“All societies are theocratic, with the only thing distinguishing them being the nature and attributes of the reigning theos.”

Mere Christendom, p. 72

“We can all acknowledge that a father spitting in his daughter’s face is not something that we would call a great moment in child-rearing. This is obviously a family with some serious dysfunction going on. Nobody reading this should want to be that dad. So don’t be that dad. Not ever. But here is the point. Suppose I had gone a different route and said something like “Whatever you do, don’t be that daughter, man. Whatever she did, it must have been pretty bad.” Enlightened moderns everywhere would be aghast. They would be aghast for a reason, and that reason is the thing I want to point to. The striking thing here is that, even in such a grim scenario, all the social pressure in ancient Israel was applied to the daughter, and not to the father. She was the one who bore the shame” ‘If this happened, should she not be ashamed for seven days?’ This default assumption seems almost inconceivable to us. We tend to wonder, ‘Why was the father not arrested and charged?’”

Keep Your Kids, p. 72

“When you look around your home at a little sea of toddlers, you should look forward to the time when you’re sitting around a table with your grown children and their grown children, telling stories and laughing together. You are at one end of the table, and your wife is at the other end, and you’re talking about how God has used your family. That is the joy that is set before you. That is what you have your eye on as you trust God’s promises. Don’t look at the chaos and get sucked down into it as though it determines everything. It doesn’t determine anything.”

Keep Your Kids, p. 66