“The leaven works through the loaf slowly. The mustard seed grows slowly. The living water from Ezekiel’s temple gets gradually deeper. But when doctrinaire Christians get power, one of their temptations is that they want to impose their whole system, down to the jots and tittles. We must refrain from doing this not because truth …
Parasites and Progress
“Anachronistic and self-serving claim-jumping is what [the Enlightenment] does best” (Empires of Dirt, p. 141).
A Feature, Not a Bug
“When I made my peace with infant baptism about twenty-five years ago, I knew I had to find a way to account for the presence of baptized infidelity and, kicking it up a notch, baptized wickedness. You sometimes get those things, and you have to have a theological framework for dealing with them beforehand, one …
Inexorable Hope
“Your great-great-grandchildren will live in a world that will be that much closer to the time when the leaves for the healing of the nations will be in the actual possession of every nation” (Empires of Dirt, p. 138).
Not to Mention the Size of His Forehead
“David knew the size and power of Goliath as well as anyone” (Empires of Dirt, p. 138).
And Behold, It Was Very Good
“When you don’t know where you are going, you can always make good time. When survival is the only prize at the end of the process, evolution could end with a world full of three-foot-long cockroaches, and we would be forced to call it good” (Empires of Dirt, p. 136).
The Last Things First
“One of the things we must come to grips with is the fact that eschatology precedes everything. The last things come first, just like Jesus said. So the first thing we need to get hold of is the idea that the whole discussion is a matter of interpretative ideas in conflict, not an interpretive idea …
We Either Gather or Scatter
“If the Church is not transforming the culture around her, then the culture around her is transforming the Church. There is no static equilibrium point” (Empires of Dirt, p. 133).
And Without Occupational Training
“After that unfortunate Cana incident, [Prohibition] was a law that would have gotten Jesus hauled before the authorities three years before He actually was. Not only did He manufacture about a hundred and sixty gallons of the stuff, He did so without a license” (Empires of Dirt, p. 132).
One and Many
“The hierarchies are ranked differently—they are not all the same. The Lord wants about half of his children to be husbands and the other half to be wives. He wants some to love classical music and others to love music from the Delta. He wants them all to hate abortion and child porn. He wants …