Addiction, Not Commitment
Many Christians are only “Christaholics” and not disciples at all. Disciples are cross-bearers; they seek Christ. Christaholics seek happiness. Disciples dare to discipline themselves, and the demands they place on themselves leave them enjoying the happiness of their growth. Christaholics are escapists looking for a shortcut to nirvana. Like drug addicts, they are trying to “bomb out” of their depressing world.
There is no automatic joy. Christ is not a happiness capsule; he is the way to the Father. But the way to the Father is not a carnival ride in which we sit and do nothing while we are whisked through various spiritual sensations.
—Calvin Miller in The Taste of Joy
Dangerous Terror
As long as the devil can keep us terrified of thinking, he will always limit the work of God in our souls.
—Oswald Chambers in If Thou Wilt Be Perfect
No Heart Trouble Here
By blood and origin, I am all Albanian. My citizenship is Indian. I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the whole world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to Jesus.
—Mother Teresa, quoted by Ruth A. Tucker in Guardians of the Great Commission
When Language Shapes Actions
I sense that we are allowing business terms to creep into our language.… I am convinced that because language shapes our thinking and actions, we change the nature of the church and its leadership if we substitute business language for “body” language. An organism quickly becomes an organization if it is thought about that way.
—Katie Funk Wiebe in the Christian Leader (Aug. 1989)
Too Familiar?
I think the “low” church milieu that I grew up in did tend to be too cosily at ease in Zion. My grandfather, I’m told, used to say that he “looked forward to having some very interesting conversations with St. Paul when he got to heaven.” Two clerical gentlemen talking at ease in a club! It never seemed to cross his mind that an encounter with St. Paul might be rather an overwhelming experience even for an Evangelical clergyman of good family. But when Dante saw the great apostles in heaven they affected him like mountains. There’s lots to be said against devotions to saints; but at least they keep on reminding us that we are very small people compared with them. How much smaller before their Master?
—C. S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
Who Owes The Tax?
Some build up kingdoms on earth; others in heaven. And the IRS watches over us all.
—Rheta Grimsley Johnson in her syndicated column; Indianapolis News (Sept. 28, 1989)
Premature Perfection
A man in conversation with John Wesley once made the comment, “I never forgive.” Wesley wisely replied, “Then, sir, I hope that you never sin.”
—Quoted by Ron Klassen in the Christian Leader (Sept. 12, 1989)
Little Nourishment In Cud Chewing
Nowadays America seems afflicted with hardening of the arteries. How else explain this senescent preoccupation with the largely meaningless detritus of the past? This morbid interest in the long ago is reflected in the steady stream of anniversary stories with which the press routinely stuffs us.…
All this looking back is the characteristic of a country in old age. We have in the past quarter-century started treating the past as cud, chewing and re-chewing it. Not that it nourishes us much, except in amusement and melancholy. If fact, we have re-chewed the history of World War II so exhaustively that, as Paul Fussell says in his new book, Wartime, we have turned its horror into jolly good fun.
Young people look ahead to Saturday night. Anniversaries go with nodding by the fire.
—Russell Baker in his syndicated column of September 2, 1989
Most Important Job
The task of pastoral ministry is, above all else, to arrange the contingencies for an encounter with the Divine.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Spiritual Care
The Me Generation
It is the continual assertion of individuality that hinders our spiritual development more than anything else; individuality must go in order that personality may emerge and be brought into fellowship with God.
—Oswald Chambers in Biblical Ethics
