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nshwilliams.bsky.social
@nshwilliams.bsky.social
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nshwilliams.bsky.social
Why did I take so long to start getting my national news directly from APnews.com? @apnews.com
Excerpt from the “What we know” section of a breaking news article on the AP website: Updates take time: Compiling accurate and thorough information on an active shooting takes time. Reporters are working to piece together the details from eyewitness accounts, authorities and other sources.
April 17, 2025 at 8:55 PM
nshwilliams.bsky.social
I’m struck by his keen awareness that we deceive ourselves precisely in our desire for unmediated relationship with our neighbors (and ourselves). What looks humanly like simplicity and directness, when it is not under Christ, inevitably becomes judgmental and domineering.
Ultimately, this hankering for false authority has at its root a desire to re-establish some sort of immediacy, a dePendence upon human beings in the Church. Genuine authority knows that all immediacy is especially baneful in matters of authority. Genuine authority realizes that it can exist only in the service of Him who alone has authority…. (Life Together p. 109)
March 31, 2025 at 12:20 PM
nshwilliams.bsky.social
In which #Bonhoeffer draws a direct line between “people of good will who love their neighbors” and authoritarianism.
Likewise, there is a human love of one's neighbor. Such passion is capable of prodigious sacrifices. Often it far surpasses genuine Christian love in fervent devotion and visible results. (Life Together, p. 33) It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming and stirring eloquence. But it is what Paul is speaking of when he says: "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned"-in other words, though I combine the utmost deeds of love with the utmost of devotion-"and have not charity [that is, the love of Christ], it profiteth me nothing" (1 Cor. 13:3). Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. There-fore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule. (Life Together, p. 34) Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober brotherly fellowship of everyday life. There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God's greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not by experience. (Life Together, p. 39)
March 26, 2025 at 12:18 PM