SILENCE: SELF-JUSTIFICATION STOPPER
The tongue is our most powerful weapon of manipulation. A frantic stream of words flows from us because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image. We fear so deeply what we think other people see in us that we talk in order to straighten out their understanding. If I have done some wrong thing (or even some right thing that I think you may misunderstand) and discover that you know about it, I will be very tempted to help you understand my action! Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification.
One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don't need to straighten others out.
Richard J. Foster in "Seeking the Kingdom"
BLESSED ARE THE RESTRAINED
We might have much peace if we would not meddle with other people's sayings and doings….Blessed be the true, simple, and humble people, for they shall have a great plenitude of peace.
Thomas a Kempis in "The Imitation of Christ"
RUDE INTOLERANCE
Religious tolerance is not always a sign of good will. It can be a sign of careless, perhaps hypocritical religious indifference of the most high-handed philosophic relativism. It can also be a mask behind which to hide downright malice. During the Nazi era, for example, arguments for Christian openness to other perspectives were used by German Christians in an attempt to neuter the church's protest against the neopaganism of Hitler and his minions. The Confessing Church in Germany found in [John 10] a theological basis to stand against Hitler. There are times in which the only way to keep alive the nonvindictive, nonjudgmental, self-sacrificing witness of Jesus Christ is to stand with rude dogmatism on the rock that is Jesus Christ, condemning all compromise as the work of the Antichrist.
Ronald Goetz in "Exclusivistic Universality" (Christian Century, April 21, 1993)
REAL INTEGRITY
Integrity is like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody knows what to do about it….Integrity entails not only a discernment of the right action but a willingness to act on one's conclusions.
Stephen L. Carter in "Integrity"
FIXING THE ROAD
If we are to better the future we must disturb the present.
Catherine Booth in "The Life of Catherine Booth" (Vol. 2)
NO CHURCH WITHOUT CHRIST
The Church of God apart from the Person of Christ is a useless structure. However ornate it may be in its organization, however perfect in all its arrangements, however rich and increased with goods, if the Church is not revealing the Person, lifting Him to the height where all men can see Him, then the Church becomes an impertinence and a sham, a blasphemy and a fraud, and the sooner the world is rid of it, the better.
G. Campbell Morgan in "Giant Steps"
THE RIGHT MIX
Afflictions are sweet preservatives to keep the saints from sin.
Thomas Brooks in "Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices"
IMAGING THE ARTIST
A Christian, above all people, should live artistically, aesthetically, and creatively. We are supposed to be representing the Creator who is there, and whom we acknowledge to be there. It is true that all people are created in the image of God, but Christians are supposed to be conscious of that fact, and being conscious of it should recognize the importance of living artistically, aesthetically, and creatively, as creative creatures of the Creator. If we have been created in the image of an Artist, then we should look for expressions of artistry, and be sensitive to beauty, responsive to what has been created for our appreciaton.
Edith Schaeffer in "The Art of Life"
CONTINUITY COUNTS
When we wonder why the language of traditional Christianity has lost its liberating power for nuclear man, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that man sees himself as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man's historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip.
Henri Nouwen in "The Wounded Healer"
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