“The Creator of all is not an impersonal force, and the creation reflects that. The biblical view of the cosmos is not the one of modernity—infinite depths of lifeless space punctuated by dead rock, or chaotic fire.”
Forgotten Heavens, p. viii
And So Has to be Much More Careful With That Exegesis
“On some issues, the theological liberal is better able to state what the teaching of the Bible is. This is because he is able to say, for example, the apostle Paul thought this way, and wasn’t it quaint? The evangelical, on the other hand, is required to believe whatever Paul taught in the Scriptures; the conservative is stuck with the results of his exegesis”
Forgotten Heavens, p. vii
And Credible Everywhere
“It is in Him that we live and move and have our being. God is the Lover, Jesus is the Beloved, and the Love between them is the Spirit. It is in the Triune Love that we live and move and have our being. This means that love is relevant everywhere.”
Extending Your Reach
“If you do not know how to be patient in the face of repeated provocations, your children are not going to know either. When you discipline your children correctly, you are loving your grandchildren.”
An Eye on the Future
“But your task is not to teach the child how to be a child—the child already knows how to be a child. You are not teaching your children to be children. You are teaching your children to grow into adults.”
The Real Lesson
“Imagine a basic showdown scenario: suppose a toddler is standing at the coffee table right across from you and repeatedly wants to mess with the vase. Suppose further that the toddler has just gotten mobile and you have not childproofed the house yet, and they keep wanting to touch the vase. Too often, parents think that the lesson is entitled ‘How not to mess with vases,’ when the actual lesson is called “How not to get exasperated with other people.’
Manners That Matter
“The child has bad manners, sure enough, and his father told him not to have those bad manners. But why does he have bad manners at the table? Because his father does. Snapping at your children at the dinner table is much worse than playing with your potatoes with a knife.”
Honest Imitation and the Other Kind
“When we try to preserve our originality by being as unique and cool as possible, what is actually going on is that we are copying other people with sidelong glances and we are unable to admit to ourselves that that is what we are doing”
No Robotic Saints
“The more like Jesus you are, the more like yourself you are going to be. The less like Jesus you are, the more monotonous and predictable it’s going to be. Sin is monotonous. Godliness is not.”
No Other Way
“There are, of course, two types of imitation. True progress and godliness is something that develops through imitation, but because human beings are necessarily imitators, the same thing is true of ungodliness”