Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from August 20, 1990

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Righteousness Exalts A Nation

Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

—Thomas Jefferson in Notes on Virginia; Manners

Getting Beyond Discussion

Let us cease arguing about the existence of demons and concern ourselves with what the demons are actually doing.

—Donald Bloesch in Theological

Notebook (Vol. 1)

The Word That Enriches

Abraham Lincoln did not have the education to read the King James Bible when he started doing so, and its language wasn’t the language he and his neighbors used. But he pushed in a direction opposite from the one we are tempted to take today: he got his education from the Authorized Version. None of us is educated enough to read and understand the Bible. What a presumption it is to think that we are, or that we should bring its language any more than its ideas (if they could be separated) down to our educational level!… [B]ecause Abraham Lincoln did not have [a] Bible paraphrase, we have “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right …”

—Kent Gramm in The Christian

Century (Mar. 23–30, 1988)

We Need Good Sight To Avoid Being Fall Guys

Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for, because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.

—Peter Marshall in Mr. Jones, Meet the Master

Wrong Credit

God if He be good, is not the author of all things, but of a few things only, and not of most things that occur to a man.

—Plato in The Republic

Freedom Gone Wrong

Self-fulfillment soon grows into a quest for self-indulgence with a vocabulary of I, Me, Mine and self-indulgence, in turn, soon becomes unbridled. The self-indulgent pursuit of pleasure embraces tolerance of homosexuality, addiction to eroticism, addiction to drugs and alcohol, habitual divorce, vandalism and lawlessness. Thus liberty becomes libertinism. It is a dictatorship of permissiveness which enslaves its citizens, a dictatorship whose decrees are endlessly purveyed by the media.

—Kitty Muggeridge in

Gazing on Truth

Away With Gossip

I once formed a mutual encouragement fellowship at a time of stress in one of my pastorates. The members subscribed to a simple formula applied before speaking of any person or subject that was perhaps controversial.

T—Is it true?

H—Is it helpful?

I—Is it inspiring?

N—Is it necessary?

K—Is it kind?

If what I am about to say does not pass those tests, I will keep my mouth shut! And it worked!

—Alan Redpath in A Passion

for Preaching

Life In The Ordinary

The culture conditions us to approach people and situations as journalists do: see the big, exploit the crisis, edit and abridge the commonplace, interview the glamorous. The Scriptures and our best pastoral traditions train us in a different approach: notice the small, persevere in the commonplace, appreciate the obscure.

—Eugene H. Peterson in

LEADERSHIP journal

(Winter, 1986)

Life Is Fleeting

The time God allots to each one of us is like a precious tissue which we embroider as we best know how.

—Anatole France in The Crime

of Sylvestre Bonnard

The Fickle Crowd

Oliver Cromwell, who took the British throne away from Charles I and established the Commonwealth, said to a friend, “Do not trust to the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.” Cromwell understood crowd psychology!

—Warren W. Wiersbe in

Be Satisfied

So Much Dirt

I was riding along a highway the other day and saw a sign, “Dirt for sale.” I said, “They ought to hang that over every rack of paperbound books in the drugstores of America.” Not since Manhattan Island was sold for $24 has there been so much dirt available for so little money as now.

—Vance Havner in On

This Rock I Stand

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