Prematurely Saved:

...To say that I am sure of my salvation may be to try to hold on to something we are not allowed to keep, and to make of Jesus something merely comforting...

...When we 22 December 1978:805 we know God and try~to use God for our ends, we are idolators...

...The next issue will be dated January 19, 19...

...Back and forth it goes...

...The clue is that this is one more damned therapy, this wave of born- againism...

...There is a reason why the ( at Delphi spoke in riddles...

...Mate- rialism is criticized, but this has less to do with the way we live than with the way we feel about how we live--and therein lies a clue...

...to try to go beyond that--to arriv~ point where I trust myself enough t "I am saved"--is less an act offa God than an act of faith in myself...

...I am bothered by the fact tha people who say this about thems...

...The burden of this message naturally fell heaviest on Turner, since the CIA is supposed to be at least one jump ahead of the game when it comes to domestic troubles threatening important allies...

...It makes you feel better about yourself and lets you be your own best friend and look after I II IIIIII number one...

...What gets blessed in all For any Christian a belief in perfectil is a dangerous thing, and here we c get into a discussion of heresy as a n ingful social problem, but we won't more appropriate category migh whatever simple discipline it could to frame the question, "What can it J to say 'I am saved...

...She was converted by her work with old and poor people, and by a minister wh o persuaded her that this should never be a matter of pride and self-righteousness...

...It is profoundly wrong, maybe even a surrender to evil, to expect to avoid dismay and dread...

...experience has taught CIA anall write an escape hatch into ever mate, a subordinate clause or stt conditional verbs, which, in retn might be cited as a warning flag...

...Busy officials have not got tit Henry James...

...When we locate and defil divine we create an idol...

...After receiving Carter's note, but before its message was confided to William Sa- tire of the New York Times, Turner re- sponded with an announcement he was setting up a new crisis-prediction center in the CIA...

...To be a follower of Jesus, do I have to know how I feel about it, or have a crystal clear sense of what it means to say that much of the creed...

...But I may decide, before long, to give it up...

...TO say "I am saved"--a: were my decision that made the difference--seems arrogant, presur ous...

...T, "I am saved" seems to say more me than it does about God...

...Carter's note will back the conditional undergrowtl cause he is asking the CIA to do tl thng it can't do--tell him what is gc happen...

...TI for wrong paper is more paper...

...This is wor- rying the President...

...The people I am worried about are the groups responsible to no one but TV audiences or other crowds, the people who are never involved in the self-critical discussion which true communities always share...

...It isn't sincerity I wonder about here--if anything this sort of perfor- mance points up what a cheap virtue sin- cerity is--but the horror involved when you wrap up the gospel in the flag, senti- mentality, individualism, and an uncriti- cal view of American capitalism...

...Iran is supposed to be the bulwark of the Persian Gulf...

...one of the joyboys asked recently...

...FAITH IN THE SHAH a religion which is so intimately involved in the scandal of incarnation is a willing- ness to accept the agony of any flesh, including the darkness of unbelief and the knowledge of forsakenness...

...The Shah has the army under control, for the moment, but not much else...

...This isn't necessarily thing more than silly, except for the that it is a growing phenomenon, converts everywhere...

...of belief, as if it meant little or nothing that in the garden of Gethsemane "Jesus's soul was filled with dismay and dread...

...If the uni" is what I hope it is, God's will to sav~ God's love for me, God's power to everything created and God's lov...

...If it is not therapy, but clarity (which isn't necessarily so cozy a thing), then the people who have made Jesus the nicest talk-show host of them all will be in for a surprise which could awe them, delight them, or terrify them, but in any case will make them feel as foolish as we all ought to feel when we are too clear about what God wants of us...

...and though taste isn't everything, it is at leastsomething, I thoughL watching this version of the slow dissolve...

...My reason for thinking badly about this isn't simple resentment at being looked at as if I were a form of fuel...

...One Quaker fi complained, "I hate the way the co-opted the word 'Christian.' I h; when they get some rink Catholic bi or priest up there, to give the ho: opportunity to trumpet the fact that Catholics can be saved now...

...Of course the CIA has been through all this before...

...This makes the paper e, read, but it doesn't make it any likely to be right...

...His wife, streaming tears and consequent mascara, testified some nights later that she really hadn't wanted to go on with this ministry but (guess what) Jesus gave her the courage...

...In the background there was a chorus of amens and praise Jesus...

...In addition, the unhappiness of many change of heart...

...In the course of time the thicket., conditional grow so dense they b~ resemble the late novels of Henry...

...If religion is finally therapy, that makes sense...

...Or is there a danger in asking for these emotions...

...T precisely what the zeitgeist seen want of me, but I'm not sure thai God's will...

...Not all of those people who talk about being saved bother me, as uncomfortable as I am with the language involved...

...If pressed-- or even if they aren't--they will admit that Jews, Catholics, and even Protestants will go to hell unless they accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior...

...All this is part of the eternal giv take of government...

...Too much recent evan~gelism has stressed the reassuring aspec...

...It isn't GOd I doubt, but myself...

...The troubles caught them by surprise, as troubles tend to do...

...The prematurely save asking us to arrive at conviction this right now, as if it were our end deal, and not God's initiative, mattered...

...In an age when it often seems that protests encounter Year's season...

...Or can I be led on, often in the dark, by the hope his words inspire, and the hope shown in his life, death, and resurrection...

...The answer was, of course, no...

...what has been made--none of things is in question...

...They call for weer the thickets, a paring back of the growth to reveal what the paper, af is supposed to be about--the out the future...

...It's not surp that Carter should be distressed 1~ CIA's misreading of events in Irat that the CIA should defend itself a~ a request to do what no one can do problem is not analytical timidity presidential importunity, nor even tt ture's inscrutability', The real reasc the CIA's failure to predict the S troubles, like the reason why no me, ieal adjustment of the estimating pr can be expected to give better resu the future, is to be found in the gap separates lran as American po makers want it to be, from lran as The one is abstract, like the geopol strategy of which it is a part, whii other is concrete, various and real T HERE'S a lesson to be learned from the troubles of Iran, but it doesn't look as if President Carter and his principal advisors are going to grasp what it is...

...It is functionally equivalent to est or TA or inner tennis...

...Can a Christian really be depressed...

...Monsignor Higgins and also canceling the abolishment of the only an unheeding bureaucracy, all these are happy de human values committee which deals with urgent biomedical opments, and we congratulate those responsible for ethical questions...

...seem to think that they are good...

...The files of the N Security Council are chock full o criticizing the CIA for failing to the surprise of the moment, of q special studies of the intelligenc, munity, and of the CIA's volta responses to unhappy officials...

...The worst problem, though, i., idolatry...

...At least I would like to begin asking some impolite questions which come to mind whenever I meet the pre- maturely saved, the "born-again" sorts who are given to lamenting their former existence (they drank, played cards, danced, thought abut sex) and celebrat- ing their present lives (now they do none of the above...

...After awhile 1 un- derstood that she really was converted, she really had tried to give her life to God in a rare and important way...

...Of several minds: John Garvey THE PREMATURELY SAVED UNECUMENICAL THOUGHTS FOR ADVENT I 'VE always believed in ecumenism...

...When in doubt create a com- mittee...

...It is possible, I think, to have an idol and call it Jesus...

...Eventually a s.L comes along and the old charges newed...

...On a long bus ride I once sat next to an old lady who said she was saved and worried about whether-I was...

...The President may now confi-dently expect a flood of new paper citing potential troubles threatening important allies, and a proliferation of the condi- tional tense which is the curse of intelligence--the maybe, could be, would be's with which analysts attempt to insulate their predictions from the sheer cussedness of the world...

...The problem i with God's end of the equation but my own...

...They are everywhere, even into the technology of satellite television, a medium which, they insist, has been given them by God to get his word all over the planet...

...On November l lth, Carter addressed a handwritten note to three of his principal advisors--Cyrus Vance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Admiral Stansfield Turner, the Director of Central Intelligence--telling them, "I am dis-satisfied with the quality of political in- telligence...

...The paper was in error...

...Kis was a weeder...

...His word comes via sets equipped with rubber tree plants and hosts who yuck it up in between impas- sioned pleas to turn to the Lord...

...he insisted the CL~ the courage of its convictions, an~ them clearly...

...bishops with the original action of the Committee on Research, Plans and Programs has led to steps to review, the functions of In keeping with the general magazine practice, C the group and perhaps to curb its considerable power in the monweal is skipping one issue during the Christmas-J future...

...Some of my best friends are tolerant...

...The vocation of Of several minds: Thomas Powers THE ILLUSION IN IRAN BEHIND U.S...

...Carter is apparently in a mood to blame the sur- prise on the CIA, which sent him a piece of hopeful paper last summer saying that the Shah of Iran had everything under control...

...Does this need to involve a feeling of certainty or secu- rity...

...JOHN GARVEY I took power in Cuba, the buildinl~ Berlin Wall, the Tet Offensive i nam in 1968, the Arab-Israeli war tober, 1973...

...The Agency was severely criticized for failing to predict the "Bogotazo" in Colombia in 1948, the entrance of the Chinese into the Korean War, a revolution in Iraq in the mid- 1950s, Castro's leftward turn after he Commonweal: 806...