Tag: Chrestomathy

“Adam could not exercise dominion over a hedge without tools, and God told him to exercise dominion over the whole globe and all the animals in it. To exercise dominion over the fish of the sea, I am pretty sure a boat would have been needed” (Ploductivity, p. 27).

“One of the things we need to remember when it comes to church architecture is that a building is corporate clothing. A building is how the whole church dresses. The trick is how to dress up without playing dress ups.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 35

Paul “does not say that being rich is like having cooties, and that they should be trying to pass their cooties off to somebody else. As I say, he doesn’t teach that.”

Ploductivity, p. 24

“We already know that tormented and driven men can do an awful lot. When we look at the accomplishments of many men, we can almost see the lash behind them. But what can free men and free women do? What can gratitude accomplish?”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 30

“The arrogant human heart is the source of the sin concerning wealth, and the arrogant human heart sins this way in the proximity of wealth. Wealth is not the locus of the sin, but the presence of the wealth is the locus of the temptation. Just as a beautiful woman is not the cause of lust, but merely the occasion for it, so also the presence of wealth is not the cause of self-sufficiency. But we see, over and again from Genesis to Revelation, that wealth provides the occasion for the sin of self-sufficiency. As Cotton Mather once put it, ‘Faithfulness begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.’”

Ploductivity, p. 23

“God hates a particular kind of incongruity with a passion. He detests the notion that we can create a liturgy, or a worship service, or a tall steeple, that somehow masks or deals with sin. But if such things could deal with sin, then Jesus didn’t have to die.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 29

“In this fallen world, wealth does have a bias toward self-sufficiency rather than dependence on God. But this is not something the wealth does to us, but rather something we do with the wealth.”

Ploductivity, p. 21

“We were created for work, and we were created for work in an astoundingly fruitful world.”

Ploductivity, p. 20

“Remember that proverbs are proverbs, and that they do not give us truths about triangles having three sides.”

Ploductivity, p. 19

“When you have a mind to work, the lack of resources is a detail. When you don’t have a mind to work, the most trivial obstacle can turn you aside from the way.”

Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 27