I mentioned in the previous post that I would comment on Wright's book here, I want to provide two quotes with minimal comments. As always, looking for discussion or input in the comment section:

1) In writing of (and criticizing) the current practices in the church regarding hymns, the Christian year (more focus on Christmas or other Christian celebrations rather than Easter) and ceremonies of death, he writes:

I hope that those who take seriously the argument of this present book will examine the current practice of the church, from its official liturgies to all the unofficial bits and pieces that surround them, and try to discover fresh ways of expressing, embodying, and teaching what the New Testament actually teaches rather than the mangled, half-understood, and vaguely held theories and opinions...Frankly, what we have at the moment isn't, as the old liturgies used to say, "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead" but the vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end. (25)

Love this quote, anyone who pushes criticial thinking over maintaing status quo is a hero in my book. Last year when I held the Tumaini dinner in Wisconsin I probably committed the mortal sin of fundraising when I asked the first speaker to get people thinking critically about what sort of missions they support, to get their brains working, not just giving because they know me, but to evaluate if this is something God laid on their hearts and whether it was a good cause. I didn't care, evaluation and examiniation of crucial, in my mind, to continued growth in our Christain walk.

2) It was pepole who believed robustly in the resurrection, not people who compromised and were in for a mere spiritual survival, who stood up against Caesar in the first centuries of the Christian era. (26)

Which emperor would have sleepless nights worrying that his subjects were reading the Gospel of Thomas Resurrection was always bound to get you into trouble, and it regularly did. (50)

Two more money quotes, the first intrigued me since, as you know, I am in a period right now where I am really fighting Christian involvement in politics, not that Christains shouldn't vote or can't hold office, rather that we seem to be placing too much hope in the political process to bring about God's Kingdom. Therefore I initially backed away from this quote, but what turned me back was the idea that in Caesar's time, Christians were persecuted, tortured burned at the stake, etc. That was something worth fighting for! It was about freedom of faith. Today it is at the opposite end of the spectrum for Christians in the West (and I fully admit that my thinking in this matter is from a Western perspective and totally void of any value apart from the Western world). While for first century Christians and a great number of believers around the world today it was about freedom, for us in the West today it is about favortism. We desire to hold the best seat at the table, we want our morals and ethics to dominate the political sphere. There is a great difference in political activism from the perspective of freedom versus favortism.