“You absolutely have to mortify that internal bookkeeper that meticulously counts how many times you invited and how many times you have been invited.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 50
More Than One Obvious Thing
[Regarding Luke 14:13-14] “Jesus here is getting at the heart of how hospitality can go wrong, when it goes wrong. There are obvious limits here—if you have little kids you don’t want to fill up your house with meth addicts—but at the same time we cannot let our understanding of the obvious limits become something that trumps an obvious text.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 49
Greasing the BBs
“Enslaved societies are atomistic, while free societies are molecular. When every individual is a solitary BB, and you dump all the BBs into a sack—we shall call the sack ‘the state’—you find that it has all the solidity of a bean bag chair. At some point it occurs to the powers that be that it would be to their advantage to encourage sexual license, and to legalize pot, which is a move that greases all the BBs. Individuals are in no position effective to resist the encroachments of the state. For that we need Edmund Burke’s little platoons.”
Gashmu Saith It, pp. 45-46
Your Jesus Coat
“So put on Christ (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:47). Put on your Jesus coat. And make sure you put your arms through both sleeves.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 43
Three Ministries
“The family is the ministry of health, education and welfare. The Church is the ministry of grace and peace. The civil magistrate is the ministry of justice. But the (non-institutional) government that supports and makes possible all three of these is self-government.”
Gashmu Saith It, pp. 42-43
Some People’s Emotions are Well-Behaved, That’s All
“We like to describe self-controlled people as ‘unemotional,’ but what we really mean is that their emotions are not half-civilized yard apes on a sugar rush.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 41
Bright Neon
“In a biblical framework, you and all your feelings are like a first-grade teacher taking her whole class to some busy downtown museum, and because she loves them, every last one of them is on a neon-colored leash.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 40
What God is After
“Hard teaching creates tender hearts. Tender teaching creates hard hearts. The jackhammer of the Word breaks up our hard hearts. The feather duster of the Word leaves our hard hearts just where they were.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 38
In the Very Nature of God
“Love and justice are defined from outside the world.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 36
Look More Closely
“Pastors and elders are not allowed to look at their flocks on a distant hillside, as painted by an impressionist at a low point in his game, and while also working with dirty brushes.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 28