“I cannot tell, by examining these parallel liturgies, which tradition contains prayer to graven images. I cannot tell, by examining these liturgies, which ones allow the service to be led by a lesbian minister. In short, by looking at these liturgies, I cannot tell whether God accepts them as ‘acceptable worship’ or not. But whether …
At or Through
“In all the sacred things we are against, we find the same error coming up again and again. Are we using the liturgy as mural or a window? Are we staring at it, or are we looking through it?” (Against the Church, p. 12).
The Unexamined Service Is Not Worth Offering
“Our liturgies shape our faith; our liturgies are a confession of faith, and they are frequently a most unexamined statement of faith. We should be against anything that is shaping us unless we are being taught by Scripture at the same time” (Against the Church, p. 12).
Going Deep
“All who love the church must be against it. If you simply love and promote the church, one of the first things you will lose is the church. This is the very first lesson we need to learn in following Jesus, right? You have to lose things in order to save them” (Against the Church, …
No Mas
“In the meantime, we do not need for the bishop to process up the central aisle like the shiniest and baddest black crow in the gutter. We do not need another message from Doctrine Man with ten rivets in each subpoint. We do not need the worship leader to take us through yet one more …
Doctrine Explains What Happened
“We will of course need doctrine that arises from the Scriptures in order to help us understand what the Spirit just did for us. But if the Spirit didn’t actually do anything, then our systematic theologies are nothing but printed kits for organizing smoke. If the Spirit didn’t do anything, then any religious frenzies, conducted …
And We All Need Jesus
“So we need to come to grips with the fact that in North America, the bride of Christ is a hot mess. We live in a time when the charismatics need the Spirit, the Reformed need a reformation, and the evangelicals need to be born again” (Against the Church, pp. 7-8).
The Ultimate Iconoclast
“God is the ultimate iconoclast, and God told His angels to begin at His sanctuary [Ezek. 9:6-7], and He told them to get in there and defile it” (Against the Church, p. 3).
Tactile Temptations
“The fact that we have mastered the art of identifying idols that we have forged in our minds and hearts does not mean at all that we have repented of forging them out of metals we dug from the ground” (Against the Church, p. 2).
We Still Like the Graven Part
“The modern man, ever since Descartes, has liked making idols out of intellectual abstractions . . . While abstractions make fine idols, it would be a grave mistake to think that modern men are somehow immune from the age-old pitfalls presented by various concrete idolatries. We like candles and graven images almost as much as …