“One of the things we need to remember when it comes to church architecture is that a building is corporate clothing. A building is how the whole church dresses. The trick is how to dress up without playing dress ups.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 35
David French and the Pink Spiders of Empathy
Introduction: David French recently wrote about what he sees as a significant developing problem with the issues of empathy and sympathy in the church. As yours truly got mentioned in his piece, ...
Audio Reading of Post
Cash and Cooties
Paul “does not say that being rich is like having cooties, and that they should be trying to pass their cooties off to somebody else. As I say, he doesn’t teach that.”
Ploductivity, p. 24
Which We Have Been Trying to Discourage
Should Be a Lot More
“We already know that tormented and driven men can do an awful lot. When we look at the accomplishments of many men, we can almost see the lash behind them. But what can free men and free women do? What can gratitude accomplish?”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 30
The Occasion, Not the Cause
“The arrogant human heart is the source of the sin concerning wealth, and the arrogant human heart sins this way in the proximity of wealth. Wealth is not the locus of the sin, but the presence of the wealth is the locus of the temptation. Just as a beautiful woman is not the cause of lust, but merely the occasion for it, so also the presence of wealth is not the cause of self-sufficiency. But we see, over and again from Genesis to Revelation, that wealth provides the occasion for the sin of self-sufficiency. As Cotton Mather once put it, ‘Faithfulness begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.’”
Ploductivity, p. 23
No Substitute for the Substitute
“God hates a particular kind of incongruity with a passion. He detests the notion that we can create a liturgy, or a worship service, or a tall steeple, that somehow masks or deals with sin. But if such things could deal with sin, then Jesus didn’t have to die.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 29
On Making Restitution for a Stolen Election, or, Don’t Take the Bait, Part Dos
Introduction: Somehow, someway, the results of the Maricopa election audit will become public soon. The news is likely to make a splash, provided someone doesn’t re-invade Afghanistan to keep the news from making a splash, and so I thought we ought to prepare ourselves for that splash. Among other things, I would suggest that we …
Letters in Brief
I was traveling this last week for the Fight Laugh Feast conference, which was wonderful, but it did burn a lot of daylight. The end result is that this letters feature today will be a little ...
We Do Veer With It
“In this fallen world, wealth does have a bias toward self-sufficiency rather than dependence on God. But this is not something the wealth does to us, but rather something we do with the wealth.”
Ploductivity, p. 21