Every Real Thing Is A Joy, If

Christianity Is Not A Religion; It Is The Announcement Of The End Of Religion.

... The Divine Knowing - What The Father Knows, And What The Word Says In Response To That Knowing, And What The Spirit Broods Upon Under The Speaking Of The Word - All That Eternal Intellectual Activity Isn't Just Daydreaming. It's The Cause Of Everything That Is. God Doesn't Find Out About Creation; He Knows It Into Being. His Knowing Has Hair On It. It Is An Effective Act. What He Knows, Is. What He Thinks, By The Very Fact Of His Thinking, Jumps From No-thing Into Thing. He Never Thought Of Anything That Wasn't.

The Life Of Grace Is Not An Effort On Our Part To Achieve A Goal We Set Ourselves. It Is A Continually Renewed Attempt Simply To Believe That Someone Else Has Done All The Achieving That Is Needed And To Live In Relationship With That Person, Whether We Achieve Or Not. If That Doesn't Seem Like Much To You, You're Right: It Isn't. And, As A Matter Of Fact, The Life Of Grace Is Even Less Than That. It's Not Even Our Life At All, But The Life Of That Someone Else Rising Like A Tide In The Ruins Of Our Death.

Christianity Is Not A Religion. Christianity Is The Proclamation Of The End Of Religion, Not Of A New Religion, Or Even Of The Best Of All Religions. If The Cross Is The Sign Of Anything, It's The Sign That God Has Gone Out Of The Religion Business And Solved All Of The World's Problems Without Requiring A Single Human Being To Do A Single Religious Thing. What The Cross Is Actually A Sign Of Is The Fact That Religion Can't Do A Thing About The World's Problems - That It Never Did Work And It Never Will

Lord, Please Restore To Us The Comfort Of Merit And Demerit. Show Us That There Is At Least Something We Can Do. Tell Us That At The End Of The Day There Will At Least Be One Redeeming Card Of Our Very Own. Lord, If It Is Not Too Much To Ask, Send Us To Bed With A Few Shreds Of Self-respect Upon Which We Can Congratulate Ourselves. But Whatever You Do, Do Not Preach Grace. Give Us Something To Do, Anything; But Spare Us The Indignity Of This Indiscriminate Acceptance.