Awesome Quote

Sometimes I get this sense that I am plowing through a collection of dusty, forgotten tomes in a setting that looks just like the archives Gandalf searched through in Minas Tirtith in his attempt to uncover the truth about Bilbo's funny magic ring. I wish I had more time to hang out in the archive and find all the cool stuff there! One thing I was reading recently is an early sermon in the Apostolic Fathers called 2nd Clement. It was preached to the Corinthian church sometime between approx. 100AD and 150AD. Here is just an awesome excerpt from it, it seemed especially applicable in light of the recent studies of the Sermon on the Mount we have been doing in our weekly fellowship...

"Let us be clear-headed regarding the good, for we are full of much stupidity and wickedness. Let us wipe off from ourselves our former sins and be saved, repenting from the very souls of our being. And let us not seek to please men. But let us not desire to please only ourselves with our righteousness, but also those who are outsiders, that the Name may not be blasphemed on our account. For the Lord says, 'My name is continually blasphemed among all the nations,' and again, 'Woe to him on whose account my name is blasphemed.' Why is it blasphemed? Because you do not do what I desire. For when the pagans hear from our mouths the oracles of God, they marvel at their beauty and greatness. But when they discover that our actions are not worthy of the words we speak, they turn from wonder to blasphemy, saying that it is a myth and a delusion. For when they hear from us that God says, 'It is no credit to you if you love those who love you, but it is a credit to you if you love your enemies and those who hate you,' when they hear these thngs, they marvel at such extraordinary goodness. But when they see that we not only do not love those who hate us, but do not even love those who love us, they scornfully laugh at us and the Name is blasphemed."