The Good Kind of Shouting

It’s Sunday again – time for the good kind of shouting – some shout outs. Here’s what I enjoyed online this past week:

1. This post: We’re Meant To Be Swimming In The Deep by Anne-Marie Heckt.
My favorite line(s): “My thoughts drifted to the One who knows me. Who gets me. Better than any other ever, ever could. Water is an elemental love. Sky might be yours. Or loud noises, or wet rain, or heat that cracks the bones, or dancing in the motes of a sunrise. Or reading words and letting them bubble into and over you like champagne.

All of that beauty feeds us and it comes from the One who knows us.

We are meant to be out there, deep, swimming. Not clinging to the shore. Time spent in that beauty is not wasted. It is the richest meal…” read the entire post HERE.

2. This post: The Politics Of Demonization by Jonathan Martin.

My favorite line(s): “Accusation turns men into devils. Demonizing turns us into demons. This is precisely why the Satan doesn’t show back up in the book of Job after the prologue–he doesn’t need to accuse Job anymore, after Job’s human friends take over doing the Satan’s job. This works in two directions, really. So long as you have an accusing mob, you don’t need a devil. Conversely, so long as you have a scapegoat, you don’t need a savior. You don’t need God on a cross, if you have an immigrant on it instead. When we accuse, we look for someone else to shoulder the shame, that God already shouldered for us.

We take over the devil’s work, and simultaneously inoculate ourselves from the hope of salvation.

This is why Jesus is hard on the Pharisees, but never on ordinary sinners: because…” read the entire post HERE.

This post: Looking Like A Donkey by Richard Beck.

My favorite line(s): “And here’s the paradox in all this: When you stop caring so much about what people think of you you become more open to what they have to say.

When you’re motivated by shame and self-presentation you have to win and always be right.

Image trumps learning, which generally involves being wrong and corrected in public. That’s the paradox. The more you care about what people think of you…” read the entire post HERE.