Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from June 18, 1990

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Comfort Zones

The church knows it must not violate this world’s comfort standards and expect to have attendees. See our fabrics, settle into our cushions, and feel our conditioned air: Even in church we want it easy. Like movie houses, we will pad our seats, glitz our lighting, modulate our reverbs, and say, “Come to Christ and go on our ski retreat.…”

Our huge temples of evangelical success may only be, as Vance Havner once said, million dollar launching pads that send up firecrackers.

—Calvin Miller in Moody

Monthly (Jan. 1990)

Events Of Providence

[A]s somebody said, … “Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

—G. Peter Fleck in The Blessings

of Imperfection

Nothing Worth Saying

Lawrence Christon sees [an] end-of-the-decade mean mood in films like The War of the Roses and Do the Right Thing. He uses media as his main medium. “The technology of our age of miracles and wonder included the CD, PC, microwave oven, computer workplace, fax, cellular phone, aerodynamic auto design, computerized ticket sales, satellite communications, the handheld videotape recorder, the Panther movie camera, colorization, the lithium-based battery, ethanol and the Mavica camera.” Then, … “All these modes of communication with so little to communicate.”

—Quoted by Martin Marty in

Context (Mar. 1, 1990)

God In Our Image

In the classic Your God Is Too Small, J. B. Phillips says we tend to give God many names which aren’t actually his names: managing director, puppeteer, magician, resident policeman, fun-hater, pie-in-the-sky, and others. Today we have added “health and wealth bringer” and others.

—Katie Wiebe in the Christian

Leader (Dec. 6, 1989)

God And The “Me” Generation

[Rabbi Harold] Kushner’s book [When Bad Things Happen to Good People] was a best seller not only because it is so well written, but also because it caters to a narcissistic age. For us, any suffering, confusion or tragedy is patently unfair and undeserved because we stopped trusting a God whose presence makes suffering, confusion and tragedy bearable.

—William H. Willimon in the

Christian Century (Feb. 22, 1989)

One Needs The Other

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I cannot forgive.”

—Henry Ward Beecher in

Life Thoughts

Running In Circles

I once read the following definition of a fanatic: “A fanatic is a person who, having lost sight of his goal, redoubles his effort to get there.” The fanatic runs around frantically getting nowhere. He is a basketball player without a basket, a tennis player without a net, a golfer without a green.

For a Christian to make progress in … learning to please God, he must have a clear idea of what his goal is.… Jesus stated it this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

—R. C. Sprout in Pleasing God

Validating sign

When a religion is good, I believe it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I am sure, of its being a bad one.

—Benjamin Franklin, quoted by

Richard Pierard in an unpublished paper, “Democracy and the Separation of Religion and Government”