Volume 6, Issue 6, February 1997

RANDOM THOUGHTS

"....Jesus was a man in his time, preoccupied by matters which for the most part would seem insignificant or incomprehensible to those of other times or other cultures. The figure of a helpless and apparently innocent man on trial for his life before the Roman governor is, however, an icon to which any member of the human race could respond. It is precisely because we know so little of the trivial things in the story that we can respond so powerfully to the larger things - to his silences, to his apparent forgiveness of his captors, to his loneliness, and to his suffering."

(from "Jesus, A Life", by A.N. Wilson, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., New York, 1992, page 229.)

"That virility and humaneness of the prophets and that capacity for growth which stir our enthusiasm were largely due to the breadth and inclusiveness of the biblical prophets' religious sympathy and faith. All the world was God's field; all the affairs of the nation were the affairs of religion. Every great event in history taught them a lesson in theology....religion became legal, fixed, monotonous, a thing by itself, shut off from the spontaneity and naturalness of the general life. The prophetic voice was hushed and the prophetic fire died out. The scribe now sat where the prophet had stood, and the sacred book took the place of the living Voice."

(from "Christianity and the Social Crisis", by Walter Rauschenbusch, Hodder & Stoughton Press, 1907, Pages 27 to 31.)

"....we live in a corporatist society with soft pretentions to democracy. More power is slipping every day over towards the groups. That is the meaning of the marketplace ideology and of our passive acceptance of whatever form globalization happens to take."

(from "The Unconscious Civilization", by John Ralston Saul, House of Anansi Press, 1995, page 32.)

"Criticism is perhaps the citizen's primary weapon in the exercise of her legitimacy. That is why in this corporatist society, conformism, loyalty and silence are so admired and rewarded; why criticism is so punished or marginalized."

(Ibid, page 165).

"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!" And he said, "Go...."

(Isaiah 7:8,9).

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.