Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  God created us to heal. He created our brains to rewire. He gave us neuroplasticity; our brain wiring isn’t rigid. If we practice and participate in healing—healing takes place. Healing is less about the actual trauma and more about whether we are willing to engage in the healing process. I believe with all of my heart that, if we engage in the process, the process will work for us. I want to encourage you not to waste your story and to not let your story define you. Where you are today isn’t where you will have to be tomorrow if you will make the decision to engage in the process. Here are some questions for you to process before moving on to the next chapter. MOVING FORWARD 1.​Label and name the emotion you are experiencing right now. Are you sad? Mad? Disgusted? 2.​Explore your own level of resistance. On a scale of one to ten (ten being highly resistant), how resistant are you to entering into the healing process? Why? 3.​Are you shocked by the amount of sexual abuse these women experienced? It is shocking, but it is a reality. Are you willing to face this reality? Look at your own history? Become an advocate for those who have experienced sexual trauma? Become a part of the solution? 4.​Take a few moments and invite God to search your heart to see if there is any unfinished business concerning your sexual history. 5.​Invite God into any memory and to lead you in the healing process. NINE Sexual Wholeness Seminar PART I: MORNING SESSION The truth is most adults have never had anyone talk with them about human sexuality. Most people do not receive a healthy sexual education. Many issues and problems can be resolved through biblical sex education and having some-one or a group of safe people to talk things through with. This is Olivia’s goal for this intensive seminar. She is hoping to create a dialogue for people to learn, ask questions, and to process their own issues. Her prayer is the isolation of sexual shame will be broken and people will find God’s healing and redemption through open and honest conversations around the topic. She has witnessed it many times and prays today will be another day of guiding a group into a deeper connection with themselves, others, and God, through the topic of sex. As Olivia reflects, she is grateful for the hard work she has done in partnership with God, in the process of recovering her own soul from the abyss of sexual abuse. She wouldn’t change a thing about her history, believing wholeheartedly her history is now God’s history and he has permission to use her story for good. At the least, she knows she could not invite people to go places she refused to go. She is happy she said “Yes” so many years ago.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  All things that were fitting I did.... But all the same in the face of such things there is nothing that anyone can do.’ That was the pagan outlook in the face of death. But the good news brings the certainty that death is not the end but the beginning of life, not the departure into annihilation but the departure to be for ever with God. (vi) The euaggelion is ‘good news of the risen Christ’ (I Cor. 15.1ff.; II Tim. 2.8). The good news which Christianity brings is that we do not worship a dead hero, but we live with a living presence. We are not left with only a pattern to copy and an example to follow, we are left with a constant companion of our way. Our faith is not a faith in a figure in a book who lived and died, but in one who rose from death and who is alive forever more. (vii) The euaggelion is ‘good news of salvation’ (Eph. 1.13). It is news of that power which wins us forgiveness for past sin, liberation from present sin, strength for the future to conquer sin. It is good news of victory. EUSEBEIA THE WORD OF TRUE RELIGION There is a very great group of Greek words which is characteristic of the language of the Pastoral Epistles. As we shall see, they are not easy to translate, but they all have in them one essential idea. There is eusebeia, the noun, which is usually translated godliness in the AV. The RSV usually retains this translation. Moffatt translates it either piety, or religion, in the sense of true religion. There is eusebēs, the adjective, which the AV translates devout or godly, a translation which the RSV retains; Moffatt translates it religious, religiously- minded, or pious. There is eusebein, the verb, which means to worship, to carry out the duties of true religion. There is eusebōs, the adverb, which the AV translates godly. There is the closely related word theosebeia, which the AV translates godliness, and the adjective theosebēs, which means worshipping God. It can be seen that all these words come from the same root; and the root meaning of them all is awe in the presence of that which is more than human, reverence in the presence of that which is majestic and divine; not only do they express that feeling of awe and reverence, but they also imply a worship which befits that awe, and a life of active obedience which befits that reverence. The fact is that in so far as Greek has a word for religion that word is eusebeia. Let us then begin by seeing what the Greeks themselves said about these words. The Platonic Definitions define eusebeia as right conduct in regard to the gods. The Stoics defined it as knowledge of how God should be worshipped.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  5.2). It is the hope that no longer shall we see the glory of God in the cloud and through a glass darkly. It is the certainty that the day will come when we shall see and be clothed with the glory of God. (iii) It is the hope of a new dispensation (II Cor. 3.12). So long as men regarded themselves as governed by law, there was room for nothing but despair, for there is none who can obey and satisfy the perfect law of God. But when we see that the key-note of religion is not law but love a new hope is born. (iv) It is the hope of righteousness (Gal. 5.5). In Paul righteousness or justification means a right relationship with God. When a man regards religion as law he must be ever in default before God, and therefore ever in terror of God. But the message of Jesus Christ enables a man to enter into a new relationship with God where the terror is gone and where childlike confidence takes its place. (v) It is the hope of salvation. This has two aspects. (a) It is the confidence of safety in this world (II Cor. 1.10), not in the sense of protection from trouble and danger, but in the sense of independence of them. As Rupert Brooke wrote, Safe shall be my going, Secretly armed against all death’s endeavour; Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall; And if these poor limbs die, safest of all. (b) It is the confidence of safety in the world to come. It is the hope of safety amidst the perils of earth, and rescue from the judgment of God. (vi) It is the hope of eternal life (Titus 1.2; 3.7). In the NT the word eternal always stresses, not the duration, but the quality of life. Eternal is the word which describes anything which is proper to God. Eternal life is the kind of life God lives. The hope of the Christian is that some day he will share the very life of God. (vii) It is the hope of the triumphant Second Coming of Christ (Titus 2.13; I Peter 1.13; I John 3.3). The Second Coming is not a fashionable doctrine today, but it does conserve this great truth—that history is going somewhere, that history is not a knotless thread, and a haphazard collection of meaningless and disconnected events. There is a consummation. The Christian is a man who regards himself and all life as being on the way to a goal.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  Apolutrōsis looks, not only backwards to forgiveness, but forwards to a re-created life. (iv) Apolutrōsis does not end with this life. It is eschatological. It is the foretaste of a process and a glory which will find their consummation in the coming of Christ and in the heavenly places (Luke 21.28; Eph. 4.30). This redemption which was wrought by the death of Christ makes possible for us forgiveness of sins, a new relationship with God, a new life upon earth, and in the end the glory of heaven. Now let us enquire what is implied in all these words which have to do with ‘ransom’, ‘redemption’, ‘rescue’, ‘liberation’. (i) They all imply that man was in captivity, in slavery, in subjection to an alien power. There was something which had man in its grip. (ii) They all imply that by no conceivable means could man have effected his own liberation or rescue. He was helpless in the grip of a power and a situation which he could not mend and from which he could not break away. (iii) His liberation was effected by the coming of Jesus Christ who paid the price which was necessary to achieve it. (iv) Nowhere in the NT is there any word of to whom that price was paid. It could not have been paid to God because all the time God was so loving the world. It was in fact God’s love that sent Christ into this world. It could not have been paid to the devil for that would put the devil on an equality with God. All that we can say is this—it cost the life and death of Christ to liberate man from the past, the present and the future power of sin. Beyond that we cannot go, but although thought may be baffled, experience shows that it cost the life of Jesus Christ to bring us home to God. MAKROTHUMIA THE DIVINE PATIENCE The noun makrothumia and the verb makrothumein are characteristically biblical words. They do not occur in classical Greek at all, and only very seldom in later Greek. They are indeed characteristically Christian words, for, as we shall see, they describe a Christian virtue which to the Greek was no virtue at all. In the NT makrothumia occurs fourteen times and makrothumein ten times. The AV varies between ‘long-suffering’ and ‘patience’. These words have two uses. (i) They describe the ‘steadfast spirit which will never give in’. It is that spirit of ‘patience’ and faith which will ultimately inherit the promise. It was because Abraham ‘patiently endured’ that he in the end received the promise (Heb. 6.15). ‘Patience’ is a virtue that the Christian must have as he waits for the Day of the Lord, and he may learn it from the ‘patience’ of the farmer as he waits for the crop, and from the ‘patience’ of the prophets who never gave up their hope in God (James 5.7-10).

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Neither is it a valid objection to urge, that monks ought not to act thus at present, while there is no dearth of secular teachers. For, the common welfare ought not to be sought by any means that may offer, but by the surest means possible. Now a plurality of teachers is greatly to the public advantage; for one will be well versed in subjects of which another is ignorant. Hence we read in Wisdom vi., 26, “The multitude of the wise is the welfare of the whole world.” “O that all the people might prophesy,” Moses cried out in his zeal for knowledge (Numb. xi. 29). The Gloss remarks upon his words, that, “a faithful preacher would have all men utter the truth, which he himself does not suffice to declare.” And, in another place, the Gloss continues, in the same strain, “He” (i.e., Moses) “wished all men to prophesy; for he was not jealous of the gift bestowed upon him.” It matters little whether teaching be conveyed by the word of a master who is present, or by the writing of one who is absent. To quote St. Paul (2 Cor. x. 11), “Such as we are in word by epistles when absent; such we will be in deed when present.” Now no one has seen the libraries of books, composed by monks, for the instruction of the Church, doubts that they can teach by writing, when absent. Therefore, it is lawful for them to teach by word, when present. We will now proceed to the easy task of confuting the objections brought against the right of religious to teach. The first argument, namely, that Our Lord gave a counsel to His disciples not to be masters, is, for several reasons, misleading. First, because the works of supererogation, concerning which the counsels are given, are rewarded by a peculiar recompense. “Whatever you spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay you” (Luke x. 33). These words are applied by the Gloss to works of supererogation. Hence it cannot be a counsel to abstain from works that are to be specially rewarded. Now teachers, like virgins, are promised a peculiar recompense. For we read in Daniel xii. 3, “Those who instruct” (ie., by word and example, as the Gloss explains) “many to justice, (shall shine) as stars for all eternity.” Hence there is no better ground for saying that it is a counsel to refrain from the function of teaching, than there is for maintaining that it is a matter of counsel to abstain from virginity, or from martyrdom.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  Preaching is not the proclamation of a preacher’s private opinions; still less is it the public airing of his doubts; it is the proclamation of the word of God. ‘Tell me of your certainties,’ said Goethe, ‘I have doubts enough of my own.’ (ii) They proclaimed Christ. Paul does not care how the preaching is done so long as Christ is preached (Phil. 1.16, 18). It is Christ whom he himself preached (Col. 1.28). In the early days the preachers did not deal with things on the circumference of the faith; they proclaimed the facts of the life, and the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Their primary aim was to confront men with Christ. (iii) They proclaimed through Jesus the resurrection from the dead (Acts 4.2). The message of the preacher was the defeat of death. They preached a risen Christ, and they preached a life that was indestructible. (iv) They proclaimed the Messiahship of Jesus. It was Paul’s message that ‘this Jesus whom I preach to you is Christ’ (Acts 17.3). It was the message of the early preachers that in this man Jesus God’s promises were fulfilled, that eternity had invaded time, that heaven’s rule had begun. (v) They proclaimed that the way was open to the God whom men had ever sought but never found. It was Paul’s proclamation that he brought to the Athenians news of the God who to them had always been the unknown God (Acts 17.23). The time of guessing and groping had gone, and the time of knowing had come. The time of searching was ended, and the time of finding had come. George Borrow tells us that once when he was on one of his tours he was surrounded by some gipsies, who cried out: ‘Give us God! Give us God!’ Not knowing what to do, he put his hand in his pocket and scattered some money amongst them. But they disregarded the money. ‘Not your money,’ they said. ‘Give us God!’ It was God whom the early preachers claimed to give to men. (vi) They proclaimed a gospel It was the gospel which the preacher preached; it was good news (I Cor. 9.14). Any preaching which ultimately depresses a man is wrong, for preaching may begin by cutting a man to the heart with the sight and the realization of his sins; but it must end by leading him to the love, the forgiveness and the grace of God. The very word which is so often used for preaching shows that in the early preaching there was nothing apologetic, nothing diffident, nothing clouded with doubts and misted with uncertainties. It was preaching with authority; and the things it preached with authority are still the basis of the message of the preacher today.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  (i) It involves believing that God is the kind of God Jesus told men about. (ii) It involves the certainty that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore has the right to speak about God in a way that no one else ever could or ever will be able to speak. (iii) It involves living all life on the assumption that these things are true. When we do that, we share nothing less than the life of God, the power and the peace which God alone can give. We have already said that eternal life is the gift of God; all God’s gifts are freely given, but they are not given away. They are there for the taking, but they must be taken. Let us use a human analogy. All the beauty and the wealth and the loveliness and the wisdom of classical literature are there for any man to take; but before he can enter into them, he must undergo the work, the study and the discipline which the learning of Latin and Greek demands. God’s offer of eternal life is there; but man must claim it and enter into it before he can receive it. (i) Eternal life demands knowledge of God. Eternal life means ‘to know the only true God’ (John 17.3). Now man can only know God through three avenues. He must use his mind to think; he must use his eyes to see and his heart to love Jesus Christ; he must use his ears to listen to what God is seeking to say to him. If we are to enter into life eternal we must never be too busy with the things of time to think about the eternal things, to walk looking unto Jesus, and to be regularly in a listening silence wherein we wait upon God. (ii) Eternal life demands obedience to God. God’s commandment is eternal life (John 12.50). Jesus is the author of eternal salvation to all that obey him (Heb. 5.9). Only in doing his will is our peace. God’s pleading is with the rebellious; but God’s gifts are for the obedient. We can never enter into complete intimacy and unity with someone from whom we continually differ, and whom we continually grieve by our disobedience. Obedience to God and eternal life from God go hand in hand. (iii) Eternal life is the reward of strenuous loyalty (I Tim. 6.12). It comes to the man who has fought the good fight of faith and who has clung to Christ through thick and thin. Eternal life comes to the man who hears and follows (John 10.27, 28). No man who goes his own way can enter into eternal life; eternal life is for the man who in complete loyalty takes the way of Jesus Christ.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 69 < Lecture 10  The Christian Mission to the Jews yNowhere in the passage is the person called the messiah; he is called the Servant of the Lord. Moreover, the suffering this figure is said to undergo happened before Isaiah delivered the prophecy. It happened in the past. yOn the other hand, the vindication is predicted as something that will happen; for instance, the passage says that after his hour of darkness, “he will see the light.” `It is important to note that this part of Isaiah (chapters 40–55) was written during the time of the Babylonian Captivity, after the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and taken its leaders and other important figures into exile. The people of Judea had suffered. These chapters were written to provide them hope in the midst of their despair. `Starting with chapter 40, the author explains that God will save them from their sufferings. Never did Jews think this was referring to the future messiah. In fact, when read in its own historical context it appears clear whom it is referring to. The suffering servant appears to be the people of Israel in exile.* `Why should we think Isaiah is referring to the suffering servant as the people of Israel? The answer is revealed explicitly in Isaiah 49:3. Talking again to the same figure, God says, “You are my servant, Oh Israel.” `All of the prophecies that Christians over the centuries have said point to Jesus in fact are like this. They originally referred to something else, and Christians later understood them to refer to the messiah Jesus. But before the Christians, these passages were never interpreted to refer to the future messiah. * Often in the Bible, an entire country or a people are addressed or described as an individual. Expectations of the Messiah `Many or even most Jews then probably weren’t giving much thought at all to a future messiah. They were just trying to survive life day by day. Those who were hoping for a messiah had various expectations.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 35 < Lecture 5  The Life and Teachings of Jesus `We don’t know anything for certain about Jesus’s upbringing, although there are obviously good reasons for thinking he always was, or at least became, seriously committed to the religious traditions of Israel. His native language was Aramaic. It is debated whether he would have known other languages, such as Greek, but the evidence appears to be against it. `He almost certainly worked, possibly starting as a boy, doing what his father did. That may have involved making gates and yokes and other rough wood products, or possibly working with stone. `As an adult he appears to have left home to engage in an itinerant preaching ministry. We do not know his age at the time or how long his ministry lasted. `However, we do know the kind of views he brought to his teaching. Jews at the time were wide-ranging in their beliefs and practices. `One of the dominant Jewish belief systems at the time is called by scholars apocalypticism. Jewish apocalypticists believed the world was controlled by forces of evil, hence the poverty, misery, and suffering in it. But God would soon intervene in history to destroy the forces of evil to bring in a good kingdom on earth. yThis intervention would involve annihilation for the powers aligned against God and the people who sided with them. But it would lead to a paradise, a return to the Garden of Eden, for those who were faithful to God. yThis was a view endorsed by a wide swath of Jews in Jesus’s time in the Jewish homeland, including Pharisees, the members of the Dead Sea Scroll community, and John the Baptist, whom Jesus associated with before beginning his own ministry. yThe first recorded event in Jesus’s life was his decision to be baptized by John the Baptist. John was an apocalyptic preacher urging Jews to repent of their sins in light of the judgment of God that was soon to arrive. yThus, Jesus appears to have aligned himself with John at the outset of his ministry. This shows where his ministry was heading: He, too, was to proclaim the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom and the need to repent in preparation for it.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 45 < Lecture 6  The Beginning of Christianity y No Jew at the time thought the messiah was going to die for the sins of the world. The messiah was to destroy the enemy and rule God’s people in the Promised Land. But the opposite happened. ` This is the key point: The radical disconfirmation of the disciples’ hopes that Jesus was the messiah was completely overturned by a radical reconfirmation and reinterpretation of their view. ` Sometime after Jesus’s death, some of his disciples reported they saw him alive again. According to the New Testament, these claims started three days later. That may be right, or it may have been a bit longer, but some of the disciples certainly made the claim. ` And they had only one explanation for it: God must have raised Jesus from the dead. How else could it have happened? God performed a miracle for the crucified Jesus. y That made the disciples rethink everything. If God raised Jesus from the dead, then he really was the one who stood under God’s special favor. He actually was the messiah. y But he obviously was a messiah in a way that differed from expectations. He wasn’t a political figure who would drive out the Romans with a sword. He was a different kind of savior. y To be sure, he actually would be the future king, but now the disciples came to think Jesus’s death was not an unexpected tragedy or an unintentional blip in the plan of God. It had all been part of the great divine design from the very beginning. y God had wanted his messiah to die. The messiah was not simply the future king of Israel who would deliver God’s people from their oppressors. His role was much larger than that. He was the one chosen by God to be sacrificed. y Like all people in antiquity, Jews understood that sacrifices could appease God. The disciples, as soon as they came to believe Jesus had been raised and therefore was the messiah, came to think that he must not have died as a punishment for any wrong he did. Instead, he died as a sacrifice for the sins of other people.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 69 < Lecture 10  The Christian Mission to the Jews y Nowhere in the passage is the person called the messiah; he is called the Servant of the Lord. Moreover, the suffering this figure is said to undergo happened before Isaiah delivered the prophecy. It happened in the past. y On the other hand, the vindication is predicted as something that will happen; for instance, the passage says that after his hour of darkness, “he will see the light.” ` It is important to note that this part of Isaiah (chapters 40–55) was written during the time of the Babylonian Captivity, after the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and taken its leaders and other important figures into exile. The people of Judea had suffered. These chapters were written to provide them hope in the midst of their despair. ` Starting with chapter 40, the author explains that God will save them from their sufferings. Never did Jews think this was referring to the future messiah. In fact, when read in its own historical context it appears clear whom it is referring to. The suffering servant appears to be the people of Israel in exile.* ` Why should we think Isaiah is referring to the suffering servant as the people of Israel? The answer is revealed explicitly in Isaiah 49:3. Talking again to the same figure, God says, “You are my servant, Oh Israel.” ` All of the prophecies that Christians over the centuries have said point to Jesus in fact are like this. They originally referred to something else, and Christians later understood them to refer to the messiah Jesus. But before the Christians, these passages were never interpreted to refer to the future messiah. * Often in the Bible, an entire country or a people are addressed or described as an individual. Expectations of the Messiah ` Many or even most Jews then probably weren’t giving much thought at all to a future messiah. They were just trying to survive life day by day. Those who were hoping for a messiah had various expectations.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. (tom. ii. in Joan. c. 19) But they ask, why is not the Word Itself called the light of men, instead of the life which is in the Word? We reply, that the life here spoken of is not that which rational and irrational animals have in common, but that which is annexed to the Word which is within us through participation of the primæval Word. For we must distinguish the external and false life, from the desirable and true. We are first made partakers of life: and this life with some is light potentially only, not in act; with those, viz. who are not eager to search out the things which appertain to knowledge: with others it is actual light, those who, as the Apostle saith, covet earnestly the best gifts, (1 Cor. 12:31) that is to say, the word of wisdom. (c. 14.). (Ifk the life and the light of men are the same, whoso is in darkness is proved not to live, and none who liveth abideth in darkness.) CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. v. [iv.] c. 3)l. Life having come to us, the empire of death is dissolved; a light having shone upon us, there is darkness no longer: but there remaineth ever a life which death, a light which darkness cannot overcome. Whence he continues, And the light shineth in darkness: by darkness meaning death and error, for sensible light does not shine in darkness, but darkness must be removed first; whereas the preaching of Christ shone forth amidst the reign of error, and caused it to disappear, and Christ by dying changed death into life, so overcoming it, that, those who were already in its grasp, were brought back again. Forasmuch then as neither death nor error hath overcome his light, which is every where conspicuous, shining forth by its own strength; therefore he adds, And the darkness comprehended it notm.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Some of my friends who aren’t Christians think that Christians are insistent and demanding and intruding, but that isn’t the case. Those folks are the squeaky wheel. Most Christians have enormous respect for the space and freedom of others; it is only that they have found a joy in Jesus they want to share. There is the tension. In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity. I told him that I couldn’t do it, and moreover, that I didn’t want to defend the term. He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes. “Then why don’t you want to defend Christianity?” he asked, confused. I told him I no longer knew what the term meant. Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent. To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend. By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry. I won’t do it. Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people? I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes. When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together. He told me how much he didn’t like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God. For me, the beginning of sharing my faith with people began by throwing out Christianity and embracing Christian spirituality, a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained. Christianity, unlike Christian spirituality, was not a term that excited me. And I could not in good conscious tell a friend about a faith that didn’t excite me. I couldn’t share something I wasn’t experiencing. And I wasn’t experiencing Christianity. It didn’t do anything for me at all. It felt like math, like a system of rights and wrongs and political beliefs, but it wasn’t mysterious; it wasn’t God reaching out of heaven to do wonderful things in my life. And if I would have shared Christianity with somebody, it would have felt mostly like I was trying to get somebody to agree with me rather than meet God. I could no longer share anything about Christianity, but I loved talking about Jesus and the spirituality that goes along with a relationship with Him.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  At one point, he shifts slightly forward on the couch, looking intently at the images until he sees Doug’s opponent stumble briefly on the mat, appearing to lose his footwork. “There,” he says. “That’s where you had him. See his balance shift?” “Yeah,” Doug agrees. “I didn’t get him then, though.” “It’s OK,” Dan says. “Here comes your other chance.” Sure enough, a few seconds later Doug’s opponent wavers again on his feet, and this time Doug gets the takedown and scores the points that eventually stand up for his victory. Dan saw it coming because, clearly, he has seen this video dozens of times already, on dozens of nights, after dozens of workouts, in advance of dozens of matches. But all the fun’s in seeing the thing as if for the first time. “He wasn’t bad,” Dan says of his father from the couch, a little smile playing across his face. He could mean the match he has just seen, or he could mean Doug’s high school career in general. Dan doesn’t completely mind the fact that his father’s wrestling life came before his. Doug set the bar, was part of the first real group of North-Linn wrestlers to bring an identity to the school in the sport. He did good things. Dan is pretty sure he can go them one better. At the North-Linn gymnasium the next evening, Dan is doing the work before the work. Someone has to get the place ready to host an invitational tournament on the weekend, and Dan and his teammates are the ones. They spend an hour or so rolling out the large wrestling mats, taping their edges together and then down against the floor to prevent them from peeling up during competition. The junior varsity kids, the ones with no real standing in the program yet, draw the duty of disinfecting the mats with ammonia spray and swabbing them with towel-wrapped push brooms. When the other wrestlers aren’t sure where something should go, they ask Dan. He ought to know: This is his backyard. He is familiar with pretty much every inch of the North-Linn gym, because he has either run, wrestled on or cleaned all of it a hundred times over. On this night, he works easily, quietly. “It’s a little like home,” he says. Funny, then, that in so many ways Dan—only his coach, Brad Bridgewater, gets away with calling him Danny—already has prepared to leave. From up there in the empty bleachers, with a few wrestling-team members still down on the floor scooting chairs and scorers’ tables into place, it is clear that a part of Dan has moved on, that some of him has gone ahead to college already. “I think it’s easier for me this way,” he says. “I know I still have something to go on to. This isn’t the end of the road for me. In a lot of ways, I’m just getting started.” And it is more complicated than that, of course.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Now this was spooky because for thousands of years big-haired preachers have talked about the idea that we need to make a decision, to follow or reject Christ. They would offer these ideas as a sort of magical solution to the dilemma of life. I had always hated hearing about it because it seemed so entirely unfashionable a thing to believe, but it did explain things. Maybe these unfashionable ideas were pointing at something mystical and true. And, perhaps, I was judging the idea, not by its merit, but by the fashionable or unfashionable delivery of the message. A long time ago I went to a concert with my friend Rebecca. Rebecca can sing better than anybody I’ve ever heard sing. I heard this folksinger was coming to town, and I thought she might like to see him because she was a singer too. The tickets were twenty bucks, which is a lot to pay if you’re not on a date. Between songs, though, he told a story that helped me resolve some things about God. The story was about his friend who is a Navy SEAL. He told it like it was true, so I guess it was true, although it could have been a lie. The folksinger said his friend was performing a covert operation, freeing hostages from a building in some dark part of the world. His friend’s team flew in by helicopter, made their way to the compound and stormed into the room where the hostages had been imprisoned for months. The room, the folksinger said, was filthy and dark. The hostages were curled up in a corner, terrified. When the SEALs entered the room, they heard the gasps of the hostages. They stood at the door and called to the prisoners, telling them they were Americans. The SEALs asked the hostages to follow them, but the hostages wouldn’t. They sat there on the floor and hid their eyes in fear. They were not of healthy mind and didn’t believe their rescuers were really Americans.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  “Son, Trevor, if you surrender your life to Jesus, I think He will do for you what He did for David. David called God, ‘The lover of my soul, and the one who walked with me through the valley of death and spread out a banqueting table for me to eat at.’ Son, you have walked through some significant pain today. But there is always more. It’s never one and done. Become a man like David, a man after God’s heart, and your life will be transformed. David suffered tremendous rejection, not just from his own father, but also from his father-in-law who was mentally unstable and frequently jealous of David. If we don’t grieve our wounds, surrender the pain and hurt and desire for a pound of flesh, our hearts become hard and we lose our capacity to love. Several times, King Saul threatened and attempted to kill David. And David never pretended it didn’t happen; David didn’t minimize his painful life experiences. He found a way to grieve the pain and to release the anger he had for the ones who hurt him, so he could keep his heart pure. “That kind of release isn’t for the sake of the other person. It’s for the sake of your heart. If you face your pain, grieve it, surrender it to Jesus, you will no longer be the kid who was given up for adoption and not wanted by his adoptive father. You will become the man who is chosen, adopted by God, wanted, and pursued by the Father of all Fathers. If you invite Him in, He will put His royal robe across your shoulders and slip His signet ring onto your finger. He does all this to say, to declare, ‘This is my son. He belongs to me. He is my friend and the one I share my secrets with.’ You will never be alone again, Trevor. You will belong to God.” “How do I do that?” Trevor asked. James stepped in, “Trevor, it’s pretty straightforward; you just invite Him into your life. Scripture talks about being born again in the spirit. You have been born once, but your spirit hasn’t been born again. If you invite Him into your life, your spirit will be born and you will spend eternity with Him. You will never be alone again. Jesus will be your best friend. Well, actually, God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will be your three best friends. And then, He says He washes your sin away and makes you white as snow. Jesus went to the cross for our sins. He died so you and I don’t have to die. He shed His blood for us, to make us new, to redeem the garbage, to make us new creations in Him. His blood washes us and makes us new men, no longer shackled by our sin and shame.” “I want that. I need that,” Trevor said. “Me too,” Jeff echoed.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that. Somebody told me that in London people don’t judge you as much by the way you look, and I think it is true because late night on PBS they play shows out of England and the actors aren’t good-looking, and I sit there wondering if anybody else is watching and asking the same question: Why aren’t the actors in London good looking? And I already know the answer to that question, it is that America is one of the most immoral countries in the world and that our media has reduced humans to slabs of meat. And there will always be this tension while I live in this country because none of this will ever change. Ani Difranco, in her song “32 Flavors,” says that she is a poster girl with no poster, she is 32 flavors and then some, and she is beyond our peripheral vision, so we might want to turn our heads, because some day we’re gonna get hungry and eat all of the words we just said. And just about everybody I know loves those lines because they speak of heaven and of hope and the idea that some day a King will come and dictate, through some mystical act of love, an existence in which everybody has to eat their own words because we won’t be allowed to judge each other on the surface of things anymore. And this fills me with hope. Jean-Paul Sartre said hell is other people. But that Indian speaker I really like named Ravi Zacharias says that heaven can be other people, too, and that we have the power to bring a little of heaven into the lives of others every day. I know this is true because I have felt it when Penny or Tony tells me I mean something to them and they love me. I pray often that God would give me the strength and dignity to receive their love. My friend Julie from Seattle says the key to everything rests in the ability to receive love, and what she says is right because my personal experience tells me so. I used to not be able to receive love at all, and to this day I have some problems, but it isn’t like it used to be. My eye would find things on television and in the media and somehow I would compare myself to them without really knowing I was doing it, and this really screwed me up because I never for a second felt I was worthy of anybody’s compliments.

• From The Triumph of Christianity (2018)

  < 128 < Lecture 19  The Conversion of Constantine y One needed divine assistance for such an enormous task, but it appeared the polytheistic option wasn’t working. Constantine decided to rely on one god alone, his father’s, and he was rewarded with a vision. In fact, the vision came to his entire army. y At midday, they looked up to the sky and saw a trophy in the shape of a cross, with text attached to it that said, “By this conquer.” Constantine had no idea what it meant, but that night he had a dream in which Christ himself appeared to him. Christ instructed him to make a copy of what he had seen as an object that would allow him to conquer his enemies. y Eusebius relayed that Constantine still had no idea what this was or what it meant. That shows he was decidedly not Christian yet. He called in spiritual advisors who told him that this was the sign of the cross and explained who Christ was. y Constantine ordered the object to be made. The object was a tall pole, plated with gold. It had a crossbeam, making it in the shape of a cross. A jeweled wreath was at the top with two Greek letters superimposed, forming the Chi-Rho symbol. The letters were the first two of the name of Christ in Greek. y This trophy is called the labarum. Constantine reportedly carried it into battle and won. y Worship of the divine is all about divine power. Constantine converted to worship the most powerful god of all. ` The third account was written by a Christian scholar named Lactantius. This account was produced much earlier than Eusebius’s, just a few years after the event. y Lactantius knew Constantine personally. Lactantius was a famous rhetorician, and not long after the emperor’s rise to power, he was appointed to be the personal tutor for Constantine’s eldest son, Crispus. y He was then part of Constantine’s household. He had unusual opportunities to hear tales of the emperor’s life. < 129 < Lecture 19  The Conversion of Constantine y His account of Constantine’s conversion appears in a booklet that Lactantius wrote called Deaths of the Persecutors . In it, this Christian apologist describes the horrible and excruciating deaths suffered by the Roman officials who had been responsible for the persecutions of Christians. y In part because Constantine’s conversion happened during the Great Persecution, Lactantius takes the opportunity to explain how it actually happened. Lactantius relates what Constantine had told him. y On the night before the battle at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a dream in which an unknown figure told him to have the heavenly sign of God decorated on the shields of his soldiers. y He did so, and again it was in the shape of the Chi-Rho. Armed with this sign, they attacked the troops of Maxentius, defeated them, and recaptured Rome. Convinced of the power of Christ, Constantine converted.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  HILARY. (de Trin. x. c. 18.) He calls Himself the bread, because He is the origin of His own body. And lest it should be thought that the virtue and nature of the Word had given way to the flesh, He calls the bread His flesh, that, inasmuch as the bread came down from heaven, it might be seen that His body was not of human conception, but a heavenly body. To say that the bread is His own, is to declare that the Word assumed His body Himself. THEOPHYLACT. For we do not eat God simply, God being impalpable and incorporeal; nor again, the flesh of man simply, which would not profit us. But God having taken flesh into union with Himself, that flesh is quickening. Not that it has changed its own for the Divine nature; but, just as heated iron remains iron, with the action of the heat in it; so our Lord’s flesh is quickening, as being the flesh of the Word of God. BEDE. And to shew the wide interval between the shadow and the light, the type and the reality, He adds, Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxvi. 20) The death here meant is death eternal. For even those who eat Christ are subject to natural death; but they live for ever, because Christ is everlasting life. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xlvii. 1) For if it was possible without harvest or fruit of the earth, or any such thing, to preserve the lives of the Israelites of old for forty years, much more will He be able to do this with that spiritual food, of which the manna is the type. He knew how precious a thing life was in men’s eyes, and therefore repeats His promise of life often; just as the Old Testament had done; (Exod. 20:12) only that it only offered length of life, He life without end. (Deut. 22:7) This promise was an abolition of that sentence of death, which sin had brought upon us. These things said He in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum; (1 Kings 3:14) where many displays of His power took place. (Ps. 21:4; 91:16) He taught in the synagogue and in the temple, (Prov. 3:2) with the view of attracting the multitude, and as a sign that He was not acting in opposition to the Father. BEDE. Mystically, Capernaum, which means beautiful town, stands for the world: the synagogue, for the Jewish people. The meaning is, that our Lord hath, by the mystery of the incarnation, manifested Himself to the world, and also taught the Jewish people His doctrines. 6:60–7160. Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61. When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Epilogue In the late summer of 2005, Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere packed up their gear, made sure their cell phones and laptops were close by, hunkered down in their families’ cars, and blasted out of town. It was a 900-mile drive from eastern Iowa to the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, and the wrestlers had someone waiting for them. Though school wasn’t yet to officially begin, Tom Brands didn’t plan on wasting time. Joey Slaton also made the long trip East. Brent Metcalf, the incoming star from Michigan, was meeting up with his new teammates as they hit campus. T. H. Leet, a three-time state champion from Georgia, would be in Blacksburg as well. The second-ranked recruiting class in college wrestling was converging on its future, and Brands was one step ahead of them. Despite his team having won an Atlantic Coast Conference title and seemingly built instant momentum in his first year, Brands had already penciled things out for the coming season, and it added up to a difficult but forward- thinking conclusion: His new kids were going to have to sit out their freshmen years, no matter how much he wanted to see them on the mat. Using his own college and international competitive career as a guide, Brands recognized the value in giving Jay and Dan and the others a year to figure out how to make campus life and wrestling life work together, to learn to live away from home, to get stronger, quicker, tougher—to do all this the Brands way, without the pressure to win immediately. The year could be invaluable. It could set up Brands’s charges for four years of sustained success, and Brands believed both