A Serious Way of Copying A Title

i would like to begin this post by welcoming myself back to my blog. its been a little while since we last spoke. i apologize for not getting back to you sooner...
anywho, i thought i would explain the title of my blog. in my ongoing quest of unoriginality, i chose to copy the title of book. a couple weeks back i began reading, and soon after finished, an interesting little piece written by Reynolds Price, a Duke professor of English and Literature, also a respected novelist, poet, and commentator on religious thought, and someone who affectionately calls himself a 'religious outlaw.'

the book is entitled 'A Serious Way of Wondering: the ethics of Jesus imagined'. i must admit that i knew going into this work that this book would be quite provocative and controversial in nature, anything written about Jesus is generally considered so, but i have never been one to avoid such a thing simply on those grounds alone. i am one who thinks that controversy or thoughts other than my own should be confronted and learned from, not avoided and pushed aside without proper examination.

so in this book, mr. price provides a glimpse at what he feels, and in some ways i tend to agree, are the apparently contradictory ethics of Jesus as articulated in the Gospels. he does so using quite a bit of artistic license and makes his own personal opinions known throughout. the central thought of the book is found in price's presentation of three problems of burning moral concern, not only in Jesus' time, but especially in th year 2007. often arguments given for many things involve someone stating: "but Jesus never said anything about (blank)." and we fill in the blank with whatever issue we want like homosexuality or abortion or whatever. And so price attempts to present a Jesus who does confront such issues, and speaks at length on homosexuality, suicide, and the plight of women in male-dominated areas like faith and ministry.

although i don't agree with all of price's observations, i think he has done a great service to us by exploring these issues with honesty and humility. i tend to see most of the Christian culture as being narrow minded and unable to see a much larger picture outside of their own 'world'. i am sure i will be posting more thoughts on such things in the near future. but in the meantime, if you want to read something interesting and outside of the conservative scope of evangelical Christian thought, go ahead and give this book a try.