Category: Engaging the Culture

“Grace has no handles and is impossible for sinners to pick up. But grace does have hands and consequently has no difficulty picking us up.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 173

“We careen from one thing to the next, thumb on the remote. Our presidential debates are not debates at all but more like demolition derbies between competing sound bytes. On virtually all our products, we plaster some form of ‘New! Improved!’ In other words, the product is emphatically not what it was the last time we were foolish enough to buy it. Sermons have deteriorated into 10-minute-long, entertaining sketches of some inspiration mini-thought or other. Momentous event on the other side of the world are summarized for us on the evening news in one minute and forty-five seconds . . . and now this. Continuity bores us. Sustained thought is wearisome. And whatever you do, it better be different from last time. In a culture like ours, fads are just like cotton—the fabric of our lives.”

The Cultural Mind, pp. 169-170

“The Lord’s usual preaching target did not appear to be drug dealers and hookers. His assaults were usually directed at religious professionals. Further, He did not address them in a true collegial spirit, as one truth-seeking rabbi to another. Instead, He referred to ‘Fools and blind! Blind guides! Hypocrites! Serpents! Brood of vipers!” From all this we might conclude that seminaries should be called a bag of snakes from time to time in order to help them keep their vision and focus clear.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 166

“I hope it is possible to say this with all reverence, but Jesus was a tough customer . . . the image that many have of the Lord’s personality and strength of character comes more from man-made traditions and saccharine portrait painters than it does from the Bible. One easily envisions a genteel limp-wrist standing outside the door of someone’s heart, gently tapping, because of course the doorknob is only on the inside. The only thing missing from this vision is the ribbon in his hair. I have sometimes thought that a far better picture of Jesus knocking at the door of my heart would be a commanding hand from offstage, two rows of angels with a battering ram, and a worried-looking troll peeking out over the wall of a castle. Otto Scott put it well when he said that God of the Bible is no buttercup.”

The Cultural Mind, pp. 163-164

“When God is ‘removed’ from His predestinating throne, men do not merely breathe a sigh of relief. Rather, they quickly notice that the throne is vacant and begin scheming about how to occupy it . . . The only alternative to a predestinating state is a predestinating God . . . And because we do not want Him, we get them.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 161-162