Difficult? Impossible!
I keep telling Shirley MacLaine, “You can’t go around telling people you are God.” It’s a very difficult concept to accept.
—Oprah Winfrey in the New York Times Magazine (June 11, 1989)
A No-Compromise Issue
If our language has appeared to some strong and severe, or even intemperate, let the gentlemen pause for a moment and reflect on the importance and gravity of the subject.… We had to deal with human life. In a matter of less importance we could entertain no compromise.
—The American Medical Association, 1871, in a report opposing abortion. Quoted in Marvin Olasky’s The Press and Abortion, 1838–1988
Elusive Goodness
Except in times of war or illness, moral awakening is as hard to come by as a winning number in the New Jersey lottery.
—Lewis H. Lapham in Money and Class in America
Reaching For The Moon
High expectations are easily stated, may be rationalized as evidence of superior spirituality, and drive most leaders nuts. It takes genuine skill and insight by an institution to set reasonable expectations. There are not enough spell-binding preachers in the world to get every congregation excited every Sunday. Likewise, there are not enough articulate profs to make every basic class an exciting brush with the hidden mysteries of the universe. There are not enough Miss Americas to fulfill every Dogpatch yokel’s expectant dreams for marriage, or enough of anything to please everybody. No wonder God is so patient with the mediocre most of us; he made so many of us! and he can get his job done, too, if we let him!
—Lloyd H. Ahlem in The Covenant Companion (June 1987)
When a simple majority won’t do
Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together, their purpose is not—or should not be—to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit—something which may be quite different.
—English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the
Saturday Evening Post (July/August 1989)
Stretched To Hit The Mark
A saint’s life is in the hands of God as a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see; He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says, “I cannot stand any more.” But God does not heed; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly.
—Oswald Chambers in The Love of God
This Is Progress?
Traveling from Paris to Boston made me sharply aware of the contrast between the great advancements in technology and the primitive quality of human relationships. While the most sophisticated machinery brought me in one hour from Paris to London and in six hours from London to Boston, the whole trip was clouded by security concerns.… Seemingly, the more advanced the methods of transportation, the less safe it is to be transported!
—Henri Nouwen in the New Oxford Review (June 1987)
Gone, But Not Forgotten
Grief refuses to flee the past just because it is gone and things have now changed.
—John C. Raines in the Christian Century (Oct. 15, 1986)
Remaking God In Our Image
Our society has taken Jesus and recreated him in our own cultural image. When I hear Jesus being proclaimed from the television stations across our country, from pulpits hither and yon, he comes across not as the biblical Jesus, not as the Jesus described in the Bible, but as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Republican.… God created us in his image, but we have decided to return the favor and create a God who is in our image.
—Tony Campolo in U (April/May 1988)
