Theology That Bites Back
“Afflicted with pretty much everything the modern church is certainly looking around for remedies. But where and how we look for these remedies remains a function of what ails us, and we are not yet desperate enough to ask for directions to the divine pharmacy.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 59
“The average Christian bookstore, which reflects accurately what we are about, is an abundant cornucopia of bushwah.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 57
“In the meantime, modernity, that once proud heresy, has visibly started to topple. Postmodernists are running around gleefully, just like looters after an earthquake in a great city, but postmodernity’s self-confessed parasitic relativism means that it has a cultural staying power which can be measured in weeks. After the looted Twinkies® run out, everyone will be hungry again.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 56
“The evangelical world is still sitting under modernity’s table, eager for any crumbs that may fall our way. The big news down here is when some rock star or other intimates that it is possible that, under certain conditions, he might believe in a divine being other than himself, we snatch it up eagerly and feast for weeks.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 55
“When Christ speaks to the churches, the double-edge sword comes out of His mouth, and His ministers are held in His right hand as He preaches. This is what gospel authority means. Jesus speaks the Word while He holds the men speaking it.”
“A revival of formal worship filled with doctrine, laughter, glory, and light would be the first step to a remarkable transformation of the nation.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 54
“When we open our Bibles to read the Word of God, or attend worship in order to hear it declared, we should feel like we are standing on a rocky beach near the base of Niagara Falls. God’s Word fills all the available space.”
“Formal worship does not create a secular/sacred distinction; it obliterates it. I give one day in seven because all seven are His. I give ten percent because one hundred percent is His.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 53
“We think that it is a virtue to tolerate, forgetting that the Lord Jesus rebuked a church for tolerating that woman Jezebel. Everything hinges on what we are tolerating, and our global love for smooth words indicates that what we are mostly tolerating is our own hardness of heart.”
The Cultural Mind, p. 49
“If our hearts were a slab of concrete, and we wanted to keep them that way, our desire to have them caressed with a feather duster would exhibit no love of tenderness, but rather the contrary. The one who really wanted a tender heart would be calling for the jackhammer. Hard words, hard teaching, are the jackhammer of God . . . When Christians call for smooth words, easy words, the result is hard people. When we submit to hard words, we become the tenderhearted of God.”
The Cultural Mind, pp. 47-48
