“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
Flee That Temptation
“This message of the cross lies at the center of our existence, and there are enough antibodies there to fight off every form of a creeping carnal respectability.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 23
Words and Wounds
“Preaching Christ means preaching both His words and His wounds. You cannot preach the cross, which is a scandal, without scandal. There is no such thing as sanitized gospel faithfulness. It doesn’t exist, and never has.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 22
Not Even a Little
“When David went out to face Goliath, he was not looking for a dialogue partner.”
Gashmu Saith It, p. 21
Dead Prophets Are Apparently an Improvement
“Jesus pointed out that after prophets are dead and gone, their reputations start to improve. This is because the only manageable prophet is a dead prophet. And if enough time passes, the ungodly start to build memorials to the deceased godly, lining it all with marble (Matt. 23:29). But whenever a living Christian leader comes back from a hot engagement at the front, with a couple of arrows through his hat, the careful me are quite willing to offer their critiques. ‘It would have been far better had you remembered to . . .’”
Gashmu Saith It, pp. 17-18
The Wrong Kind of Good Testimony
[Concerning Luke 6:26-28] “Jesus teaches that when we finally have that ‘good testimony’ we have been striving for, we ought immediately to see a red danger light blinking on the dashboard of our sanctification center. Something has gone terribly wrong.”
Gashmu Saith It, pp. 14-15
Including the Container Labeled Skepticism
“The problem with this scoffer is that his attitude is a universal corrosive, and eats out every container you might try to keep it in.”
The Light From Behind the Sun, p. 191