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"Rumors of Another World: What On Earth Are We Missing?” is a weighty book and not one you can breeze through quickly but rather calls the reader towards a meditative examination of how society models and sells life today is the antithesis of the contemplative path God intended.
The book seeks to answer three basic questions:
What does the current world tell us about heaven?
Why is the world so bad then?
Where are the natural + supernatural intersections - and what’s their effect on our daily life?
Author Philip Yancey seeks to remind us that the world we live in can not just be fully natural or supernatural–it’s not an either/or choice. Rather our everyday interactions bleed over into the supernatural world. When we act kindly and selflessly, he calls this ‘hallowing’--describing the term as releasing the holy sparks present in God's creation.
Ultimately he calls us to an upside down world view that is others focused and which seeks to emulate Jesus’ life. He gives some “easy” examples that call us to serve those and seeks situations that we get nothing out. Specifically: seek those whose egos need stroking (as opposed to those who stroke yours), find people with few resources and give them yours, look for the weak and the sick–and love them.
One of the authors’s most powerful (and surprising) observations was his comparison of romantic love to that of God’s love for us. This one stuck with me and is a riff off of C.S. Lewis colleague Charles Williams’ “romantic theology”. If we think of how we felt when we were first falling in love and we had “the ability to see the best in one other person, to ignore & forgive flaws, to bask in endess fascination"-well, that is how God views us and how in heaven we will view everyone else there.” That’s a wild thought–this idea that just how we can’t get the person we’re falling in love with out of our head, the way they permeate every thought–that’s how God thinks about us–but all the time. That should serve as both encouragement and a reminder of our value to him–the creator of the universe can’t get us out of his mind.
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- what does the current world tell us about heaven?
- Why is the world so bad then?
- Natural + supernatural intersections - and the effect on our daily life.
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What do we miss on a daily basis due to our own lack of faith?
Encounter > reduction
You can't quantify God's creation- the beauty of it.
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"A society that denies the supernatural usually ends up elevating the natural to supernatural status."
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Today what was called idolatry is now masked as addictions
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The prayer-> God, take my many longings and show me them at the Holy source that is their origin and which only God can order.
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George Orwell quote-o we have cut away our souls by our disconnection with the hallowed.
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"We forget that what is to us an extension of sight is to the rest of the world a peculiar and arrogant blindness." Flannery O' Connor
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Nature humbles us to God's power and might and how frail we are.
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Idea of "hallowing" → releasing the holy sparks present in God's creation.
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Mystics/saints understand the secret is to live one moment at a time
57
Why meditate/contemplate? To see this life as a unity of both worlds-as God sees it combo of practiced repetition and rare revelation.
Author makes a very interesting parallel between the idea of romantic love and that this is the way God thinks of us. Where he can't get us out of his mind. This feeling we experience is one of those echoes-those rumors of the heavenly.
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[Christianity] applies a dose of realism to the chaos of human longings... promises an ordering of life...
68
Marriage as God's great tool to form our character.
Every relationship is a tool to build our character
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Ordinary acts of faith turn us from self- obsession so that our lives become reflections of Jesus-so while they may sometimes feel rote-PRESS ON, GET THE REPS.
CH. 5 DESIGNER SEX
81
By desecralizing sex-the Church steals away a powerful pointer towards the CREATOR.
89
Romance-particulary the initial bloom of it gives us "the ability to see the best in one other person, to ignore & forgive flaws, to bask in endess fascination" > This is how God views us!!! And how in the 'Kingdom to come' we will view everyone else there. -from Ciates" Williams"
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Sex (the idea of it, the desire of it) brings into marriage where it instead teaches us about sacrificial love.
103
God put restlessness in us for a purpose to beckon us to him but also aware of its danger
105-6
In U.s. today the 7 deadly sins have become-have been distorted into virtues:
Pride - idolizing the proud
Envy - advertising is centry to creating it
Anger - Public outrage is all the rage
Greed- Hustle, prepare for retirement"
Sloth- Retire early
Gluttony- Big gulp trend-'more is more'
Lust - scantily clad women has become the norm. .
108
QUOTE: "There are two ways to get enough, one is to continue to accumulate more & more. The other is to desire less."
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Greed (as is all sin) is rooted in disorder.
116
Original sin must be acknowledged and balanced w/ original grace!
132-3
One of greatest health hazards? DIVORCE.
Increases of early death from stroke, heart disease, hypertension, cancer...
Double the suicide rates
Divorced non-smoker = same health risks as married person who smokes a pack a day.
143
Sin is like a force field we can't explain or resist.
144-5
Natural condition is sin.
Like having a 3 - story mansion but livin in the dank cellar (Kierkegaard, Suren)
145
Quote: "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to." Twain
The cycle: sin → pain → guilt → repentance → consequences > restoration.
REF: Psalm 51 & AA
157
Ex. of mom who 'loved' cleaning up her son - or so he thought. In fact, the cleaning was an excuse to hold him.
Mess (sin) is just part of getting close to him this is what it is like w/ God.
166
Quote: "Without God, everything is permitted." Dostoyevsk
Stalin era practice of having school children pray to Stalm for candy (and then giving them the candy).
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To watch: "To End All Wars" on the life of Ernest Gordon in WWII (2001 film)
184
A supernatural, spiritual world is the only is the only rationale to explain so much madness in the world: children starving, snipers, homeless pop Hn in a rich country like v. 5. A- etc...
187
The point of the book: the world is not "either/or "→ i. e., not just natural or supernatural. Our everyday actions have supernatural consequences-even things like loving the sick and needy.
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Seeing both worlds should force us to look at humanity in its seeming imperfection differently-to go beyond the surface w/ ppl. (e. g. Elephant Man Ex.)
MONEY, HARDSHIP, DEATH
202
Our objective: world upside ↓ view
Seek those whose egos need stroking
Find people with few resources
Look for the week, the sick
in these things we are emulating Jesus *
210
Giving should not be uptight-worried about every tax deduction.
No, we are called to hilarious, cheerful giving
Giving freely w/ no recognition
215
"When 2.5M ppl. die in Africa each year from AIDS, that's not a cause, that's an emergency"' Bono
224
"Evil is overcome by good only if the injured party absorbs it, refusing to allow it to go any further." YANCEY
237
Maybe the world is counterculture and the Kingdon of God is the culture.
Jesus' normal pattern of life couldn't be accepted
Follow God's faintest whisper requires solitude and total obedience.
239
Jesus' call to us to lose our life for his sake in order to find our life seems paradoxical but is really about every day acts of obedience.
It also means discomfort
ecstasy- greek-ek stasis-to stand apart from-to get outside our bodily desires
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