Monthly Archives: May 2009

Beyond Justification 2 – What does it mean to be human?

The article that spurred this series, Beyond Justification: An Orthodox Perspective, immediately caught my attention in its opening paragraph with the sentence: Orthodox in general have never quite understood what all the fuss was about to begin with. That precisely captures my state of confusion ever since my conversion to Christianity. It has seemed like [...]
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Beyond Justification 1 or How did I come up with a new series already?

Earlier this week I was discussing with a friend the difficulty of actual communicating anything meaningful about sex or sexuality in our cultural context without first exploring the question of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God. I think a lot of American cultural Christians, especially those often [...]
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Fasting and Humility

Only weeks into this gluten free fast, I already begin to understand the reason for the linguistic linkage between humility and humiliation, at least for someone with my longstanding private and often even stoic demeanor. That private aspect to my nature is the primary reason I never started my own blog. Celiac is taking that [...]
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Red Lobster

To celebrate our mother’s doctoral graduation, my brother took everyone out to Red Lobster. I told our server that I had celiac disease and asked if they had a gluten free menu. They do not have one. I ended up talking to the manager who consulted with the chef. They told me that anything grill [...]
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Breaking the Fast – the Ancestral Sin

For several days, I’ve been reflecting on the story of the ancestral sin. I had never really considered this aspect before, but the whole story revolves around a fast. God gives the adam, humanity, a single and apparently simple fast. Anything in the garden you may eat, but of the fruit of this one tree, [...]
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Not the Fast I’ve Chosen

This post collects the permanent links to all the posts in the series, Not the Fast I’ve Chosen. I wanted to provide this to make it easy to reference the entire series. Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 1 Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 2 Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part [...]
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Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Epilogue

This series has barely managed to scratch the surface of many different and often deep topics. I never intended it to deeply cover everything in depth, but rather to lay the groundwork for my focus on this particular subject on this blog. I’m sure I will visit and revisit many of the topics touched on [...]
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Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 9

I closed my train of thought in my last post with the idea that, though God has not given me celiac disease for any reason whatsoever, he has been quietly at work preparing me and giving me the tools, should I care to employ them, to stand and perhaps even grow in the face of [...]
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Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 8

If God is not any of those images of God from my last post in this series, then what sort of God is he? Why does it matter that he is not a God who sends illness and disease? The answer to both of those questions is the same: Jesus of Nazareth. It seems to [...]
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Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 7

But it is the fast that I’ve been given. As I’ve written the posts traveling the thread of my own experience and personal journey, it’s dawned on me that some, perhaps even many, might read that statement from my earlier posts as some form of fatalism or even is if I’m blaming God for this [...]
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