Theology That Bites Back
“Adam was in a momentous conflict before he sinned. God insists that we bet with real money. God requires us to risk things. This risk includes all that we hold dear, and to shrink back from it is to incur the displeasure of God. The wicked and lazy servant was the one who would not risk what had been entrusted to him. To play it safe is to play it dangerous.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 76
“The shepherd must hate the wolves because he loves the sheep. If he hates the wolves because he loves to hate, then he is a wolf himself.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 75
“Righteousness is more important than victory, and victory will only come to those who care about righteousness more than victory.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 74
“No reformation worth having was ever accomplished to the sound of polite applause in the background. There will be smoke, and thunder, and yelling, and all the rest of it.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 73
“We may fight with abandon because we are not abandoned. Fatalistic warriors can be grim and fell, but never merry.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 71
“Some of these principles nest within others, like Russian dolls. Some of them do not—like dolls that aren’t Russian dolls.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 70
“But Paul doesn’t tell us to fight dirty jokes with clean jokes, lame or not. He says to fight dirty jokes with contentment and gratitude.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 66
“All of this is one of the reasons why more than a few readers constantly assume that I am always making fun of them. This is because they belong to a different tradition, that, say, of stuffing all the shirts, and they have trouble distinguishing a man who is making fun from a man who is just having fun.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 57
“Before claiming the right to speak like Ezekiel, can we at least agree that Ezekiel was Ezekiel? He, at any rate, rebuked the geopolitical lusts of Jerusalem, by saying that they yearned for Babylonians who were hung like donkeys, and who ejaculated like horses.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 53
“If someone is caught up in an immoral lifestyle, should we seek to help them? Well, of course, but in the same way we would want to help someone out if they had fallen into a sewage lagoon. Gingerly.”
No Such Thing as Bad Words, p. 49
