Paul “does not say that being rich is like having cooties, and that they should be trying to pass their cooties off to somebody else. As I say, he doesn’t teach that.”
Ploductivity, p. 24
Should Be a Lot More
“We already know that tormented and driven men can do an awful lot. When we look at the accomplishments of many men, we can almost see the lash behind them. But what can free men and free women do? What can gratitude accomplish?”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 30
Either Way, It Should Be On Fire
“With regard to the vexed question of written or unwritten sermons I have not very much to say. I think it is a question whose importance has been very much exaggerated, and the attempt to settle which with some invariable rule has been unwise, and probably has made stumbling speakers out of some who might have been effective readers, and stupid readers out of men who might have spoken with force and fire. The different methods have their evident different advantages.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 129
The Occasion, Not the Cause
“The arrogant human heart is the source of the sin concerning wealth, and the arrogant human heart sins this way in the proximity of wealth. Wealth is not the locus of the sin, but the presence of the wealth is the locus of the temptation. Just as a beautiful woman is not the cause of lust, but merely the occasion for it, so also the presence of wealth is not the cause of self-sufficiency. But we see, over and again from Genesis to Revelation, that wealth provides the occasion for the sin of self-sufficiency. As Cotton Mather once put it, ‘Faithfulness begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.’”
Ploductivity, p. 23
No Substitute for the Substitute
“God hates a particular kind of incongruity with a passion. He detests the notion that we can create a liturgy, or a worship service, or a tall steeple, that somehow masks or deals with sin. But if such things could deal with sin, then Jesus didn’t have to die.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 29
Copying the Wrong Thing
“The positive evil [of imitation] comes from the fact that that what is worst in any man is always the most copiable.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 127
We Do Veer With It
“In this fallen world, wealth does have a bias toward self-sufficiency rather than dependence on God. But this is not something the wealth does to us, but rather something we do with the wealth.”
Ploductivity, p. 21
Created to Be Fruitful
“We were created for work, and we were created for work in an astoundingly fruitful world.”
Ploductivity, p. 20
So Watch It
“The range of sermon-writing gives it a capacity of various vices which no other kind of composition can presume to rival.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 126
Solomon, Not Euclid
“Remember that proverbs are proverbs, and that they do not give us truths about triangles having three sides.”
Ploductivity, p. 19