Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read
A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .
Indeed, our consumer society is grounded in the generation of artificial desires, readily transposed into urgent needs. The always-emerging new desires and new needs create a restless striving that sets neighbor against neighbor in order to get ahead, to have an advantage, and to accumulate at the expense of the other. The power of such a compulsion to “get,” of course, negates neighborly possibility.
Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition With Study Guide
Walter Brueggemann
The first word, psychikos, does not in any case mean anything like “physical” in our sense. For Greek speakers of Paul’s day, the psychē, from which the word derives, means the soul, not the body. But the deeper, underlying point is that adjectives of this type, Greek adjectives ending in-ikos, describe not the material out of which things are made but the power or energy that animates them. It is the difference between asking, on the one hand, “Is this a wooden ship or an iron ship?” (the material from which it is made) and asking, on the other, “Is this a steamship or a sailing ship?” (the energy that powers it). Paul is talking about the present body, which is animated by the normal human psychē (the life force we all possess here and now, which gets us through the present life but is ultimately powerless against illness, injury, decay, and death), and the future body, which is animated by God’s pneuma, God’s breath of new life, the energizing power of God’s new creation.
Surprised by Hope
N. T. Wright
Moses in Deuteronomy says to rest: Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (5:15) Remember the exodus! Remember that the coercive system of Pharaoh was disrupted. Remember that the brick quota was declared null and void. Moses warned the Israelites: if you forget this, you will give your life over to coercive competition. But if you remember, you will know that Pharaoh and all like agents of coercion have been defeated. You do not need to meet expectations of your mother or your work or your boss or your broker or anybody else. You are free from the quota . . . if you remember, if you situate yourself in the covenant memory.
Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition With Study Guide
Walter Brueggemann
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise