the importance of being foolish (I)

Thursday night Small Group (there really isn't a name for it) is going through Brennan Manning's The Importance of Being Foolish. Tiffany is a big Manning fan and recommended it. I'll be posting quotes on my blog as I read through the chapters week-by-week, just a way of sharing some of the things he writes that have importance to me. So, here we go!

Chapter One: Truth

"Self-deception is the enemy of wholeness because it prevents us from seeing ourselves as we really are. It covers up our lack of growth in the Spirit of the truthful One and keeps us from coming to terms with our real personalities." 

"To become a little child again (as Jesus enjoined we must) is to recapture a sense of surprise, wonder, and vast delight in all of reality... A truly balanced person retains a capacity for wonder and the willingness to express it in the very confession of creaturehood, the spontaneous acknowledgement that he is a human being and not a god, a being with limitations who, far from having embraced infinity, is happily and hopelessly engulfed by it."

"[The devil] prompts us to give importance to what has no importance; he clothes with a false glitter what is least substantial and turns us away from what is surpassingly real. He causes us to live in a world of delusion, unreality, and shadows."

"We should be embarrassed by the Word because it says much that we don't want to hear. But why are most of us not embarrassed? Why doesn't the Word exult, frighten, and shock us? It's not because we are unfamiliar with it--we hear it week in and week out. Why doesn't it force us to reassess our lives?"

One reason Christians often reject the way of Jesus: "[The] gospel ethic is too disturbing, too problematic to live out. Let us shove it under the rug and forget about it. If you tell it like it is, people will be turned off. We are reluctant to structure our moral teaching around the gospel."

"The demands of the gospel bring us to the vivid awareness of our weakness and imperfection. They stun us, reduce our overestimation of ourselves, and make us realize how limited we are. This realization--when we allow it to infiltrate our hearts--keeps us from smugness, complacency, and the self-sufficiency that poisons spirituality."

"God's Word wakes us up to our need. Until we submit our lives to the judgment of the gospel and the standards of goodness and virtue established by Jesus, there can be no profound consciousness of being a sinner in need of mercy. How many of us have actually tasted the truth that we are saved; that we do not save ourselves; that in very truth we are poor, weak sinners with hereditary faults and limited virtues; that we are God's children not by our merit but by God's mercy... If the gospel tells us anything, if the church proclaims just one thing year in and year out, it is that salvation is God's free gift. The gospel is the glad tiding of gratuitous redemption."

"In the Jewish community of New Testament times, the child was considered of no importance, meriting no attention or favor. The child was regarded with scorn. For the disciples of Jesus, being like a child means accepting oneself as being of little account, unimportant... In the mentality of New Testament times, poverty and childhood were regarded with equal contempt. However, Jesus says that God prefers the underprivileged. God is pleased to give a privileged place in the kingdom to those whom the world considers most unfortunate."

"The primary posture of the Christian is a childlike openness to God, and our primary attitude one of Thanksgiving."

"We are worshipers of the saving love and mercy of the God who has accepted us. We are steeped in gratitude and dependence. Our very being is a Eucharist, a permanent and perpetual thanksgiving to God. The Psalms remind us that whenever God's people are gathered together, an attitude of joyful thanksgiving is the thanks offering of the assembly... If Eucharist means thanksgiving, Christianity means people who are joyfully thankful people."

"The joyful Christian is one who has retained a sense of awe and wonder before God, one who has existentially experienced membership in a redeemed community. She has a lively faith-appreciation of this great gift. She has opened up to the truth that everything she has is from God, that she is completely dependent on Christ, that 'Jesus saves.' Of course, on a given day she may come to worship more depressed than anything else. In this vale of tears no Christian life is an unbroken, upward spiral to the mountaintop. Yet the Christian's basic orientation is one of joy and gratitude. Such is the legacy of the paschal mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are God's children not by our merit but by God's mercy."