“Generalizations are legitimate if they honestly describe an overall pattern. Generalizations are consequently not refuted through particular and individual counter examples. Honest Pharisees lived at the time of Christ, and they were not an embarrassment to Christ’s scathing denunciations of their religious sect as a whole. Indeed one indication of a Pharisee’s honesty would be …
Corruption and Stewardship
“Rarely will followers of Christ set overt corruption as their goal; rather, they want to be conservative, consolidate gains, learn fiscal realism, and be ‘good stewards.’ Of course, nothing is wrong with good stewardship — other than the fact that is a phrase which frequently stands in for bad stewardship” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. …
Surrendering Slowly Is Not Fighting
“This is the same phenomenon which caused one wit to observe that if the liberals in our Congress were to introduce a bill to burn down the Capitol, the conservatives would counter with a bill to phase the project in over the course of three years. When one group wants to drive us over a …
Prevailing Winds at the Back
“A certain type of man is always able to trim his sails to suit the prevailing winds, and he takes pride in the fact that he is adept at it. He does not know where he is going, but he is making good time” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. 169).
Extreme Obedience?
“It is not really possible to love God too much. It is not possible to take his Word to extremes, because His Word prohibits that use of it. If a man is careful to keep his conduct, motives, attitudes, and manner within the boundaries set by Scripture, how could we object to him without objecting …
Half Way There and Face Down
“Half measures generally fall down half way” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. 158).
Staying Raveled
“God must be understood to be fully God. Otherwise, everything sound in religion unravels” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. 151).
Protesting Catholics
“Many modern readers of history fail to see the catholicity of the Reformation. In no way did the reformers desire to found ‘a denomination’ in the modern sense; rather, they desired the reformation of the one Church. They were one party within the Church; the other party was the papal faction” (For Kirk and Covenant, …
Obedience a Two-Way Street
“It is easy to have strong views on the subject of authority, but these usually come up when we are considering how someone else ought to be obeying us. When we turn to consider those that we should be obeying, our ardor sometimes dims” (For Kirk and Covenant, p. 129).
Humorless Reformers
“Few things are more terrible in human society than the humorless reformer . . . a man who cannot see what he most needs to see, which his own contribution to the problem. In this vain and fallen world, a man who cannot laugh has no business undertaking to cure the world’s ills, because he …