Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
;
The Search 
Love the post title!
I understand why Perez would be upset, but it’s not like Miss California said, “I hate gay people.” In order to find a solution to the gay marriage debate, we need to discuss this with civility. Both sides need to hear each other.
While I agree with Miss California, that marriage is between a man and a woman, I was disappointed with her answer. She sounded like a right-wing nut job. I don’t blame anyone for giving her a hard time.
What I find unbelievable about all of this outrage is how vanilla her answer was.
Asked whether states should follow Vermont’s lead by legalizing same-sex marriage, she essentially said from that a. the great thing about America is people can choose whether or not they want same-sex marriage legal in their state and b. if given the choice she would vote against legalization of same-sex marriage.
She even added “no offense” as cover for what was a personal opinion informed by the understanding of scriptures she was taught growing up.
In my opinion, the only thing “controversial” about her answer was the way the attention-starved judge over-reacted to an honest answer. And what’s sickening is that the judge is now eating up all of the attention and is even more of a household name than he was two days ago.
I had heard about something regarding Miss California, but I hadn’t heard the full story. That’s really ridiculous. I think the title of your post sums it up perfectly, not just for this incident, but for so many areas of life today. Tolerance and relativism are the values of the day — unless you disagree with the most loudly-voiced opinions. Kudos to Miss California for taking a stand (albeit a somewhat timid one, but who wouldn’t be a little cowed in that situation?).
While I have an opinion opposite of Preejan, I respect her for being honest with her answer. However, what really bothers me is that we’re holding up Perez Hilton as some kind of authority on this (or any other topic).
Of course Perez is going to run to his little blog and bad-mouth this woman the next day. That’s because he, just like many conservatives, believes this is a black-and-white issue.
But don’t let his reaction speak for the rest of the country. To give someone a Zero just for stating an opinion different from yours is absolutely ridiculous. It’s petty and it’s unfair.
Perez Hilton is using this for attention. And the fact that thousands of blog entries (and comments to blog entries!) have been devoted to this over the past few days shows that he has succeeded.
But please don’t let his childish and rude reaction speak for all of us who believe that the sky won’t fall if we allow gay couples to marry.
Good point Gabe. I promise not to use Perez Hilton as a gay marriage “Straw Man” in future arguments thanks to your eloquent post.
Have past Miss America contestants ever been asked to comment on an issue that guarantees that either the “red states” or the “blue states” will hate her?
Perhaps one cannot be Miss America without being able to please a critical mass of the American electorate by talking out of both sides of their mouth.
I hope in future Miss America contests that there will be some titillating discourse on abortion and the economic stimulus package.
you guys are all missing the point.
the problem is not what her answer was or the way she handled it. The problem is that no one is allowed to speak for marriage. The discussion simply won’t allow it. The parameters of the discussion are getting narrowed and altered as to shut other opinions out. Any opinion in favor of marriage is automatically marginalized and looked on as “kooky” or “right-wing nutcase”. You cannot come across as reasonable and support marriage btw man and a woman-it is not allowed anymore. If you do, it is now okay to call you (on national television!) “bigoted” and “homophobic” or “a crazy bitch,” and no one questions your decency.
No one has questioned Hilton’s bias-he’s considered much more mainstream. He is justified for saying she “doesn’t represent Americans” or is “abnormal.” In all the interviews he’s done, these opinions have never been challenged. They are assumed to be normal and valid.
Meanwhile, to be in favor of marriage means you have to be on the immediate defensive, because you are hateful.
Why isn’t anyone noticing this? How quickly we allow our focus to drift.
I think this is partially what Brett is trying to get at here.
As much as I really don’t care about Perez Hilton or Miss America, I wonder how many people would applaud her for giving her honest opinion if she said that, in her opinion, marriage is between a man and a woman of the same race, and that the great thing about America is that states can choose for themselves whether interracial marriage should be legal.
Hilton’s stunt was to inject a question of meaning and significance into an environment purposefully drained of meaning and significance; a sickly anachronistic patriarchal ritual.
Prejean was of course factually incorrect in claiming that people get to choose what kind of marriage to enter into (the part of the transcript that you omitted). And she didn’t answer the “why” part of the question aside from saying “that’s how I was raised,” which is not really an argument–though I realize the standards for logical thought at these events are not high.
I’m sure this episode will fuel the anti-gay right’s familiar persecution fantasies for a while but those of us who experience actual persecution every day in the form of unequal treatment by our government can see that “persecution” is as artificial and substanceless as, say, a beauty pageant.
Actually, Kevin. Hilton’s stunt serves as a catalyst for a second right-wing complaint.
He was another liberal judge, legislating from the bench.
I’m confused. I thought the judging of this section of this kind of contest was on the composure and articulation of the contestant. They’re supposed to judge them on HOW they answer not WHAT they answer. By giving her a zero the Hilton guy robbed her!
Great point Tim!
Tim,
The difference there is fairly obvious. The definition of marriage tends to come down to a moral issue (even in our politics – whether thats good or bad i don’t intend to comment on). that is, those who oppose the rights of gays to wed oppose it based on a moral principle. It’s not just a matter of political agenda or even based on defending marriage in a traditional sense. No, in large part, it is based on a moral stance regarding sexuality, then applied to traditional thought on marriage.
No thinking person opposes interracial marriage based on a moral standard, especially because Biblical teaching in the NT specifically focus on the idea of homosexuality.
I suspect that no one ever told Perez Hilton that “beauty comes from the inside”
David–
I recommend you learn your history. Interracial marriage used to be illegal in this country for precisely the same reason that homosexual marriage is currently illegal in most states– it was a ‘moral issue.’ Interracial marriage wasn’t fully legal across the country until Loving v. Virginia in 1967– at the time, 16 states had laws against interracial marriage. The Loving case had made its way to the Supreme Court (activist judges!) after an appeal by the Lovings; their marriage was deemed illegal in 1959. The Virginia judge said, in part, ‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.’ There was also an anti-miscegenation amendment proposed for the US Constitution in 1871, in 1912–1913, and in 1928. Now does any of this seem eerily familiar?
It would seem to me that equating anti-same-sex marriage statutes to anti-miscegenation statutes would require equating differences in melanin amounts in the skin to differences in basic biology that enable human life to continue.
Such an equation appears unwise.
Her opinion is her opinion….it shouldn’t be a factor…we’re allowed to disagree in this country….or at least we USED to be able to!!
Thank you Brent T for that succinct observation.
The traditional concept of marriage has its support in the existence of two distinct and complementary genders, the union of which allows for the creation of new life. The gender make-up of the marriage couple is supremely relevant in this matter—the color of their skins completely irrelavant.
That said, my assessment of the Miss USA flap is that that was a really ridiculous question to even ask. Entertainment masquerading as political grandstanding (and vice versa) is really starting to wear thin.
Brett and HS,
If I understand you correctly, you’re suggesting that the purpose of marriage is procreation.
(correct me if that’s not what you’re suggesting…)
In that case, the Amish or African marriage which produces 7-10 children has more value (is more of a “true” marriage) than the Wall Street couple who opted to have 1.
Or how about the couples who are physically unable to procreate? What is the state of their marriage? Is it any less valid? Do we condemn as sinners those senior divorcee’s who decide to marry in their 70’s even though the chance of having kids has far surpassed them?
As you said Brett, such an equation seems unwise.
And I don’t believe the original equation was about “melanin amounts in the skin” versus “differences in basic biology.” The equation is between the idea that marriage used to be illegal between interracial couples based on moral grounds, and now marriage is now illegal between homosexual couples based on moral grounds. Those are very equatable.
Getting back to the topic however, why has no one commented on Prejean’s use of the term “opposite marriage”?
That’s just hilarious!
Thanks Ryan.
Further, the language of the Loving decision includes this:
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
I don’t see why language about freedom, human rights, liberty, discrimination, equality, etc. is tied to race and not to gender. As well, I was responding to David’s assertion that ‘No thinking person opposes interracial marriage based on a moral standard,’ which is historically false. There were, as well, ‘biological’ arguments for anti-miscegenation laws, mostly based on eugenics. And the reason that this sounds horrible and racist and freedom-choking to you which anti-same-sex-marriage arguments do not is, I’ll wager, a function of the period in which we live rather than the soundness of either argument.
Ryan wrote:
“Brett…,
If I understand you correctly, you’re suggesting that the purpose of marriage is procreation.
(correct me if that’s not what you’re suggesting…)”
Consider it done.
Brett wrote:
“Consider it done.”
Ha. You actually need to correct me for this response to be worth anything.
What were you actually suggesting?
Tim,
I understand that there have been times in history when people opposed interracial marriage based on moral grounds, however, no thinking person does today. That was my point. However, we can debate the historicity of that point till were blue in the face and still completely the miss point.
The question is whether homosexuality is fundamentally immoral. When it comes to interracial marriage we aren’t even discussing sexuality in the same way. The interracial debate centers ONLY around skin color. Should two people who are of opposite sex but also differing skin colors be allowed to marry and thus have sexual relations? This has nothing to do with a natural order of sexuality. But homosexuality must. Sex between two people of the same sex necessarily functions in a completely different fashion – one many people would suggest is unnatural. Thus, the two debates are built upon differing pillars. One is a matter of racial divide, its about skin color. The other is about the right of order and nature of sexuality. Two fundamentally differing arguments. Hence my suggestion that the two shouldn’t be considered comparable points.
Like all else, it comes down to the nature of things.
David,
My point is that the argument you are making is pretty much identical to arguments made about interracial marriage 50 or 100 years ago– that it’s ‘unnatural’ and ‘immoral.’
I don’t see why the question is, as you put it, ‘whether homosexuality is fundamentally immoral.’ The government has no reason to care whether something is moral. And simply because something defies what you personally believe to be the natural order of things does not make it immoral– organ transplants, for example.
But I’m not really interested in arguing for why gay marriage needs to be legalized. I just wanted to point out the historical myopia, the cultural relativism, and the begging-the-question nature of those people who simultaneously think 50-yr-old arguments against interracial marriage are intellectually dishonest but contemporaneous arguments against homosexual marriage are intellectually honest.
Or let me put it this way: You’re absolutely right that no thinking person makes these arguments about interracial marriage today. However, many thinking persons make these arguments about homosexual marriage today, and these arguments are interchangeable with arguments that thinking persons made against interracial marriage 50 years ago. Why do you think this is?
Perez Hilton was asking a question about gay marriage at a beauty pageant. How can anything in the above statement be taken seriously?
Perez Hilton.
It all boils down t this:
She was asked a question about what her opinion was on gay marriage and she gave an answer.
Hilton disagreed to he decided to slander her publicly, which is beyond obnoxious seeing that the last time I checked we were free to have our opinion and speak our opinion without fear of persecution (not wanting to talk about Jesus, Jesus… please). Even, anti-Semitic groups and pro-Segregationists still have their rights protected to think what they want and voice their own opinions.
Ryan —
By all means. You said that if you understood me correctly, I was suggesting that the purpose of marriage was procreation. I was not.