"The Powers the Be" by Walter Wink

Why do theology books always have lame covers? Give me some art, a picture, whatever...
just something better than the title in a block font!

I'm a quarter of the way through an amazing book that was recommended and loaned to me by Ron. Its an amazing read that I would highly recommend to all of you.

Below are some quotes that resonated with me:

"God at one and the same time upholds a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; condemns that system insofar as it is destructive of fully human life; and presses for its transformation into a more human order. Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three."

"By acknowledging that the Powers are good, bad, and salvageable- all at once- we are freed from the temptation to demonize those who do evil. We can love our enemies or nation or church or school, not blindly, but critically, calling them back time and again to their own highest self-professed ideals and identities... We can oppose their actions while honoring their necessity"

"The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures."

"The Myth of Redemptive Violence... enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right. It is one of the oldest continuously repeated stories in the world... It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today."

"The myth of redemptive violence is the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world has ever known. Furthermore, its orientation toward evil is one into which virtually all modern children (boys especially) are socialized in the process of maturation." [G-d, may this not be true for Cash!]

"By making violence pleasurable, fascinating, and entertaining, the Powers are able to delude people into compliance with a system that is cheating them of their very lives."