“Your Spirit can move as He always has.
Why don’t You come down—show up and show off?
Throw them all down and all their devices.
And with the left hand of Your cruciform power?”
21 Prayers, p. 105
Mild or Orgiastic
“The choice between secular options on the right is like a competition between a gentlemanly Epicurean and a rowdy one. The former walks at dawn in a manicured flower garden, contemplating chess moves and Rawlsian political theory, while the latter is more interested in crack cocaine and hoochie mamas. Without an overarching standard governing the two of them, we are simply comparing a longer life of nobler, milder pleasures, and a shorter life consisting of a blowout filled with orgiastic ones. But when we have to choose on those grounds, it is simply a matter of personal preference.”
Privileges Are Not the Same Thing
“The secular state dispenses freedoms (it would be better to call them privileges) like they were party favors. They function as bribes. They serve as . . . bread . . . or circuses. As Chesterton points out somewhere, sexual license is the first and most obvious bribe to be offered to a slave. For many in our era, that was the bribe that ushered them into their bondage to the state.”
Mere Christendom, p. 9
The Straight Path
“Why would You spend so much of Your wisdom
Constructing the road that winds up to You
If You did not desire that we would then take it?
If Christ is the road, then can we not come?
Why call us if You did not want us to come?
Why would You choose to make the way straight
If You did not wish us to take the straight way?”
21 Prayers, p. 104
One Name Given
“We lift Christ up to You so that in our turn
We too might be lifted, raised up to You.
We approach You through Christ and in no other way.”
21 Prayers, p. 101
Of Necessity
“If there is no God above the state, then the state has become god—the point past which there is no appeal.”
Mere Christendom, p. 5
Works Both Ways
“The liberties of the individual are too precious to be left in the hands of a civic agnosticism. To not know why you are extending liberties to the citizenry is to not know why you would be doing anything bad if you took them all away.”
Mere Christendom, p. 5
Quite Obviously
“I ask that Your Spirit would move in clear ways
That were obviously never ginned up by us.”
21 Prayers, p. 101
Dried Walnut Hearts
“I ask that Christ would now live in our mouths,
Inhabiting our hearts, and dwell in our lives.
I ask You to break up our little dried walnut hearts
And sweep up the pieces to throw them away.”
21 Prayers, p. 98
Christian Guardrails
“In order for genuine liberty to be extend to non-Christians, it is essential that non-Christians not be allowed to define genuine liberty. The blind should not lead the blind, as someone once taught us . . . If Jesus is Lord, the liberty of those who don’t believe in Him are far more secure than the liberties of everybody in the hands of a Caesar who answers to no one above him.”