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1.31.2020

The most important book regarding the features, nature, and development of morality in Western culture is this rauschenbusch routing Bush book, Christianity and the social crisis. He is unable to see entirely past the church but almost. It is extraordinarily insightful and helpful. It is so clear that it would unleash the Soul and Spirit and energies of a young Martin Luther King jr. As it did.

The most important book regarding the features, nature, and development of morality in Western culture is this rauschenbusch book, Christianity and the social crisis. He is unable to see entirely past the church but almost. It is extraordinarily insightful and helpful. It is so clear that it would unleash the Soul and Spirit and energies of a young Martin Luther King jr. As it did.

Breathtaking insights that I have seen nowhere else and are very useful and empowering for me.
The clarity that he provides at how laws are worse than useless and unsustainable unless they reflect a social morality that has already been established. He seems to think that that can only be established by a Christian Church which is so sad and patently ridiculous. But the process is absolutely correct and there is no greater failing on the part of the legal left than their wielding of laws to do what only the long-term work of sewing a new Morality In The Souls of men, revealing the Morality In The Souls of men, liberating it from the tyranny of head and flesh, can do.

Among the many gifts of reading this is this particular treasure for me. That the most joyful task is to unleash within ourselves and thereby plant in others the seeds of Joyful living for others, LSGIA being, with the certainty that it may take years or centuries to grow, if it grows at all. That's how it works. Let's get on with it.

And yes, yes, yes it is centuries and Aeons too late to save the human species or the  United States but it is not too late to save the quality of life of the poor souls that survived Downstream and to unleash the quality of life, to unlock it, among one or several of our fellow creatures today.

"Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the...


Jesus in his teachings alluded with surprising frequency to the use and abuse of intrusted wealth and power. In the.... WHAT TO DO 381 parables of the talents and pounds ^ he evidently meant to stewardship V define all human ability and opportunity as a trust. His sWp.°^"^^" description of the head servant who is made confident by the continued absence of his master, tyrannizes over his subordinates, and fattens his paunch on his master's property, is meant to show the temptation which besets all in authority to forget the responsibility that goes with power.^ His portrayal of the tricky steward who is to be dismissed for dishonesty, but manages to make one more grand coup before his authority ends, not only shows the keen insight of Jesus into the ways of the grafter, but also shows that he regarded all men of wealth as stewards of the property they hold.' The parable of the peasants who jointly rent a vineyard and then try to do their absent owner not only out of his rent, but out of the property itself, was meant by Jesus to condense and dramatize the whole history of the ruling class in Israel.* The illustration of the fig tree which has had all possible advantages of soil and care without returning fruit, and which merely gets a year's reprieve through the hopeful pleading of the gardener, expresses the indignation of Jesus against the waste of intrusted opportunity.^ The terrible invective against the scribes and Pharisees is directed against teachers who had misused their influence to darken truth and leaders who had treated their leadership as a chance to get profit and honor for themselves.® The fact that Jesus in his diagnosis of wrong moral relations so often puts his finger on trust abused and betrayed, is proof of his penetrating social insight. Nearly all powers * Matthew 25. 14-30; Luke 19. n-27. * Matthew 21. 33-46. ' Matthew 25. 45-51. * Luke 13. 6-9. * Luke 16. 1-15. ' Matthew 23. 382 CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL CRISIS in society are essentially delegated powers. The more complex society becomes, the less will it be possible for the individual to attend to all his needs himself, and the more will he have to intrust others with specialized functions and powers. When

Sanders is the only microscopic sliver of Hope. The others are all certain surrender to Doom.


What I am concluding is that I don't want my life. What...


What I am concluding, this conscious competence is only coming within the last day or so, is that I don't want my life. What... a pitiful little thing. And now I am carefully catching myself when I experience it as my life. Because it is bad? Because it feels inferior

If we were a sane and moral species we would make being rich illegal. Oh, who would invent our new stuff? We don't need any new stuff.


"we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of laws. Our legislative bodies are the greatest law factories the world has ever seen. Our zest for legislation blinds us to the subtle forces behind and beyond the law. Those influences which really make and mar human happiness and greatness are beyond the reach of the law. The law can compel a man to support his wife, but it cannot compel him to love her, and what are ten dollars a week to a woman whose love lies in broken shards at her feet ? The law can compel a father to provide....


we have an exaggerated idea of the importance of laws. Our legislative bodies are the greatest law factories the world has ever seen. Our zest for legislation blinds us to the subtle forces behind and beyond the law. Those influences which really make and mar human happiness and greatness are beyond the reach of the law. The law can compel a man to support his wife, but it cannot compel him to love her, and what are ten dollars a week to a woman whose

1.28.2020

Trump's peace plan: you agree to the theft of 99% of your land and wealth and 100% of your human rights. That's it.


the Church has never been able to get entirely away from the revolutionary spirit of Jesus. It is an essential doctrine of Christianity that the world....

the Church has never been able to get entirely away from the revolutionary spirit of Jesus. It is an essential doctrine of Christianity that the world is fundamentally good and practically bad, for it was made by God, but is now controlled by sin. If a man wants to be a Christian, he must stand over against things as they are and condemn them in the name of that higher conception of life which Jesus revealed. If a man is satisfied with things as they are, he belongs to the other side. For many centuries THE SOCIAL AIMS OF JESUS 9I the Church felt so deeply that the Christian conception of life and the actual social Hfe are incompatible, that any one who wanted to live the genuine Christian hfe, had to leave the world and hve in a monastic community. Protestantism has abandoned the monastic life and settled down to live in the world. If that imphes that it accepts the present condition as good and final, it means a silencing of its Christian protest and its surrender to "the world." There is another alternative. Ascetic Christianity called the world evil and left it. Humanity is waiting for a revolutionary Christianity which wiU call the world evil and change it. We do not want "to blow all our existing institutions to atoms," but we do want to remould every one of them. A tank of gasolene can blow a car sky-high in a single explosion, or push it to the top of a hill in a perpetual succession of little explosions. We need a combination beween the faith of Jesus in the need and the possibility of the kingdom of God, and the modern comprehension of the organic development of human society. We saw at the outset of our discussion that Jesus was not a mere social reformer. Rehgion was the heart of his life, and all that he said on social relations was said from the religious point of view. He has been called the first socialist. He was more ; he was the first real man, the inaugurator of a new humanity. But as such he bore within him the germs of a new social and political order.... N

1.27.2020

12 sentences. THIS IS JESUS, the first I've ever seen it spoken, in all my years.


Beyond the question of economic distribution lies the question of moral relations; and beyond the moral relations to men lies the question of the religious communion with that spiritual reality in which we live and move and have our deep- est being — with God, the Father of our spirits. Jesus had V realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man > in the love of God. That was the real secret of his life, the well-spring of his purity, his compassion, his unwearied courage, his unquenchable idealism : he knew the Father. But if he had that greatest of all possessions, the real key to the secret of life, it was his highest social duty to share it and help others to gain what he had. He had to teach men to live as children in the presence of their Father, and no longer as slaves cringing before a despot. He had to show them that the ordinary life of selfishness and hate and anxiety and chafing ambition and covetousness is no life at all, and that they must enter into a new world of love and solidarity and inward contentment. There was no service that he could render to men which would equal that. All other help lay in concentric circles about that redemption of the spirit and flowed out from it. No comprehension of Jesus is even approximately true which fails to understand that the heart of his heart was religion. No man is a follower of Jesus in the full sense who has not through him entered into the same life with God. But on the other hand no man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without ^ effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything — that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over THE SOCIAL AIMS OF JESUS 49 the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.

Private guns are not about keeping your family safe, it's about getting your rocks off on the delusion that you are.


Being friends with is a deadly empowerment of my head and flesh. For my freshman year in college this was miraculously avoided and I was friends to everyone. But then it stopped in the miracle ended and I didn't know why. Similar thing last night. I have more and more respect for the early monasteries. Going to create a place of sanity.


1.26.2020

Expected destination for the next couple of days. Chilly but sunny



The outcome of these first historical chapters is that the essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God. The fourth chapter raises the question why the Christian Church has never undertaken to carry out this fundamental purpose of its existence. I have never met with any previous attempt to give a satisfactory historical explanation of this failure, and I....

The outcome of these first historical chapters is that the essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God. The fourth chapter raises the question why the Christian Church has never undertaken to carry out this fundamental purpose of its existence. I have never met with any previous attempt to give a satisfactory historical explanation of this failure, and I

Shouldn't you read the chapter that created Martin Luther King jr.? Really? Now maybe?

The fundamental contribution of every man is the change of his own personality. We must repent of the sins of existing society, cast off the spell of the lies protecting our social wrongs, have faith in a higher social order, and realize in ourselves a new type of Christian manhood which seeks to....

The fundamental contribution of every man is the change of his own personality. We must repent of the sins of existing society, cast off the spell of the lies protecting our social wrongs, have faith in a higher social order, and realize in ourselves a new type of Christian manhood which seeks to...... overcome the evil in the present world, not by withdrawing from the world, but by revolutionizing it. If this new type of religious character multiplies among the young men and women, they will change the world when they come to hold the controlling positions of society in their maturer years. They will give a new force to righteous and enlightened public opinion, and will apply the religious sense of duty

The force of Loving reation, 2 verbs, AKA God, must have our every breath Allegiance. If jail or death the consequence, so...?


Monumentally wrong James was. Rauschenbusch final chapter WOULD SPAWN AN MLK JR.


Regardless of the fault, his or mine about the early chapters, the last chapter is an explosive insightful brilliant situation analysis.

1.25.2020

Focused on loving soul for joy all day long. Best day in many many weeks. Lifted almost all other factors. And this makes sense. Soul is the seat of all goodness and attention and learning and acceleration and capacity-building are all the best thing that any of us can do.

Rereading this book, extremely disappointed. It catalyzed Martin Luther King jr., and that's pretty important. But it is about the church, reforming the church. There's no hope in that.

I couldn't stand the middle chapters so I've gone right to the end and will spend a few more hours giving it a chance.
Reading it first 10 years ago or so it was electrifying. Why I found it electrifying I have no idea.

The greatest contribution which any man can make to the social movement is the contribution of a regenerated personality, of a will which sets justice above policy and profit, and of an intellect emancipated from falsehood. Such a man will...

The greatest contribution which any man can make to the social movement is the contribution of a regenerated personality, of a will which sets justice above policy and profit, and of an intellect emancipated from falsehood. Such a man will..... in some measure incarnate the principles of a higher  social order in his attitude to all questions and in all his relations to men, and will be a well-spring of regenerating influences. If he speaks, his judgment will be a corrective force. If he listens, he will encourage the truth-teller and discourage the pedler of adulterated facts and maxims. If others lose heart, he will stay them with his inspired patience. If any new principle is to gain power in human history, it must take shape and life in individuals who have faith in it. The men of faith are the living spirits, the channels by which new truth and power from God enter humanity. To repent of our collective social sins, to have faith in the possibility and reality of a divine life in humanity, to submit the will to the purposes of the kingdom of God, to permit the divine inspiration to emancipate and clarify the moral insight — this is the most intimate duty of the religious man who would help to build the coming Messianic era of mankind.

Like all the greatest spiritual teachers of mankind, Jesus realized a profound danger to the better self in the pursuit of wealth. Whoever....

Like all the greatest spiritual teachers of mankind, Jesus realized a profound danger to the better self in the pursuit of wealth. Whoever.... will watch the development of a soul that has bent its energies to the task of

Trump is a pandemic deadly assault on our souls. James woke from a dream last night where he was trying to please Trump. This is not a joke. This is no joke. He is a deadly infection.