“I don’t mean to pick on English departments today, but if the head of such a department at some soft Christian college has a bumper sticker that says “Not All Who Wander Are Lost,” and the background of the bumper sticker is decorated with stardust, and the driver of this particular Volvo things my language here is intemperate, injudicious, and unbecoming a Christian minister, then what we are actually dealing with is a cowardly refusal to read the situation. And I don’t care if he is published and has tenure. I don’t care if he is a two-feather hobbit.”
As Swift as Anything
“Shall I praise you for this checklist mentality? Wisdom is pursuing you, friend, but you are fleet of foot.”
The Issue Is Actually the Circumference
“We continue to allow our evangelical leaders to represent us with an etiolated ‘gospel-centeredness’ that keeps the gospel at the center of a tiny little box that we store in the innermost recesses of our being.”
Which Is Not a Sign of Advancing Sophistication
“Young people today are routinely tempted by things that their grandfather didn’t find out about until his second year of medical school.”
Meditative Preparations
“Each one of your teenagers today is walking around with Bourbon Street in his pocket, or in her purse. And in many cases, always downloaded. You are driving off to church, and your (inexplicably sullen) teenager is in the way back, AirPods in, preparing his heart for worship by listening to “effin’ on the blim blam, n-word in the vocative plural!”
And It Will Come About
“The chaos of the deep upon which the Spirit moved was brought out of nothing by the Word (Col. 1:17). The protons at the center of every atom, the position and velocity of every asteroid in the great darkness beyond Mars, and the awesome intricacy of the double helix . . . all of it, spoken into existence by the Word and sustained by that same Word . . . And that Word is always driving in the same direction—the formation of the world that will come about as a result of the Word’s authority.”
Prepare to Meet Your God
“Uninspired sermons, even when anointed by the Holy Spirit, are not to be equated with Scripture. So much should be obvious. But the prepared Reformed parishioner nevertheless comes to a preached message prepared to encounter the Word of God.”
Getting the Straight Word
“Anybody who wants to discover the real condition of their soul can read through Ecclesiastes and Ephesians, and there he will find the whole thing laid out for him, his heart pinned to a card like a dried beetle in a museum case.”
Your Ethical Superiors
“We live in a time when progressives can sport bumper stickers that will tout the ticket of Shagrat/Slubgob 2024, and still manage to look down on you and your kind as ethical retards.”
Melted Butterscotch
“The people always have an earnest desire to have a messenger who is willing to prophesy smooth things for them (Is. 30:10). ‘Prophesy deceits unto us’—they want deceits, boy, and they want them layered on thick. They want to heap up teachers who will stroke their felt needs (2 Tim. 4:3). If a man of wind comes prophesying wine and beer, he would be just the right spokesman for this people (Mich. 2:11). They want prophets who will speak to them in terms of affirming and melted butterscotch. They want pumpkin spice sermons.”