Theology That Bites Back
“Fathers, your highest parental priority is to manage and maintain a climate of true fellowship in your home. You’re in charge of the thermostat. Too often, dads are just the thermometer, thinking to themselves, ‘It sure is hot in here.’ But fathers are called to control the temperature of their household.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 88-89
“When Jesus assumed human nature, He did so first as a single cell. The eternal Word of the eternal Father, the who spoke the heavens and earth into existence, took on a body that was the size of the period at the end of this sentence.”
“Too many Christian parents, because they’ve got their shoes laced way too tight and because they want to be good, conservative, Bible-believing, Reformed types, give their kids a garden of no with the occasional, intermittent, and very reluctant ‘Yeah, okay, I guess so this time. Don’t let it go to your head.’ That is not how God is. And since we are supposed to imitate our Father in heaven, we are supposed to be openhanded.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 87
“Though we call it a silent night, this suckling child was actually the deafening shout of God’s defiance. The principalities and powers, the thrones and dominations, were all going to come to nothing.”
“But the secret of the gospel is that grace works better than works do . . . Works are frustrating and impotent. Works collapse under any weight you try to put on them. That’s the issue. Works don’t work. But grace liberates. Grace sets you free to work.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 85
“The time to train your kids is when they’re kids.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 84
“We need to be done with leaders who want to be like Jesus, only not so bloody.”
“Biblical masculinity is cultural gluten. Without it the cookie just crumbles to pieces in your hand, and is tasteless on top of that. Or someone at the organic equivalent of DuPont comes up with an artificial bonding agent that either doesn’t work or turns the cookie into an all-natural shower tile.”
“Biblical child-rearing is a gigantic custody battle between the state and Christ.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 80
“In such a movie, a petite woman can throw five 300-pound guys around like they were made of balsa wood. All she has to do is have the director on her side. But that’s not the way it works in the real world. If your daughter buys into it, at some point she is going to be thirty-eight, owner of her own company, very lonely, and wondering where all the good men have gone. It turns out they didn’t want to be married to a girl boss.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 78
