Doodlings Redivivus

by Kim Fabricius

All serious theology begins with the question “Who gives a shit?”

Making room for God in your life is like making room for cold in the fridge.

Most wondrously, the longer I am married, the more of a mystery to me my wife becomes. I expect one morning to wake up, turn to my beloved, and say, “Who the hell are you?”

There is a certain kind of writing that may aptly be called “praying with your pen”. At the keyboard, however, one cannot pray, only conjure.

There are your daily ups and downs, and then there is your character. In the ecology of the self, the former is the weather, the latter the climate.

In our fiercely neoliberal economy, the heart (to contemporise Calvin) has relocated, going south (metaphorically as well as geographically): it is now a perpetual sweatshop of idols.

Cunning capitalism: in the SCM/Canterbury Press summer book sale, Theology of Money, RRP £30.00, is going for a song at £4.00.

I am shocked and outraged at the shock and outrage of the public reaction to the corruption and crime exposed in Murdochgate. Christ, even Pavlov’s dogs would bark, “Yuh think?”

Is it surprising that so many American Christians are obsessed with hell when mass incarceration and capital punishment are the way the nation does justice?

Ivan Karamazov declares that he would rather return the entrance ticket than remain in a world that requires hell for its harmony. There are many people, however, who would gladly pay extra for a better seat.

When Sartre said that hell is other people, he wasn’t wrong, just not specific enough. The Tea Party perhaps? Oops, wrong species.

As Karl Barth should have said: Nulla salus extra infernum.

I started believing in special providences of books after finishing the copy of Barth’s Romans that a friend gave to me as a birthday present. I started believing in angels at the same time.

Hollywood is making a comedy series on the Synod of Dort. But for copyright issues it would be called Will & Grace.

If you have ever been to the Big Apple, you will know that New Yorkers never needlessly give offence. They do it enthusiastically.

Après ski, two theologians were avidly discussing the phrase piste christou.

I’ve been closely following the pistis christou debates, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am that, according to some scholars, I am justified by an objective genitive. I’d been getting so worried that I might need some complex periphrastic or optative construction to get saved that I’ve been brushing up on my Metzger and Moule.

Theologians attack the New Atheists for shooting fish in a barrel. They should know.

As ministers approach retirement, the question many ask themselves is not which church they will attend, but, apart from the ones they occasionally preach in, whether they will attend any church at all.

Karl Rahner was trying to explain the Trinity to Bill Clinton, without much success. In exasperation he finally exclaimed, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

In Who Moved the Stone?, Frank Morison, the pseudonym of Albert Henry Ross, proved that Jesus rose from the dead. Ross was a lawyer and an advertising agent. Enough said.

After he had finished his PowerPoint Presentation on the Mount, Jesus said, “Now break into groups of no more than six and share.”

Jesus cell phones Mary from the Sea of Galilee just before he starts teaching in parables (Matthew 13): “Ma, I’m on the boat.”

Some Christian leaders seem to think that “The Lord is my helper” (Hebrews 13:6) means that he is their PA.

A junkie once told me that the only way to kick the habit is by falling in love. He was obviously an anonymous theologian.