Tag: Chrestomathy

“You are not ‘blaming the victim’ if you are honestly involved in finding out who the victim is. A young girl abused by her stepfather is the victim. A stepfather falsely accused by his stepdaughter is the victim. If you approach is ‘ready, fire, aim,’ it does not matter if you say that your intent was to side with the victim. That really must be your first priority, but getting the identity of the victim right is part of it.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 56

“A minister should never promise not to tell. He can and should promise to be discreet with what he learns. He can promise not to put it on the prayer chain, but he should never commit himself not to tell others on his ministry team or, as necessary, someone in law enforcement.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 52

“No conscientious pastor can be willingly complicit in a child having to spend one more minute under the control of his abuser, and no pastor can willingly turn over an innocent person to a system that will simply presume him to be guilty and quite possibly make a hash out of the rest of his life. That really is a true pastoral dilemma.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 51

“Because of the rampant confusion of spiritual and inspired (which are not the same thing at all), we need to do more theological spadework in the garden of our studies, and less beating our brethren over the head with the spade.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 47

“I am not bound to accept a prophetic utterance from a charismatic friend the same way I am bound to believe the book of Romans.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 45

“There is no way to maintain that the revelatory gifts are ongoing without jeopardizing the integrity of the canon of Scripture. If the word given is a Word from God, and if we believe that it is, then we must treat it as though it is.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 44

“We are often tempted to say that some things are supernatural simply because we do not know how far nature actually goes.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 43

“What holy word does God speak into a sinful religious world? He says not to bow down before an image in religious devotion.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 40

“The inconsistent Christian writes articles for academic journals explaining how it turns out that the Scriptures, rightly understood, were all along saying just what the latest breeze from off the Zeitgeist Bay would seem to indicate they ought to have been saying.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 35

“When the pomos taught us that all truth claims were disguised power grabs, they were telling us more about their purposes than they were actually intending to.”

Concise and to the Point, p. 34