“A book has but one voice, but it does not instruct everyone alike.”
ThomasKempis

“Christians must again understand that their first task is not to make the world better or more just, but to recognize what the world is and why it is that it understands the political task it does. The first social task of the church is to provide the space and time necessary for developing skills of interpretation and discrimination sufficient to help us recognize the possibilities and limitations of our society. In developing such skills, the church and Christians must be uninvolved in the politics of our society and involved in the polity that is the church. Theologically, the challenge of Christian social ethics in our secular polity is no different than in any time or place — it is always the Christian social task to form a society that is built on truth rather than fear. For the Christian, therefore, the church is always the primary polity through which we gain the experience to negotiate and make positive contributions to whatever society in which we may find ourselves.”

StanleyHauerwas

what’s in your eye?

In a small town in Kansas, there was a farmer named Jack. He owned a small family farm and worked hard. 

Jack decided to grow carrots, although he had traditional been in the beet business.

He struck up a relationship with a local business owner named Tom that made homemade soups and was in the market for some new veggie vendors. Tom took care to make his soup in small batches, wanting the finest taste and quality products.

Jack and Tom made a deal that Tom would use Jack’s carrots in his soups that called for carrots. 

A few weeks later, once the soup was in production and being sold, Tom started to get phone calls from customers complaining. 

The soups didn’t taste great. And it so happened that the soup in question was the soup using Jack’s carrots. 

After tasting the soup and agreeing that it was terrible, Tom gave Jack a phone call. He couldn’t believe Jack’s bad carrots were ruining his fine soups. Jack came to Tom and took a taste of the soup, and he agreed that the soup was lacking in the taste department. 

The only problem was that they couldn’t agree on why the soup tasted bad. When Jack took a bite of his carrots, he thought they tasted like fine carrots. When Tom tasted his other soups, he found the quality taste he had be working for. But for some reason, together, they made for a pretty rotten soup. 

They discontinued their business relationship because all they wanted to do was point fingers at each other. Jack wouldn’t try anything different with his carrots, and Tom refused to believe the problem was in the way he made soup.

I wonder how often we look at a bad product, that’s the combination of our work and someone else’s work, and we think the “bad” results could NEVER be related to our end of the deal…. hmmmm….