my burg

What do Christians -- or the church as a collective -- have in common with secularists working on the problems of the world today?  How is our agenda different, or the same?  What common ground does a secular social justice have with a biblical social justice?  Is better technology or political / social structures (what Eliot calls "machinery") the answer to "setting the world right"?  What solutions should the Church be expected to bring to societal problems? Following are some excerpts from a radio broadcast talk by T. S. Eliot, given in February, 1937, which forms an Appendix to "The Idea of a Christian Society" in Christianity and Culture .  He writes,   "I want to suggest that a task for the Church in our age is a more profound scrutiny of our society, which shall start from the question: to what depth is the foundation of our society not merely neutral but positively anti-Christian?  "It ought not to be necessary for me to insist t...

"And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."  (Joshua 24:15 ESV) These are among the last spoken words of Joshua as recorded in Scripture.   According to mentalfloss.com here are some last words that people uttered before dying:  -- Blues singer Bessie Smith died saying, “I’m going, but I’m going in the name of the Lord.” -- Frank Sinatra died after saying, “I’m losing it.”  [ Previously, he sung about doing life "his way."] --When Harriet Tubman was dying in 1913, she gathered her family around and they sang together. Her last words were, “Swing low, sweet chariot.” -- Murderer James W. Rodgers was put in front of a firing squad in Utah and asked if he had a last request. He replied, “Bring me a bullet-proof vest.”   -- Si...

"During a good part of history the philosopher endeavoured to deal with objects which he believed to be of the same exactness as the mathematician’s. Finally Hegel arrived, and if not perhaps the first, he was certainly the most prodigious exponent of emotional systematization, dealing with his emotions as if they were definite objects which had aroused those emotions. His followers have as a rule taken for granted that words have definite meanings, overlooking the tendency of words to become indefinite emotions.  "If verbalism were confined to professional philosophers, no harm would be done. But their corruption has extended very far. Compare a medieval theologian or mystic, compare a seventeenth-century preacher, with any 'liberal' sermon since Schleiermacher, and you will observe that words have changed their meanings. What they have lost is definite, and what they have gained is indefinite. "The vast accumulations of knowledge—or at least of informatio...

Here are my favorite T. S. Eliot quotes: "When the Christian faith is not only felt, but thought, it has practical results which may be inconvenient." "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? It is for lack of wisdom, not lack of information, that the people perish." "Disillusion can become itself an illusion If we rest in it."   "Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands of statesmen."  "It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are. You will find that you survive humiliation And that's an experience of incalculable value." "What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone." "Half the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don...