Steering Through Chaos

I'm in this class this semester. It's called Spiritual Formation and it's part of the required Bible minor here at Cedarville. It's a continuation of Christian Life and Thought from last semester. We have the same prof and even the same class. The content of the actual class is nothing exciting, and we're required to meet in small groups once a week, and one of the guys in it makes me crazy, BUT we're reading this amazing book! I love it. It's called "Steering Through Chaos," by Os Guinness. It's actually a compilation of passages by everyone from Plato, to C.S. Louis, to Shirley McClain, on the 7 deadly sins. Anyway, it's hard to describe, but I seriously love it.

I'm going to do 8 posts with some of my favorite quotes and stuff from each chapter (beginning with the introduction). You may have heard of the 7 heavenly virtues that are traditionally taught along with the 7 sins: humility against pride, kindness against envy, abstinence against gluttony, chastity against lust, patience against anger, liberality against greed, and diligence against sloth. This book, however, draws parallels directly from the beatitudes: poverty of spirit against pride, mourning against envy, meekness against anger, hunger and thirst after righteousness against sloth, mercy against avarice, those persecuted against gluttony, and purity of heart against lust. You may not see the direct relation, but in reading, it is actually incredible how closely associated they are.

Anyway, that's the gist of the book. Let me begin with a few quotes from the introduction, mostly concerning the moral deterioration of the world.

Ok, I take that back. Most of the quotes that are really good from the introduction are just too long, so there won't be a whole lot here, but there was this one really haunting part. These two things were said by Danny Cash, 18, who's friend murdered a 7-year-old girl in a casino restroom, while he waited outside. In the first he had just been asked if he was appalled by what happened. "I'm not going to get upset over somebody else's life. I just worry about myself first. I'm not going to lose sleep over someone else's problem." The second one appeared in The Washington Post in 1998. "When asked whether he felt worse for the dead girl or her murderer (his buddy), Cash replied, 'Because I know Jeremy, I feel worse for him. I know he had a lot going for him."

It's actually really frustrating because there's this really long, particularly chilling part, concerning Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," but told by Kay Haugaard. It just shows the callousness and desensitizing of modern society.

The future chapters will have a lot more that I can take from them, but this is just like an introduction to it all.