Tim Keller is a Baller

It would be a really good idea to download and listen to these and these.

Fall Reading Daze

I acquired several books over Fall Reading Days (which is ironic considering we are supposed to be reading assigned reading during our break). Perhaps the book I am most excited about is Refractions, which is a collection of essays on art and faith by Japanese Christian artist Makoto Fujimura. Tim Keller wrote the forward.

I also bought and finished Flannery O'Conn0r's first novel, Wise Blood. The book's skeleton is a collage of various short stories she had previously written, which admittedly feels a little disjointed at times, but I do not think that it detracts from the thrust of the book. If anything, it was interesting to see how she developed the characters from their embryonic versions. As always, it was especially interesting to see O'Connor's perspective on God, depravity, and divine grace in her native South. As a southerner by birth, I completely concur with O'Connor's commentary:

"anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."

Keller on Material Salvation

"Christianity... is perhaps the most materialistic of the world's faiths. Jesus's miracles were not so much violations of the natural order, but a restoration of the natural order. God did not create a world with blindness, leprosy, hunger, and death in it. Jesus's miracles were signs that someday all these corruptions of his creation would be abolished. Christians therefore can talk of saving the soul and of building social systems that deliver safe streets and warm homes in the same sentence. With integrity."

-The Prodigal God (112)