Michael Servetus (1511-1553) was �the hunted heretic,� as Yale scholar Roland Bainton called him in the title of his biography. While in the service of an auspicious dignitary of the Spanish Catholic Church, the young Servetus accompanied him on a journey to Rome and was so disgusted by what he perceived as useless ostentation and corruption in the Vatican court that he started publishing his own ideas, such as the unitarian nature of God and the humanity of Jesus, opinions for which he was immediately marked for extinction as a dangerous heretic. He was on the run all over Europe, wanted dead or alive; not only by Catholic authorities, but by the newly emergent Protestant reformers, to whom he had appealed for acceptance of his ideas. He was captured and burned at the stake with green wood (for longer punishment) in Geneva; his pamphlets tied around him, on orders from John Calvin. � Bill Joyner
Responsibility and freedom coexist as necessary polarities for human efficiency. Inner constraints of self-giving love and responsible self-discipline counter-balance the potential chaos of absolute freedom. �All things are allowed,� Saint Paul said, �but all things are not expedient.� � BJ
The Scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, �Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act � � �John 8:3
MAVERICKS AND HERETICS
I had one sleepy eye fastened on the dead-faced derelict. It is thus one hears from the gods. �Give me a ticket to wherever it is.�� In a single poignant expression this shabby creature on a midnight express train had personalized the terror of an open ended universe � and pronounced the destination of the modern world. � Loren Eiseley
P. O. Box 3411 / Sarasota, Florida 34230
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Yes, I had a lover, his hands caressed, his presence consumed; and yes, we loved without BJcertification. Then, the guardians of law and order, with indignant satisfaction, tore our secrecy away.
I stumbled with unbelieving tears toward the stoning ground where men of God would hurl heavy boulders against my dying flesh.
They brought me before a strange judge,
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whom they hated more than I, and he challenged any who were without sin to commence the stoning.
Yes, I had a lover, one who loved me more than the first, and one day his flesh was crushed, as mine would have been, by folks who knew the law very well.
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God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. Matthew 8:17 makes it crystal clear that it is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering. � Man�s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world � The Bible, however, directs him to the powerlessness and suffering of God; only a suffering God can help. � Deitrich Bonhoeffer
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