Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from September 10, 1990

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Basic Satanism

Selfishness and immorality are far more consistent with Satan’s strategies than drinking blood or drawing pentagrams.

—Al Menconi in Today’s Music: A Window to Your Child’s Soul

Faith Without Passion

Very few of us [Christians] could say with Paul’s conviction, “For me to live is Christ.” If we experienced this as a transforming joy, a life-bearing truth, we would not be so generally passive about it.

—John Garvey, quoted by Martin Marty in Context (May 1, 1990)

A Prayer

Thou who mad’st the mighty clock

Of the great world go;

Mad’st its pendulum swing and rock,

Ceaseless to and fro;

Thou whose will doth push and draw

Every orb in heaven,

Help me move by higher law

In my spirit graven.

Like a planet let me swing—

With intention strong;

In my orbit rushing sing Jubilant along;

Help me answer in my course

To my seasons due;

Lord of every stayless force,

Make my Willing true.

—George MacDonald, from Discovering the Character of God (compiled by Michael R. Phillips)

No End To Growth

The landscape gardener looked surprised. “Will you say that again, ma’am?”

The lady-of-the-house waved a hand to include the several-acre woodland she was having landscaped. “I want a picture of how it will all look when it’s finished—fish pond and rose garden included. Could it look like this sketch in Better Homes and Gardens?”

“Hard to say, you know,” the man said.… We’re dealing here with living things. I can show you a pattern, I guess, but these things grow. Okay? So you’re going to have to keep on planting, cultivating, and trimming. Who’s to say what it will look like some day? It’s just never going to get finished growing!” …

“I had no idea I was hiring a philosopher,” [my friend] said over coffee.

“But that little speech reminded me that growth doesn’t stop when we reach our full height.”

—Julie Masters Bacher in The Quiet Heart

To obey is better than sacrifice

The utter obedience required in the military is accepted as necessary, even when one’s life may be the price of that obedience. Why does the Christian fail to practice the same obedience in spiritual matters?

—Allan C. Emery, Jr., in A Turtle on a Fencepost

In Search Of The Thinking Christian

The church can’t be blamed for all the ailments of the world. On the other hand, I’m quite willing to concede and insist that the church has unnecessarily accommodated a failure of cognitive analysis. For the past half generation evangelical churches have gravitated toward the experiential and even the emotional at the expense of the intellectual.

—Carl F. H. Henry in Tabletalk (January 1990)

Getting Our Hands Dirty

We are the agents of the Creative Spirit in this world. Real advance in the spiritual life, then, means accepting this vocation with all it involves. Not merely turning over the pages of an engineering magazine and enjoying the pictures, but putting on overalls and getting on with the job. The real spiritual life must be horizontal as well as vertical.

—Evelyn Underhill in

The Spiritual Life