Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read
A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .
The most constant “whim,” historically, has been the disastrous idea just mentioned: that Jesus is here giving laws. For if that is all he is doing, they will certainly be laws that are impossible to keep. The keeping of law turns out to be an inherently self-refuting aim; rather, the inner self must be changed. Trying merely to keep the law is not wholly unlike trying to make an apple tree bear peaches by tying peaches to its branches.
The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas Willard
So we invert the purpose of work. Instead of working as a way to love and serve others, we turn work into a way to be loved and served by others. Instead of longing to hear the “Tov!” of God, we work for the “Tov!” of people. And this is only the beginning of our brokenness; sometimes we actively labor to hurt people. Not only is the world complex and hard to manage, but evil abounds. Whether it’s a competent bookkeeper working in the field of sex trafficking or an otherwise talented manager writing an email specifically intended to produce guilt and shame in an employee, often human work actively cultivates evil instead of love.
The Common Rule
Justin Whitmel Earley
Knowing about God is different than knowing God. You see, if the Galatian believers really knew God as their Father then they would be free just as Jesus has promised absolute freedom, but they were not free. Paul stuck in this disclaimer as a teaching jab: they were certainly known by God who loved them as his own sons, but they were living as slaves because they did not know and believe the father heart of God for them as sons.
Orphan Slave Son
Ben Pasley
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