersting alternative, that prophets were political commentators or pundits.