To be a Christian … is to immerse oneself in unstinting fiction making. Jesus’s words “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” to cite a famously ignored example, demand an arduous imaginative act. This deceptively simple line orders me, as I look at you, to imagine that I am seeing not you, but me, and then to treat this imaginative me, alias you, as if you are me. And for how long? Till the day I die! Jesus orders anyone who’s serious about Him to commit the “Neighbor = Me” fiction until they forget for good which of the two of themselves to cheat in a business deal or abandon in a crisis or smart-bomb in a war—at which point their imaginative act, their fiction making, will have turned Christ’s bizarre words into a reality and they’ll be saying with Mother Teresa, “I see Christ in every woman and man.”

—David James Duncan, God Laughs & Plays, pp. 63-64

Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living toom, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, pp. 75-76

Marketers know what we want. There is hardly an industrial-grade fast-food burger that is not advertised with images of dewy, plump tomatoes, wholesome bread straight from the oven, some kind of premium beef. The reality of flaccid vegetable matter, a soggy bun and tasteless meat is, of course, rather different. But that’s not really news—jokes about fast food that doesn’t look anything like the commercials aren’t even funny anymore. What is significant is that we are so mesmerized by the promise of fresh, wholesome food that we can be tricked into eating something else. Packages wouldn’t be decorated with images of traditional farms and contented animals, and commercials wouldn’t depict chefs and italian grandmothers carefully tasting this or that “authentic” recipe, if these weren’t the things we all think of as important.

The desire for food grown and prepared with care is not elitist or limited to a band of hippies. It’s what we all want.

Similarly, just as no one says they want tasteless, truck-ripened vegetables or feed-lot beef, no one deliberately plans a rushed meal. And yet, again, that is what we end up eating, wolfing down burgers in our cars or slurping a plastic tray of microwaved pasta as we stand hunched over the kitchen sink. Fast-food companies rarely show lonely people eating in their cublicles at work, or solitary figures heedlessly munching as they watch television at night. As usual, the marketers seem to know what we really want: they show smiling families gathered around the dining-room table. Talking, laughing, spending time together. If marketers know what we want, why don’t we get what we want?

In other words, we’re promised one thing, and we get something else. We end up gulping down food of dubious provenance when what we really want is to linger with friends and family over a meal of fresh, wholesome ingredients, carefully prepared. Fast food is sold to us on the merit of its illusory resemblance to Slow Food.

—Jeff Crump, from the introduction to Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm

I’m all the time being asked by people, “How do you feel closer to God?” And I kind of always want to say, “I don’t know.” When I read the lives of most of the great saints, they didn’t necessarily feel very close to God. When I read the Psalms I get the feeling like David and the other Psalmists felt quite far away from God for most of the time. Closeness to God is not about feelings. It’s about obedience. … I don’t know how you feel close to God. And no one I know who seems to be close to God knows anything about those feelings either. I know if we obey, occasionally the feeling follows. Not always, but occasionally. I know that if we disobey, we don’t have a shot at it.

Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, my brothers, you’ve done it unto me”, and that is what I’ve come to think: if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor.

This, I know, will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved, and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.

—Rich Mullins, from a concert in Lufkin, TX on July 19, 1997, two months before he was killed in a car accident

They rode in silence for a while, and then the driver made another good point. He said he knew that his truck was turning the atmosphere into poison gas, and that the planet was being turned into pavement so his truck could go anywhere. “So I’m committing suicide,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Trout.

“My brother is even worse,” the driver went on. “He works in a factory that makes chemicals for killing plants and trees in Viet Nam.” Viet Nam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes. The chemicals he mentioned were intended to kill all the foliage, so it would be harder for the communists to hide from airplanes.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Trout.

“In the long run, he’s committing suicide,” said the driver. “Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”

“Good point,” said Trout.

—Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions, p. 86

Do you wish to honour the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: “This is my body” is the same who said: “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food”, and “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me” … What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger? Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well.
(Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, no. 50)

If you ask [Christians] who is Amos or Obadiah, how many apostles there were or prophets, they stand mute; but if you ask them about the horses or drivers, they answer with more solemnity than sophists or rhetors.
(Source unknown)

We admire wealth equally with them, and even more. We have the same horror of death, the same dread of poverty, the same impatience of disease, we are equally fond of glory and of rule. We harass ourselves to death from our love of money, and serve the time. How then can they believe?
(Homilies on First Timothy, no. 82

—St. John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407 A.D.)

Jesus’ life and his death was one sustained act of love toward people, and therefore it was one sustained act of revolt against the powers. … Jesus always treats human beings as victims. He never blames anybody for the infirmity that they have. Even if it was caused or influenced by demonic power, he never blames the victim. He treats them as victims. He never blames anybody for being demonized. He never says, “Boy, you must have screwed up in your past, or played with a Ouija board or something.” He just sees the need and he meets it. In fact, on the cross, what does he do? He prays, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” Jesus never battled people. Rather, he fought for people by fighting against the powers. …

We are called to imitate Jesus in all respects. That’s what it is to be Christian, Christ-like, and therefore we’re called to wage war the way Jesus did: not against people, but against the powers. And the way we wage war against the powers is by refusing to do anything other than love people. …

Last Saturday I was at a Super-American station and I bought some windshield washer fluid. And I walked in to purchase my windshield washer fluid, and there was at the counter a Caucasian clerk and an African-American clerk. In front of the Caucasian clerk, there were two customers: one customer being checked out, and one customer waiting. In front of the African-American clerk there was no one.

So the African-American clerk calls to the person waiting in line (he was a white guy), and says “I’m open for business.” The white guy turns to him and says, “You think I’m blind? You think I’m stupid?” And then he looks over in this direction like he’s looking at some potato chips, and he says, “I’m checking out the price of potato chips, if you don’t mind!” The African-American clerk says “I’m just trying to help, letting you know that I work here.”

Then the customer that was being checked out by the Caucasian clerk left, and this guy just walks up and starts buying his stuff. He wasn’t checking out the chips. You couldn’t even see the price of chips from where he was standing. Now I’m seeing this—I haven’t seen anything this overt in quite awhile in terms of racism. And immediately my blood pressure rises, my temperature rises, my heart starts beating fast. I have an impulse to say things and do things that might not be consistent with the character of Christ. And I had to just stop and take a few deep breaths. I have to remember who the enemy is and who it isn’t. And I have to remember that it’s a mere dust particle compared to the log in my own eye, and that I’m the chief sinner. And I have to remember that my one job as a Kingdom person is to ascribe unsurpassable worth to all people at all times. And there are times when I enjoy that, and times when I hate it, and this time I hated it, but I have to do it! So I just started praying for this guy, saying “Lord, I agree with you—I’m trying to agree with you—that he has unsurpassable worth, that he was worth you dying for. And I pray blessing on his life, and I pray that you would free him from the powers.” Because the real enemy is not the guy! The real enemies are the powers that would oppress him in his racism, and me in my self-righteousness against the racist! By refusing to give into that hatred, and loving this person, that is my warfare against the powers.

—Greg Boyd, “Fighting the Right Enemy“, a sermon preached on 3/9/2008 at Woodland Hills Church

If we could count the fears, both great and small, that once hounded us, and then thank God for each dread outcome that never materialized, we would reach no end of gratitude.

—John Kavanaugh in America, vol. 173 no. 10 (7 October 1995), p. 23

I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be pased, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countryment. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

- Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions, p. 209

“What about you, Lev Nikolayevich, you preach very well, but do you carry out what you preach?” This is the most natural of questions and one that is always asked of me; it is usually asked victoriously, as though it were a way of stopping my mouth. “You preach, but how do you live?” And I answer that I do not preach, that I am not able to preach, although I passionately wish to. I can preach only through my actions, and my actions are vile. … And I answer that I am guilty, and vile, and worthy of contempt for my failure to carry them out.

At the same time, not in order to justify, but simply in order to explain my lack of consistency, I say: Look at my present life and then at my former life, and you will see that I do attempt to carry them out. It is true that I have not fulfilled one thousandth part of them [Christian precepts], and I am ashamed of this, but I have failed to fulfill them not because I did not wish to, but because I was unable to. Teach me how to escape from the net of temptations that surrounds me, help me and I will fulfill them; even without help I wish and hope to fulfill them.

Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that I have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: “Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!” No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support.

— Leo Tolstoy, excerpt from a personal letter