Joshua Sprinkle > Recent Status Updates

I pray that I never write a book that only gets to the meat of the argument on page 78.*

*I pray that I am one day wise enough to write a book that is careful enough to walk gently with the reader down a path of 3 chapters of context for one of the most important things in the universe.

For the love. This one is going to take me forever. I have resolved to try to be reading three books at a time: theology, narrative, and something interesting. This is my "something interesting."

Super useful and low-key inspiring.

I'm absolutely convinced that libertarians fundamentally misunderstand human nature, ie we are totally depraved, so there's no way a society could organize itself at scale without government intervention beyond what they think is moral.

But I do like the emphasis on pure theory balancing the hard numbers.

Ask me about case studies that curb my enthusiasm for libertarianism.

Back after a brief hiatus and the saga of not really getting what's going on in these short stories continues. I wonder if there would be more intriguing symbolism in the original Spanish.

It feels wrong to rate things like this. All I can say is the Westminster catechism has a more interesting structure of Q and A. This is essentially a distillation of sermons Luther gave about the basics of the faith. (The ten commandments, the Lord's prayer, communion, etc.) It's a slow read.

"On this view religion and science, each verified in its own way from hour to hour and from life to life, would be co-eternal." (123)

God has placed a call on my life to create spaces where people encounter his Gospel.

Ok I've been Márquez pilled. The majority of these stories are not accessible to me, but "The Woman Who Came at Six O'clock" and "Nabo: The Black Man Who Made the Angels Wait" had me crying in Starbucks as I read through them. I still have to wade through some of his prose, which at some points is quasi-dreamlike, but at best is deeply prayerful.

ART HISTORY AS MEDIA LITERACY RAHHHHH

I sort of liked this one called "eyes of a blue dog" but I honestly cannot stop comparing each story to better magical realism. Maybe this book was important when it came out because nobody was writing like this? I do certainly sense the sensual streets of CDMX in these pages, but it's as chaotic as the traffic patterns.

Thank God that he has not given up on me

Simone Weil is my favorite Calvanist.

So far I prefer Asian or English magical realism. The realism in this book is so thin it doesn't merit the injected and arbitrary magic that masquerades as masterful while wandering aimlessly through mountains and valleys of symbolism without dealing seriously with the dreamlike archetypes that it wields.

On pages 49 - 50 this author, though non-religious, gave a lecture about religious experiences in 1902 and articulates something astonishingly compatible with the gospel of grace. He correctly intuits: "religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape ... Inwardly it knows [death] to be permanently overcome ... I cannot explain the matter ... to understand it you must [experience it]

If this is what it takes to get the nobel prize then I will throw my name in the hat.

This is a collection of original documents with commentary from a scholar that I'll be doing a lil mini class with through the American Enterprise Institute. It's been really accessible to read curated snippets like this.

Praise our heavenly Father that he has not given up on me yet.