people-from-south-carolina

"One can understand his caution in telling of God’s unmerited mercy, forgiveness and love, lest people get the impression that it is unnecessary to behave. This reaction to the gospel has been with us since the beginning, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom 6:1). Fear of antinomianism seems always to be a justification for Pharisaism."

"When Christianity is reduced to a religion of control, an endeavor to keep order by condemning sinners are giving no word that enables us to escape our bondage, it loses all joy and love. People will naturally turn away from such an atmosphere and seek the worldliness of the Sadducee rather than the joylessness of the Pharisee."

"The Sermon on the Mount is a deeper unfolding of the law of Moses. It leaves no hope that human goodness can replace (or make waste of) the costly betrayal, rejection, passion, suffering, death, and resurrection of God’s action in Jesus Christ."

"When we realize before God that we have deserved no forgiveness, yet are forgiven, the heavy burdens of hatred, resentment, and bitterness are removed from our souls."

"Christians are justified by the righteousness of Christ whereby they dwell in him and are thus acceptable to God, but this is not on account of any inherit righteousness of their own. The righteousness of sanctification is that whereby we grow in grace by virtue of being in Christ. It is a grateful response to a gratuitous justification."

"A common expression: “heaven for the climate, but hell for the company” is an indication how people react to Pharisaical Christians. They would rather be in hell with other sinners than in heaven with those who thought that they were good enough to be there."

"When one begins with the false assumption of being free, all concern will be involved with how to keep such freedom in check, how to control sin. The result is the deadly religion of the Pharisee. If one begins with the assumption of bondage, the concern will be how to proclaim the gospel story in kindness, patience, and love so that people are enabled to be set free."

"If our hope lies in human ability to make all things right, the tendency is to believe that some historical action, program or ideal could bring the ultimate victory for which everyone yearns. No matter how commendable and beneficial such programs or ideals, they will inevitably become occasions of dangerous and destructive idols."

"Clergy often make the mistake of thinking, when they preach from one of the Gospels, that they are preaching good news. Most of the gospel material is not gospel but what leads up to the good news of Good Friday and Easter. A large part of the Gospels is conviction of sinners, rebuke of Israel’s unfaithfulness, disappointments of expectation, and declaring salvation as a human impossibility."

"The fact is that our freedom lies in God’s will and his service. The mystery lies in the final triumph of justice, mercy, and love and how we are, or are not, a part of that victory. Our human nature persists in attempting to abolish the mystery by the lie that in our freedom it is we who choose to have the faith that saves. Scripture and the saints have unanimously insisted otherwise: God has chosen us and our faith is his gift, not our accomplishment."

"“Ye shall be as gods” is as flattering now as it has been since the Garden of Eden. “All is one,” “all is God,” and “all is well” is as attractive to adults as dessert before dinner is to a child. Would the realities of the Balkans, inner-city blight, troubled marriages, rebellious children, and irresponsible parents be any less difficult to solve if we all believed we were gods? On the contrary, humans trying to be gods is precisely what is wrong in the Balkans, our cities, our marriages, our children, our parents, and in ourselves."

"The Sermon on the Mount is the necessary, rigorous, and devastating purging of Pharisee yeast. It’s chemotherapy for the Pharisee cancer. Any confidence in one’s own righteousness before God has no authentic way to wiggle through chapters 5–7 of St. Matthew. Any genuine pilgrimage through this Sermon leaves us bereft of self-righteousness, with no pedestals from which to judge other sinners. Jesus, in these passages, leaves us in the only posture legitimately possible on Good Friday: on our knees with empty hands to receive the incomparable and desperately needed mercy of God."

"One of the spiritual hazards of scholarship is that it can become Gnostic. A lifetime of submersion in conceptual and subtle complexities with an ever more sophisticated vocabulary can seduce some of the best scholars into elitism, inept pedagogy, and irrelevance."

"St. Paul established the guidelines for all subsequent orthodoxy that race, nationality, degree of servitude, and gender are not barriers to identification with Christ’s saving humanity, and it is an Antiochene heresy to say that any of these differences is a barrier."

"The Sermon on the Mount is not a blue print for society or an individual’s rule of life. It is an introduction to the passion, and invitation to Good Friday."

"Neither creeds nor correct doctrines are the objects of our faith. They did not die for our salvation. Yet, as faithful guidelines to the inevitable implications of scripture and boundaries for what can be called authentic Christianity, they are far more important than is currently appreciated. There are symbols that point to God but, like dogs being trained to fetch, we look at the trainer’s finger rather than toward that to which the finger points. Faithfulness to correct doctrine and loyalty to the creeds is not the same thing as trust in the God whom the creeds describe. This is the perennial temptation of orthodoxy itself. It is like tennis players who mark off the court, put up the net, sit down and call that “tennis.”"

"Christianity did not and cannot start with people who have forsaken sin. It receives them and begins to free them from the bondage that is sin."

"The righteousness whereby we are accepted by God is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us when we are incorporated in Christ."

"The saints testify that the deeper into sanctification one goes the clearer one sees one’s sins. The more majestic the vision of God the more unworthy sinners see themselves in his reflection. Confidence is rare in the face of the text: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; so that each one may receive good or evil according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor 5:10). Confidence before such a test may be a mere product of limited self-knowledge or a small god."

"The Sermon is not some elevated ideal that we are to stretch and strive for, but a window through which to see God’s kingdom. It is not a set of rules by which to live but a vision which enables us to die to self. This vision empties us of any confidence or trust in our own center. Humility is the only appropriate posture before the cost of God’s love at the crucifixion."

"The trust that there will be justice is a Christian trust. But it includes justice for us as well, which none of us can endure. As long as I trust that my relative goodness needs less mercy than that of the murderous Idi Amin (genocidal dictator of Uganda), I am where Charles Wesley was prior to his conversion. This is not to say that there are no significant differences between Amin’s atrocities and my sins. But when the gold medal Olympic swimmer, Josh Davis, and I are in a boat together, fishing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the boat sinks, it is ultimately unimportant that Josh can swim a great deal better and longer than I can. We both drown. God’s justice is bigger than the Pacific Ocean."

"Inasmuch as we are sinners, we see ourselves as the center of all we survey. We hope, we wish, we want to have whatever we desire. And we believe that being able to have or to do what we want is freedom. We tell such lies as “we are born free,” “he’s free to choose to take revenge or to forgive,” “he’s free to get drunk or to stay sober,” “she’s free to commit suicide or to renew her hope,” “terrorists are free to kill innocent people or to refrain from doing so.” Each destructive choice is made from bondage. Drunkenness, suicide, vengeance, and mass murder are instances of bondage, not freedom. Having no restraints is not freedom but license, a state of hazardous slavery."

"When Christianity is reduced to be like Jesus, it loses its grace and becomes a mere law that can be obeyed only by inflated confidence in human nature’s ability to fulfill all obligations and/or by lowering the law to levels that one can obey."

"I’m going to fucking beat your ass."

"Denmark’s investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant."

"Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you. I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face."

"Dorothy Pelote's Christian walk was, no doubt, enhanced by the motto by which she lived-- It is Impossible to Serve God Without Service To Your Fellow Man."

"I couldn't have her. I wasn't going to let anybody else have her."

"I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to [his] fellow Christians to end the death penalty. An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament. [...] We are now under God's grace and mercy."

"[The electric chair would] burn and cook him alive, but the alternative is just as monstrous. If he chose lethal injection, he risked the prolonged death suffered by all three of the men South Carolina has executed since September — three men Brad knew and cared for — who remained alive, strapped to a gurney, for more than twenty minutes. He does not wish to inflict that pain on his family, the witnesses, or the execution team. But, given South Carolina's unnecessary and unconscionable secrecy, Brad is choosing as best he can."

"When Brad went to prison, he rededicated himself to his Christian faith. He has devoted every day since to prayer, repentance, and the work of redemption. Brad is a peaceful, trusted presence on death row. Guards describe him as respectful and helpful. He serves as an informal chaplain to his fellow prisoners. He is a source of strength to his siblings and children. He is also in declining health and poses a danger to no one."

"I did see a splash of blood when the bullets entered his body. It was not a huge amount, but there was a splash that you could see kind of protrude from the wound. [...] His arms flexed. There was something in his midsection that moved. I'm not necessarily going to call them breaths. I don't really know. But there was some movement that went on there for two or three seconds. It was very fast."

"My heart started pounding a little after Sigmon’s lawyer read his final statement. The hood was put over Sigmon’s head, and an employee opened the black pull shade that shielded where the three prison system volunteer shooters were. About two minutes later, they fired. There was no warning or countdown. The abrupt crack of the rifles startled me. And the white target with the red bullseye that had been on his chest, standing out against his black prison jumpsuit, disappeared instantly as Sigmon’s whole body flinched. It reminded me of what happened to the prisoner 21 years ago when electricity jolted his body. I tried to keep track, all at once, of the digital clock on the wall to my right, Sigmon to my left, the small, rectangular window with the shooters and the witnesses in front of me. A jagged red spot about the size of a small fist appeared where Sigmon was shot. His chest moved two or three times. Outside of the rifle crack, there was no sound."

"He expressed remorse every day of his incarceration at the violence that he caused and sought to be a different person since his incarceration. [He] tried to be as supportive and loving as kind as possible to everyone in his midst, whether that was his neighbors on death row, whether that was corrections officers, whether that was pen pals and family members that he was supporting from afar, emotionally and spiritually."

"He knows what the firing squad is going to do to his body — he knows it's going to break his bones, he knows it's gonna pulverize his organs. And it's a measure of how impossible the choice was here."

"The amount of Motown legends seems endless. Notably when talking about those in the background. That's where Jamerson comes in. A good amount of the bass work laid down during the glory days of Motown's dominance in the pop music world can be credited to Jamerson, whose technically solid and creative playing was a signature of the label's sound. The Hall of Famer was also one of the most prominent and revered session bassists during the 1960s and ‘70s. He played on legendary tunes such as "You Can’t Hurry Love," "My Girl," and "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." Talk about legendary."

"Sally Reynolds told a short story of a negro pet of Mrs. Kershaw's. The little negro clung to Mrs. Kershaw and begged her to save him. The negro mother, stronger than Mrs. Kershaw, tore him away from her. Mrs. Kershaw wept bitterly. Sally said she saw the mother chasing the child before her as she ran after the Yankees, whipping him at every step. The child yelled like mad, a small rebel blackamoor."

"Every day regiments pass by. The town is crowded with soldiers. These new ones are running in, fairly. They fear the war will be over before they get a sight of the fun."

"Our battle [summer]]. May it be our first and our last. So-called. After all, we have not had any of the horrors of war."

"Woe to those who began this war, if they were not in bitter earnest."

"And all the time they seem to think themselves patterns — models of husbands and fathers."

"God forgive us, but ours is a monstrous system, a wrong and an iniquity! Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds."

"I do not pretend to go to sleep. How can I? If Anderson does not accept terms—at four—the orders are—he shall be fired upon. I count four—St. Michael chimes. I begin to hope. At half-past four, the heavy booming of a cannon. I sprang out of bed. And on my knees—prostrate—I prayed as I never prayed before."

"I have seen a negro woman sold on the block at auction. She overtopped the crowd. I was walking and felt faint, seasick. The creature looked so like my good little Nancy, a bright mulatto with a pleasant face. She was magnificently gotten up in silks and satins. She seemed delighted with it all, sometimes ogling the bidders, sometimes looking quiet, coy, and modest, but her mouth never relaxed from its expanded grin of excitement. I dare say the poor thing knew who would buy her. I sat down on a stool in a shop and disciplined my wild thoughts. I tried it Sterne fashion. You know how women sell themselves and are sold in marriage from queens downward, eh? You know what the Bible says about slavery and marriage; poor women! poor slaves! Sterne, with his starling—what did he know? He only thought, he did not feel."

"What nonsense I write here. However, this journal is intended to be entirely objective. My subjective days are over. No more silent eating into my own heart, making my own misery, when without these morbid fantasies I could be so happy."

"My father was a South Carolina nullifier, governor of the state at the time of the nullification row, and then U.S. senator. So I was of necessity a rebel born."

"Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of these negro servants. Laurence sits at our door, as sleepy and as respectful and as profoundly indifferent. So are they all. They carry it too far. You could not tell that they hear even the awful row that is going on in the bay, though it is dinning in their ears night and day. And people talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. And they make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding their time?"

"I was a seceder, but I dreaded the future. I bore in mind Pugh's letter, his description of what he saw in Mexico when he accompanied an invading army. My companions had their own thoughts and misgivings, doubtless, but they breathed fire and defiance."

"It’s an insane idea, yes, but hell, this is war. If insanity works, a general is duty-bound to use it."

"In everyone’s life there are crossroads, moments of decision, however insignificant. To spot the crucial moments in his life, and act, makes a great soldier. To spot the crucial moments on a larger scale, a grand scale—that’s the work of a general."