Explosive Glory

“But we want to see You glorified now.
And deliverance that comes like a bolt from the blue
Would also be glorious, and Your name would be praised in it,
But I pray we might see this grace as its building.
Father, I pray for a gathering crescendo
That then reaches in glory a climax of wonder.
I pray that Your glory comes in like a thunderclap,
So that we might try to match an amen.”

21 Prayers, p. 106

Mild or Orgiastic

“The choice between secular options on the right is like a competition between a gentlemanly Epicurean and a rowdy one. The former walks at dawn in a manicured flower garden, contemplating chess moves and Rawlsian political theory, while the latter is more interested in crack cocaine and hoochie mamas. Without an overarching standard governing the two of them, we are simply comparing a longer life of nobler, milder pleasures, and a shorter life consisting of a blowout filled with orgiastic ones. But when we have to choose on those grounds, it is simply a matter of personal preference.”

Mere Christendom, p. 10

Privileges Are Not the Same Thing

“The secular state dispenses freedoms (it would be better to call them privileges) like they were party favors. They function as bribes. They serve as . . . bread . . . or circuses. As Chesterton points out somewhere, sexual license is the first and most obvious bribe to be offered to a slave. For many in our era, that was the bribe that ushered them into their bondage to the state.”

Mere Christendom, p. 9