Theology That Bites Back
“When the church is unsubmissive to Christ, it becomes submissive to the world. ‘Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God’ (Jas. 4:4). Conversely to be submissive to Christ is the same thing as becoming uppity to the demands of the world.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 299-300
“We start fussing, in a self-important kind of way, about the problems of extremes and excesses. Of course. There is a counterfeit boldness that might be called ‘worldview machismo.’ And there is a counterfeit humility that might be called ‘worldview effeminacy.’ But rebuking us all, there is a faith that wonders in a loud voice why the uncircumcised Philistines are being allowed to talk the way they do.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 298-299
“As a result, we treat the Biblical world and life view as though it were pie dough—but the farther we spread it, the thinner it gets. This universal but think application of Christ’s claims has the advantage of not provoking a hostile reaction from the world, and it enables us to feel good about our Kuyperian selves.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 298
“The law must slay me before I can understand it. But the same thing is true of the Gospel.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 295
“Rather than have the Bible cut us up in pieces, we do the obvious, which is to cut the Bible up into pieces. We would rather do the dividing than be divided. So we call the pieces by different names—‘Oh, that’s in the Old Testament!’ Or we postulate a false dichotomy between law and Gospel.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 294
“The woman’s unborn child can be killed for having birth defects, but if he navigates his way past our abortion law and is successfully born, we will arrange special Olympics for him, handicapped parking in every lot in town, and access into every building in the nation. In a fever pitch of moral do-goodism, we insist that such individuals have a fundamental right to be able to access anything—except for their lives.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 290-291+
“In other words, when it becomes apparent that we as a people are disregarding God’s law in some flagrant way, the next thing to watch for is some kind of moral crusade that will help compensate for it. In our nation today, a woman who is six months pregnant can do to a clinic and have the child terminated. Not only can she do this, but she can receive considerable societal support in doing so. The law of God is flagrantly insulted. But if that same woman stands on a busy street corner, visibly pregnant, and smokes herself a pack of cigarettes, she would bear the brunt of a lot of cold, icy stares. How dare she risk a low birth rate?”
The Cultural Mind, p. 290
“Jesus said that the Jewish leaders searched the Scriptures—because they thought they would find life in them. But those Scriptures, Jesus said, bore witness to Him. Propositional truth, whether found in the book of Romans or in the Westminster Confession of Faith, must be understood as a window through which we look. Every true statement also can become a mural at which a very ‘conservative’ man can blindly stare. And if anyone points out that the objects in the mural are alive, he brings that person up on charges.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 287-288
“The Christian faith taught that Ultimate Truth had a face and two hands, and used to work in a carpentry shop. If telephones had been invented back then, His name would have been in the phone under the Ds—Davidson.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 286-287
“But above all else, they remembered John’s testimony about the hard run he took one morning to an empty tomb. The grave clothes had been there, but nothing else. John then walked outside with Peter and into a world made new. It took some time for that world to realize it, but nothing was ever the same.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 286
