Category: Engaging the Culture

“So we need to remember that the eschatological future promised by the prophet Isaiah, and the future that was shaped by the industrial revolution and will continue to be shaped by the digital revolution, are the same future. I don’t believe in an invisible spiritual future, shaped by the Holy Spirit, full of sweetness and light, and an actual historical future shaped by the Devil, Halliburton, the Illuminati, and Murphy’s law. The world, this world, is presently going where Jesus is taking it. So we should be wise, and stop worrying.”

Ploductivity, pp. 98-99

“Everywhere the human race goes, it drags a bell curve around with it . . . one half of all medical doctors graduated in the lower half of their class, right?”

Ploductivity, p. 98

“The philosophers Hume and Kant, in a frenzy of high conceit, helped to banish ‘testimony’ from the modern world as a reliable source of knowledge. We want an idolatrous way of knowing that what we think is indubitable. But we are finite, and so it has to be testimony or nothing. Jesus is Lord, so it is testify and live or languish and die . . . Jesus is under your breastbone and throughout the congregation. That is what we are talking about . . . If He has no testimony concerning us, then we can have no testimony concerning Him.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 124

“This is the sinful pattern. God gives wealth, and man takes credit for it himself. If someone else comes along later and blames man for creating all this wealth, and demands that we have ourselves a little ‘social justice’ around here, he is just creating an extra layer of sedimentary silliness. And by this point, we don’t need any extra layers of silliness.”

Ploductivity, p. 96

“The service is not a zero-sum game, where the sacrament must give way to the Word or vice versa. Word and sacrament go together the way cooking and eating do. Services with great preaching and no sacrament are like celebrity chef television shows, where a lot of good food is prepared but not eaten. And sacramentalists are the ecclesiastical equivalent of a raw foods movement, where you come to church to get your puny carrot.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 122

“A very common feature of the acknowledgements section at the beginning of books is the part where the author thanks his long-suffering family for putting up with his surliness while he was Locked-in-the-Attic-in-Order-to-Write-the-Book, and for being willing to leave food by the door, tapping twice quietly, and then slipping quietly away.”

Ploductivity, p. 94