Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read
A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .
Rather than being pushed by beliefs, we are pulled by a telos that we desire.
Desiring the Kingdom
James K. A. Smith
Moses anticipates that if they are not alert to the God of emancipation, they will end up right back in another system of coercion. Because the land is fertile, its produce will make Israel safe and happy. And if Israel can increase its produce, it will be safer and happier. And Israel will discover that the sky is the limit! The fertility of the land and the productivity of the system will make Israel acquisitive; Israel will come to think that the goal of its life is to acquire and acquire and acquire. And in order to acquire, Israelites must compete with the neighbor. The system will turn one’s neighbor into a competitor and a threat and a challenge.
Sabbath as Resistance, New Edition With Study Guide
Walter Brueggemann
All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine: the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week. But I think Dickens will prove stronger. (Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature [New York: Harvest, 2002], 56)
Desiring the Kingdom
James K. A. Smith
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