“The law must slay me before I can understand it. But the same thing is true of the Gospel.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 295
Who Holds the Knife?
“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
Except for That
“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+
Compensatory Crusades
“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
Why Are Things Moving?
“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
Under D
“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
A New World Outside
“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
Just LIke That
“The God who spoke light out of darkness, with the darkness helpless to do anything about it, also spoke light into the darkness of our hearts.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 284
Tyranny All Round
“For some reason, no one wants to admit that the grace of the new birth is irresistible. But our first births are just as irresistible, and virtually no one complains about that. I was born in 1953, and I do not recall ever being consulted in 1952 about whether I wanted to be born or not. Life was simply thrust upon me, somewhat violently they tell me, and first thing I knew, I was playing with toy trucks on the floor of this family’s living room. The name was Wilson, they said, and the prison door clanged shut. That whole business was irresistible—it makes your skin crawl to think of it. I was now somebody’s brother, not someone’s sister, and I hadn’t been asked about my preferences there, either. I was an American, not an Englishman. I was a Wilson, not a Williams or Smith. In short, there was a good bit of tyranny all around.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 282
When the Reports Are Never Cheery
“Imagine going into a hospital for the soul and inviting them to run every test imaginable—spiritual blood work, MRIs, X-rays, the works. Imagine further that omni-competent angelic technicians are running the show, recalling that the law was delivered to us through angels. This is what the law of God does. It detects everything—the slightest stirring of lust, the first few cancer cells of envy, the leprosy of vainglory, the pustules of pride, which we think are beauty marks. And the report always comes back to us in the words of God to Abimelech: ‘Behold, you are a dead man’ (Gen. 20:3, NASB).”
The Cultural Mind, p. 278