“They see the soft evangelical ‘culturally engaged’ center lusting after the respect of the world, and willing to lick dirt to get it. As an aside, licking dirt is not a great strategy for gaining respect.”
Because We Are Not There Yet
“Just don’t make the mistake of putting your emotions in the driver’s seat. This is a complicated car, a very expensive car, and your emotions are two years old. They don’t know how to drive. Your emotions need to be in the back, strapped in a car seat, with instructions to behave.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 57
All the Way
“Here is the definition I would offer, taking this as a summary from all of Scripture: to love someone is to treat that person lawfully from the heart.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 55
Always There
“In A.D. 500, you didn’t have to deal with the algorithms. You didn’t have a device in your pocket that pings you with a notification whenever you get a new incoming lie.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 53
The Only One
“Christ is the standard for every man and woman, for every boy and every girl. He is the path we must run. He is the only curriculum.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 52
Not in the Bill of Rights
“Young people do not have a constitutional right to be silly.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 52
Keep It Tough
“Math will hurt their feelings, because math reminds everybody of the Last Judgment. The answer is right or wrong, and you can’t blow sunshine at it.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 51
How Centuries Sanitize Things
“So in this powder key called Jerusalem, what did Jesus do? Did Jesus come in to pour soothing oil on troubled waters? No, He went into the Temple, for crying out loud, and started flipping over tables . . . We call it the cleansing of the Temple, of course, because it is thousands of years in the past, and we read a bronze plaque about it in the Museum of Heroic Bygone Deeds. What would we call it if it had happened last week? Vandalism? Performance art? Prophecy without a permit?”
Jesus Mobs
“Now can we all agree that these crowds, as warmly affectionate toward John the Baptist as they might have been, and as doggedly committed to the honor of the rabbi Jesus as they were, were people who had not taken on board the full import of what the Scriptures had required of them? I mean, had you gone to one of their rallies, who knows what kind of flags might have been there? And did their presence in the mix in any way discredit what Jesus was up to? Not even a little bit.”
Rocks on the Large Side
“Character is hard. Character is built through difficulty. Character grows when you are out in the rain, picking up rocks. But personality grows, or thinks it does, when it is being flattered, stroked, cajoled, and otherwise lied to.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 50