Tag: Chrestomathy

“Let us not teeter along on the rim of some health and wealth nonsense, but at the same time, let us give the steely eye of rebuke to those Christian leftists who want to dance along the other rim of disease and poverty, once those progressive ideals have been suitably renamed.”

Ploductivity p. 62

“The faith of the people is the soul of the building. The building itself, without living, evangelical faith—without songs pouring out of forgiven hearts, without a proclamation of truth that is piping hot, without prayers of honest and sincere contrition—becomes a mausoleum. When the people are alive, the sanctuary is animated and alive.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 71

“Whatever you worship in place of God is another thing you lose. Whatever you surrender gladly to Him is returned to you, pressed down, shaken, and running over.”

Ploductivity, p. 62

“Church growth must not be thought of as a zero sum game, where one church can only grow at the expense of the others.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 69

“The technophile just assumes that man is the measure of all things, and he plumps his resume in order to get a job with Google, so that he too may become one of the lords of the earth. The technophobe just memorizes the poetry of Wendell Berry, and years for the days of yesterday when all our food was eked out under a hot sun by a slow mule and a picturesque peasant staggering behind it.”

Ploductivity, p. 59

“In that Holy of Holies, the law of God was kept inside the ark, but under the mercy seat. And so that is how we treasure our commitment to the law—under the mercy.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 67

“What is evangelical faith? It is spiritual literacy. The natural man does not understand the things of the spirit because they are spiritual discerned.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 65

“If [technology and progress] are forms of wealth, then we know that they are good things, blessings from God, and we also know that they are very dangerous things. The Bible does teach us what our orientation toward wealth should be—that of glad suspicion, or maybe, on our gloomy days, suspicious gladness.”

Ploductivity, p. 57

“Wealth is a function of accumulated man hours. And in another way, wealth is the ability to command the labor of another—the ability to tap into some portion of those available man hours. This accumulation of man hours can come in one of two forms, or in a combination of the two. The first is a large enough population size to all any specialist to be summoned, and the second is the incarnation of a specialist’s knowledge in a tool.”

Ploductivity, pp. 51-52

“The key is gratitude that is expressed and not just dialed in. We know how to dial it in. We all know, for example, how to say grace at the beginning of meals. That is something we just do, and wouldn’t dream of not doing. But suppose the head of the home stopped the meal in the middle, and told everybody that the food was really, really good, and why don’t we say grace for a second time? That would seem odd, weird, contrived, and perhaps . . . more grateful. It would highlight how the initial grace we say is something said on cruise control.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, pp. 63-64