Tag: Selected Quotes

“Augustine exhorted us somewhere to love God and do as we please. This makes us nervous, and more than a little bit jumpy. Of course the protection resides in the first clause—loving God affects what will please us. Psalm 37:4 says that if we delight in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our hearts. Taking delight in the Lord necessarily transforms what we consider delightful. Having said this, and having pointed to every necessary qualification, we cannot get away from the right hand of God and all the pleasures there (Ps. 16:11).”

The Cultural Mind, p. 189

“An inability to learn truth from beauty is not beauty’s problem.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 187

“Poetry today huddles in its prescribed little ghettos—the sentimentalism of greeting cards and cupboard poetry, the small clutch of arcane poetry journals with circulations of thirteen, self-absorbed adolescents scribbling pages of navel-gazing free verse, and nationally-ignored poet laureates. That about covers the world of poetry.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 185

“Our ability to get our words anywhere in the world within seconds, our ability to hit the remote when we are tired of what is happening in London and want to go to Hong Kong, our ability to see the world at a glance—all this creates an illusion of omniscience. This is strong wine for weak heads.”

The Cultural Mind, p 183

“The dishonesty of the whole endeavor is what causes conservative believers to adopt our classic and traditional tone—that of shrill—which we have used for so long it has almost become an art form among us. We have been cordoned off, and our response is to dance impatiently in place while heckling unbelief from our assigned place on the periphery.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 180

“The point here is not that modern evangelicalism is sick, but rather that it is the sickness. And what is the name of the sickness? The name is unbelief, and the apostle warned that it is by faith that we stand. We do not support the root, but rather the root supports us.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 178

“Nothing has proven to be more irrelevant than the liberal lust for relevance.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 178

“So many churches, denominations, parachurch ministries, mission agencies, and publishing houses have drifted into unbelief and liberalism that one would think that we should know what it looks like by now. But Solomon’s words still ring true. Fools receiving an inheritance from the past do not think to inquire whether or not they are being fools. Every morning is a new day to them, and they see no need to cling to all those dry and dusty lessons from the day before. They just take the valuables, shake the dust of wisdom off them, and head down to the pawn shop.”

The Cultural Mind, pp. 177-178

“In Paul’s theology, grace and works do not mix at all—otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. At the same time, Paul teaches that grace works . . . We are not saved in any way by good works, but we are necessarily saved to good works.”

The Cultural Mind, p. 174

“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