So Get Cracking
Not the Best Way
“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
Parked Cars
“We always have the resources for doing what we are supposed to be doing at that moment. If we don’t have the resources for going forward, we have the resources for waiting. If we are supposed to go forward, we will have the resources to do so . . . God doesn’t steer parked cars. If there is no motion, it doesn’t matter how much the steering wheel is turned back and forth.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 119
Child and Father
“Let them see clearly that you value no feeling which is not the child of truth and the father of duty. And to let them see that you value no other feeling you must value no other feeling either in yourself or them.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 176
Deliberate Steps
“An amazing amount of work can be accomplished through diligent plodding. But please note that I said plodding, not shuffling.”
Ploductivity, p. 92
Emblem or Mask
“When congregations build church buildings, this is either a testimony or a mask. It is either a declaration of what we are all becoming in Jesus Christ, or it is an attempt to substitute with blocks of stone what God will only receive from tender hearts.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 117
Obey Your Husband and Other Transgressive Ideas
Introduction: As trendy as it may be to rage against the patriarchy, for progressive evangelicals, the key to doing this successfully is to rage against the exegesis, which is to say, to rage ...
Audio Reading of Post
Theology Unfragmented
“We are not to teach what the Bible says in bits and pieces, but rather are to gather it all up in a systematic whole.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 107
Novemberesque Letters
Letter to the Editor: Have you read Paul Bloom’s book “Against Empathy”? Amidst all the pushback to your conversation with Joe Rigney, Bloom wrote the book in 2016 and is an ...
(L)et’s (G)o (B)randon—(t)o (Q)Anon +
Introduction: If our generation got any fruitier, it would have to be acknowledged from every quarter that somebody had put way too many mangoes in the fruit salad. This judgment of judicial ...