Theology That Bites Back
“Simplicity is beautiful when it is elegant. Complexity is beautiful when it is understated. The lines should be clean, not cluttered . . . Compare what we are going to do architecturally and liturgically with what a godly women should do to adorn herself. She should adorn herself, and she should make herself beautiful. But the Bible is explicit that this is not to be done by bedizening oneself with various spangles.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 43
“When God breathed the breath of life into Adam, and Adam first sat up, he did so with two opposable thumbs. And he used one of those thumbs when he chucked his first rock into the first pool he came to.”
Ploductivity, p. 30
“Both with architecture and with liturgy, there are some who assume that if one’s good, two must be better. The liturgy gets cluttered up with bright colors and shiny objects, and the architecture of the church looks, at the end of this process, like a gingerbread architect on acid did the whole thing.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 41
“In order to evaluate a tool, we have to account for the telos, the end, the purpose. Hammers are used to build both brothels and barns.”
Ploductivity, p. 29
“The last thing in the world we want is to complete the steeple, and find out that the sign outside says Nehushtan Memorial.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 37
“One of the things we need to remember when it comes to church architecture is that a building is corporate clothing. A building is how the whole church dresses. The trick is how to dress up without playing dress ups.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 35
Paul “does not say that being rich is like having cooties, and that they should be trying to pass their cooties off to somebody else. As I say, he doesn’t teach that.”
Ploductivity, p. 24
“We already know that tormented and driven men can do an awful lot. When we look at the accomplishments of many men, we can almost see the lash behind them. But what can free men and free women do? What can gratitude accomplish?”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 30
“The arrogant human heart is the source of the sin concerning wealth, and the arrogant human heart sins this way in the proximity of wealth. Wealth is not the locus of the sin, but the presence of the wealth is the locus of the temptation. Just as a beautiful woman is not the cause of lust, but merely the occasion for it, so also the presence of wealth is not the cause of self-sufficiency. But we see, over and again from Genesis to Revelation, that wealth provides the occasion for the sin of self-sufficiency. As Cotton Mather once put it, ‘Faithfulness begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.’”
Ploductivity, p. 23
