Along All the Wires

“Apart from Christ, the electric crackle of envy runs along all the wires. Everything is hooked up to this particular grid. The current flows from Gentile to Jew, Jew to Gentile, white to black, black to white, short to tall, fat to skinny, and so on—mimetic desire and carping envy are absolutely everywhere and in everything. People who dismiss this with a wave of the hand do not understand the Scriptures, and they are blind when it comes to identifying one of the mainsprings of all unregenerate human action. The prohibition of envy and covetousness (‘of anything that is your neighbor’s’) is in the Ten Commandments for a reason” ().

American Milk and Honey, p. 5

What Pastors Need to be Able to See

“We must indeed learn how to fight for nature, not by means of nature. Natural affections by themselves do not empower us to engage on behalf of nature. But anyone who cannot identify the crackle of envy in antisemitism, or the smell of sulfur that wafts off of it, is not qualified for pastoral ministry” (American Milk and Honey, p. xv).

Yes, I Said Hot Pot

“Some might say, in defense of their idolatrous commitment to an absolutist view of tribal identity, that Scripture tells us to stick to the bounds of our appointed habitation (Acts 17:26)—as though this exercise of God’s sovereignty applied only to remote northern villages in Finland, or to White Town, Oklahoma. But God’s sovereignty in this applies equally to Brooklyn, that hot pot of jumbled ethnicities.”

American Milk and Honey, p. xv