An Offering of Uncles

Each month a group of pastors in Santa Cruz read a book together. Last month Jason Farley picked "An Offering of Uncles," & it is a fabulous book. I'm thankful we don't read many Ecclesiological Engineering books; I'm interested in the life Jesus promised & I'm pretty sure my neighbors are too.

"Set down here, therefore, the fact that orthodox Christianity has nothing against the body, & everything for it. First, God made it. Second, God loves it. Third, God took it to himself in the womb of Mary. Fourth, he walked the earth in it, not with disdain, but with enough obvious pleasure to acquire a bad reputation in the eyes of fussy people; &, finally, he died, rose, ascended into heaven, & reigns forever as the incarnate Lord--in a body--with flesh, bones & all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature. The problems raised by orthodox Christianity are anything but Oriental. They are embarrassingly--shockingly--fleshly. The current age, if it hears the true doctrine at all, finds it not too spiritual, but too material for its tastes. It is not God who is too refined for man. It is man who finds God's announced way of doing business slightly...vulgar."  (Pgs. 95-96)

"When the body has to be pinched, stretched or reprocessed before we can get enthusiastic about it, there is a good case to be made out that it is not being loved or offered as a body." (Pg. 96)