I'm reading this book, "Stealing Jesus," and I extracted this quote from it. It was originally written by Houston Smith in a paper for The World Religions:

He invited them to see things differently, confident that if they did so their behavior would change accordingly. This called for working with people’s imaginations more than with their reason or their will. If listeners were to accept his invitation, the place to which they were being invited would have to seem real to them. So, because the reality his hearers were most familiar with consisted of concrete particulars, Jesus began with those particulars. He spoke of mustard seeds and rocky soil, of servants and masters, of weddings and wine. These specifics gave his teachings an opening ring of reality; he was speaking of things that were very much a part of his hearers’ worlds.

But having gotten them that far, having roused in them a momentum of assent, Jesus would then ride that momentum while giving its trajectory a startling, subversive twist. That phrase, “momentum of assent,” is important, for its deepest meaning is that Jesus located the authority for his teachings not in himself or in God-as-removed but in his hearers’ hearts. My teachings are true, he said in effect, not because they come from me, or even from God through me, but because (against all conventionality) your own hearts attest to their truth.

I love this passage, because I feel like we so often trivialize our faith into bumper sticker theologies and then invoke the name of Jesus to give what we say authority, when, in fact, the things that we say should have authority because they "are true...not because they come from me, or even from God through me, but because (against all conventionality) your own hearts attest to their truth."

This is a little off subject, and I will be posting our first grocery receipt later today, but I will be revisiting this topic a lot in the future. I am examining the ways that I understand my faith and the ways that I represent it, so close examination of language is essantial. But, hey, more on that later.