Jeff Ragan > Recent Status Updates

"He by whose favour such error is corrected, O Parvati, is that gracious Rama. In Him is no beginning, no end, & the Vedas have tried their best to describe him thus: 'Without feet he walks, without ears he hears, without hands he performs his various deeds...without speech he is the most eloquent, without body he touches...thus his activity is supernatural in all ways and none can describe his greatness'" (221).

"They could afford to praise Sparta, since the did not have to live in it. They did not feel at close range the selfishness, coldness, & cruelty of the Spartan character; they could no see from the select gentlemen whom they met...that the Spartan code produced good soldiers & nothing more; that it made vigor of body a graceless brutality because it killed nearly all capacity for the things of the mind" (87).

"The net result of all this is (a) that Paul seems almost certainly to be forbidding something that is already going on, and (b) that he altogether eliminates abstention as a normal practice, acceding to it only hypothetically and under certain conditions, on the basis of his Jewish background" (313).

"'Relational rent,' as one of my mentors termed it, is paid with time. Money is not the currency of relationship. Time, care, and concern are" (107).

"The most well-known example of church discipline in American history - the scarlet 'A' sewn on Hester Prynne's clothes - was a product of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical imagination and not an accurate record of either a historical event or of the general practice of church discipline in colonial New England" (653-4).

"Piper hadn't taken the time to look at his position from the enemy's perspective. The shallow holes that the platoon was digging on the rise seemed awfully open and very obvious. the dark dirt and the black rocks piled in front of the holes clearly identified each fighting position. It was instantly apparent that the platoon would be fully within the range of he enemy's supporting fires" (45-46).

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record" (152).

"O peuple de Sion habitant a Jerusalem, tu ne pleuraras plus! Car Dieu te fera grace quand tu crieras et, lorsqu'il t'entendra, il repondra a ton appel. Car le Seigneur te donnera du pain dans la detresse et de l'eau dans l'angoisse. Oui, celui qui t'enseigne ne se cachera plus, tu verras de tes yeux le maitre qui t'instruit." - Esaie 30:29-20

"I am a mass of sin; Thou are all purity;
Yet thou must take me as I am
And bear my load for me.

Me Death has all consumed; In thee all power abides.
All else forsaking, at thy feet Thy servant Tuka hides" (212).

"The power and pride of Sparta was above all in its army, for in the courage, discipline, and skill of these troops it found its security and its ideal. Every citizen was trained for war, and was liable to military service from his twentieth to his sixtieth year... 'Return with your shield or on it,' was the Spartan mother's farewell to her soldier son" (81).

"Paul saw clearly, and taught, that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28), that is, that the old distinctions between the sexes that tended to eliminate women from worship and significance had been broken down by the cross, resurrection, and gift of the Spirit" (300).

"'...if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down...what would you tell him to do?' 'I...don't know. What...could he do? What would you tell him?' 'To shrug'" (422).

"As the gospel of justification by faith alone spread, the impossibility of justification without faith quietly challenged the practice of indiscriminately administering baptism & the Lord's Supper to everyone who belonged to a particular political entity, whether city, nation, or parish. Naturally, this meant the millennium-old, Constantinian relationship between church & state was itself being challenged" (645).

"Davis quickly saw that there were three ways to defend the valley: forward of the trails, behind the trials, or in the trails...A forward defense was the simplest option...Davis's second option was a reverse-slope defense...[It] would deny the platoon clear observation of the enemy...but it would provide better protection...third option was to block the enemy in each of the four trails that led into Wadi Al Sirree.

"Et quand les Egyptiens crieront a l'Eternel a cause de leurs oppesseurs, il leur enverra un liberateur qui prendra leur parti et les delivrera. L'Eternel se fera connaitre au pays de l'Egypte et, ce jour-la, les Egyptiens connaitront l'Eternel." - Esaie 19:20-21

"...the old sperm-whaling ships...in the course of voyages that might last two or three years, seldom called at any port. They avoided ports like the plague. All that they needed to replenish was water and the captain took care to do this at some remote, uninhabited island...where the crew had neither the temptation nor the opportunity to desert. It is an example that I have found it advisable to follow..." (839).

"Feed thy fatted rams, thou worldly one,
Take them grain and dainties, and then slay.
Give thy thoughts that reek with 'said and done'
Last-fruits of Knowledge, and cast away.

Then shalt see with Spirit-eyes the Place
Where the dwelling of the Lord shall be;
Then shall pass thy terrors of disgrace;
Then shall Custom lose her hold on thee" (209).

"In the course of their development the irrepressible Hellenes spread into every isle of the Aegean, into Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus, into Egypt, Palestine, Syria...In all these regions they built city-states, independent and diverse, and yet Greek; they spoke the Greek tongue, worshiped Greek gods...They did not leave Greece behind them..they carried it with them...they made the Mediterranean a Greek lake" (70-1).

"The Christian creed...is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. That creed...affirms a holistic view of redemption that is predicated in part on the doctrine of creation - both the physical & spiritual orders are good because God created them - and in part on the doctrine of redemption...the whole fallen order, including the body, has been redeemed...& awaits its final redemption" (294).

"...sales is as much or more about the heart than it is the head. I'm not interested in adding people to my team who don't love what they do...there may be accountants, software engineers, and project managers who do good work without being passionate about their jobs, but I've never once met a highly successful dispassionate salesperson. We cannot afford to hire someone who doesn't love sales!" (88-9).

"...the proper ends for a local congregation's life and actions are the worship of God, the edification of the church, and the evangelization of the world. These three purposes in turn serve the glory of God" (634).

"'...I'm out all on my own, defending a position four klicks away from the rest of the company, and I hardly know my platoon. How can I complain?' Davis said with a laugh'" (35).

"L'Esprit de l'Eternel reposera sur lui, et cet Esprit lui donnera le discernement, la sagesse, le conseil at la force; il lui fera connaitre l'Eternel et s'attacher a lui. Son plaisir sera d'obeir a l'Eternel. Il ne jugera pas d'apres les apparences, et n'arbitrera pas d'apres des oui-dire. Il jugera les pauvres avec justice, et il arbitrera selon le droit en faveur des malheureux de pays." - Esaie 11:2-4a

"'But to walk off & abandon...an industrial enterprise, as if we were in the age of landless nomads or of savages wandering in the jungle!' 'Aren't we?...Why should I leave a deed or a will? I don't want to help the looters to pretend that private property still exists. I am complying with the system which they have established. They do not need me, they say, they only need my coal. Let them take it'" (414).

"Those, however, whose good karman enables them to take refuge in God and who, released from the bondage of evil, assume a divine nature, know God to be the origin of all beings, the eternal Lord whose proper form, name and actions are beyond thought and speech and who has descended into human shape to rescue the sadhus, and they worship God with all their minds focused on him alone" (190).

"The mixture of races & ways took centuries to win even a moderate stability, but it contributed to produce the unparalleled variety...of Greek thought & life. Instead of thinking of Greek culture as a flame that shone suddenly...we must conceive of it as the slow...creation of a people almost too richly endowed in blood & memories...instructed by warlike hordes, powerful empires, & ancient civilizations" (64).

"Truly Christian conduct is not predicated on whether I have the right to do something, i.e., whether it is to my own benefit or not, but whether my conduct is good, meaning ultimately helpful to those around me" (279).

"...from these several considerations we may conclude that fertility does not constitute a fundamental distinction between varieties and species when crossed" (149).

Darwin's definition of "species" is in direct contradiction with modern science's definition. How he can be believed as the expert on "The Origin of Species" is beyond me.

"The Bible also represents churches as composed of members. Combining the collective images of families, parties, and communities with the even more integrated image of an individual body and its various parts, the Bible presents the local church as an entity made up of multiple individuals yet so highly integrated they are identifiable as a unit. They are even said to be a part of one another" (621-2).

"From my point of view...Greenland is the ideal objective, combining remoteness, difficulty of access, the grandest scenery, an inexhaustible number of mountainous fjords each with its own character, & on the whole a region still sufficiently unfrequented for a man in a small boat to feel very remotely akin to the early seamen-explorers and to their successors the old whaling men from Hull, Leith, Dundee..." (831).