“So in this powder key called Jerusalem, what did Jesus do? Did Jesus come in to pour soothing oil on troubled waters? No, He went into the Temple, for crying out loud, and started flipping over tables . . . We call it the cleansing of the Temple, of course, because it is thousands of years in the past, and we read a bronze plaque about it in the Museum of Heroic Bygone Deeds. What would we call it if it had happened last week? Vandalism? Performance art? Prophecy without a permit?”
Jesus Mobs
“Now can we all agree that these crowds, as warmly affectionate toward John the Baptist as they might have been, and as doggedly committed to the honor of the rabbi Jesus as they were, were people who had not taken on board the full import of what the Scriptures had required of them? I mean, had you gone to one of their rallies, who knows what kind of flags might have been there? And did their presence in the mix in any way discredit what Jesus was up to? Not even a little bit.”
Rocks on the Large Side
“Character is hard. Character is built through difficulty. Character grows when you are out in the rain, picking up rocks. But personality grows, or thinks it does, when it is being flattered, stroked, cajoled, and otherwise lied to.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 50
Different Kinds of Hustle
“Character wants to deliver a product; personality wants to get a sale.”
Keep Your Kids, p. 49
Only Two Destinations
“Everyone is growing up into something. No matter what the world says, our life is not static. You are either growing up into Christ, or you are growing up into Gollum—diseased, malicious, and bent. Those are the only options. You can’t just freeze the frame and say, ‘I want to stop right here and be sorry for myself forever.’”
Keep Your Kids, p. 49
Quicktwitch Timidity
“A number of you have been languishing out there for a while, listening to sermons from a man who, if he had been a character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, would have been the Rev. Rabbitheart.”
A Time of Some Excitement
“There I was, I will tell my great-grandchildren, sitting on a skittish horse, hands behind my back, rope around my neck, and a learned academic voice called out from the crowd, ‘Ya! What does someone like you know about Girard?’”
Really Not Possible
“Dad teaches his sons how to hit a ball and gathers his family around after dinner to read to them. Mom teaches her daughters how to make the family-favorite recipes. And yes, I know that the examples I just used are Platonic forms of gender stereotypes, and it would not be possible to tell you how sorry I am.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 47-48
The Insufficiency of Education in Virtue
“Christian virtue needs to grounded on the bedrock of grace. Education in virtue is no substitute for gospel. If all you’re offering your kids is a moral course of instruction, all you’re doing is bringing up Pharisees. You’re raising a household of moralistic prigs. You’re going to get two inches of snow on a dunghill: it looks really pretty, and it photographs well, but it is what it is. Or to use the illustration the great Puritan Thomas Watson once used, you’re treating a broken leg by putting a silk stocking on it. An external conformity to virtuous behavior is not going to cut it. Everything depends upon the new birth.”
Keep Your Kids, pp. 46-47
Blind and Fastidious
“Remember that, right after having committed the crime of all crimes, the murder of the Christ, when Judas came back and returned the thirty pieces of silver, these orderly process-mongers were very concerned about what account to put the money into. They didn’t want to get dinged in the next audit. Ethics are so important.”