God knows what He's doing...

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."
-James 4:13-15

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.
-Proverbs 19:21

The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.
-Proverbs 16:9

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
-Jeremiah 29:11

Jesus and Politics

If we were to remove all of the biblical teaching on caring for the marginalized and the significance of social justice, we would be left with a rather slim book. If we took away the role of stewardship of creation and of cultivating natural resources, Adam and Eve would have been left with very little to do in the Garden. It would be too easy to simply identify Jesus with a political party, to simply put him on the left or on the right. The ethic of the new community demands humble participation, maybe even realizing that the solutions to complex social issues and problems transcends party platforms. The ethic of the new community may demand that - like all things for its members - we recognize that we now see dimly, and not so clearly as those who have put Jesus on the left or on the right would like us to think.

-Stephen J. Nichols, "Jesus: Made in America" (pp. 220-221)

Cream of Wheat

Christian music, originally called Jesus Music, once fearlessly sang clearly about the gospel. Now it yodels of a Christ-less, watered down, pabulum-based, positive alternative, aura-fluff, cream of wheat, mush-kind-of-syrupy, God-as-my-girlfriend kind of thing.

-Steve Camp, thesis 41, "A Call for Reformation in the Contemporary Christian Music Industry"

Reducing Jesus

To those fundamentalists and evangelicals who singularly focus on giving invitations, the image of Jesus standing and knocking on the doors of hearts, drawn from Revelation and not from the Gospels, assumes iconic status. To evangelicals of a pacifist stripe, Jesus turning the other cheek reigns supreme. To the socially conscious, Jesus embodied in the poor becomes the rallying point. To just about all American evangelicals Jesus becomes the best friend, the Savior next door. All of these are biblically based images. The problem comes when such a focus on a particular episode in the Gospels or a particular characteristic or trait of Jesus leads one to downplay or even dismiss other episodes of the biblical narrative and other aspects of his character. Jesus comes to us as a complex figure, and reducing him does an injustice to the Gospel accounts. Reducing him does an injustice to Jesus himself.

-Stephen J. Nichols, "Jesus: Made in America" (p. 88)

2 x 2 = 4 ?

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert - himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt - the Divine Reason... The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn... There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it's practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic... The old humilty made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humilty makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether... We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

-1908, G. K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy" (pp. 31-32)

God is Love

God's love for us is not mainly His making much of us, but His giving us the ability to enjoy making much of Him forever. In other words, God's love for us keeps God at the center. God's love for us exalts His value and our satisfaction in it. If God's love made us central and focused on our value, it would distract us from what is most precious; namely, Himself. Love labors and suffers to enthrall us with what is infinitely and eternally satisfying: God. Therefore God's love labors and suffers to break our bondage to the idol of self and focus our affections on the treasure of God.

-John Piper, "Pierced by the Word" (p. 13)

The Object of our faith... not the Example.

Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity—liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man's will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God. [...] Liberalism regards [Christ] as an Example and Guide; Christianity, as a Saviour: liberalism makes Him an example for faith; Christianity, the object of faith.

-J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Liberalism" (pp. 47, 96)