THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

'Only the Christian worldview locates the problem with the world not in any part of the world or in any particular group of people but in sin itself (our loss of relationship with God). And it locates the solution in God's grace (our restoration of a relationship with God through the work of Christ). Sin infects us all, and so we cannot simply divide the world into the heroes and villains. (And if we did, we would certainly have to count ourselves among the latter as well as the former). Without an understanding of the gospel, we will either be naively utopian or cynically disillusioned. We will be demonizing something that isn't bad enough to explain the mess we're in; and we will be idolizing something that isn't powerful enough to get us out of it. This is, in the end, what all the other worldviews do. 

The Christian story line works beautifully to make sense of things and even to help us appreciate the truth embedded in stories that clearly come from another worldview.' 

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.162.

HUMANKIND

'Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.' 

Ernest Becker in Glynn Harrison, The Big Ego Trip, p.139. 

SELF-ESTEEM

'...in the early 1950s only 12% of teens aged fourteen to sixteen agreed with the statement, "I am an important person", but by the late 1980s 80% claimed to feel important in this way.' 

Glynn Harrison, The Big Ego Trip, p.93. 

FORGIVENESS

'Every time you forgive someone else...you pass on a drop of water out of the bucketful that God has already given you.' 

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone: Part 2, p.39. 

GOD'S GRACE

'We have a God who is Lord of all, and yet chooses to be a servant. We, on the other hand, are servants who like to think we are lords.' 

John Hindley, Serving without sinking, p.50. 

JESUS

'Jesus' greatness is not that He can command the service of millions; it is that He serves millions.' 

John Hindley, Serving without singing, p.49. 

MINISTRY

'You and I are non-one's saviour, no one's ultimate refuge or rock. Jesus has done and is doing far more for His people than we ever can or will. This is part of Christian freedom; we're free not to feel ultimately responsible; free to trust Jesus to comfort, to teach and to keep His people. We're liberated by knowing there is a Saviour, Refuge, Rock; and that it's not us. We are free to say: Enough.'

John Hindley, Serving without sinking: How to serve Christ and keep your joy, p.39.  

GRACE

'There is a story from the American Civil War of a Northerner who bought a young slave girl at a slave auction. As they left the auction, the man turned to the girl and said, "You're free!"

She turned to him in amazement. "You mean I'm free to do whatever I want?"

"Yes," he said.

"And to say whatever I want to say?"

"Yes, anything."

"And to be whatever I want to be?"

"Yes!"

"And even go wherever I want to go?"

"Yes!" He laughed. "You're free to go wherever you'd like!"

She looked at him intently and replied, "Then I will go with you."' 

Sally Lloyd-Jones, Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, p.118. 

SELFISHNESS

'In 2006 the respected UK Henley Centre for Forecasting disclosed findings from a tracking poll that had been posing the same set of questions for over twenty years. Each year the pollsters had asked, "Do you think the quality of life in Britain is best improved by (a) looking after the community's interests instead or our own or (b) looking after ourselves, which ultimately raises standards for all?

Before the year 2000 the overwhelming majority had chosen (a). Most people thought that the best way to improve the quality of life for everybody was to put other people's interests ahead of their own. But as a new millennium dawned, the gap began to close. And just six years later a majority (53%) of those interviewed chose option (b). For the first time in the history of the poll more people believed in looking after "me" first.' 

Glynn Harrison, The Big Ego Trip: Finding true significance in a culture of self-esteem, p.59.  

IDENTITY

'We either get our name - our defining essence, security, worth, and uniqueness - from what God has done for us and in us (Revelation 2:17) , or we make  a name through what we can do for ourselves.' 

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.115. 

WORK

'If lay people cannot find any spiritual meaning in their work, they are condemned to living a certain dual life; not connecting what they do on a Sunday morning with what they do the rest of the week. They need to discover the very actions of daily life are spiritual, and enable...people to touch God in the world, not away from it. Such a spirituality will say..."Your work is your prayer."'

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.78. 

SUFFERING

'Afflictive providences are of great use to the people of God; they cannot live without them. The earth does not need more chastening frosts and mellowing snows than our hearts do nipping providences. Let the best Christians be but a few years without them, and he will be aware of the need of them; he will find a sad remisiveness and declining upon all his graces.' 

John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence, p.209. 

GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY

'...all providences are overruled and ordered for good according to that blessed promise (Rom. 8.28); not only things that are good in themselves, as ordinances, graces, duties and mercies, but things that are evil in themselves, as temptations, afflictions, and even their sins and corruptions, shall turn in the issue to their advantage and benefit. For though sin is so intrinsically and formally evil in its own nature, then in itself it is not capable of sanctification, yet out of this worst of evils God can work good to His people. And though He never makes sin the instrument of good, yet His providence may make it the occasion of good to his people, so that spiritual benefits may, by the wise overruling of Providence, be occasioned by it.'

John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence, p.198.  

PATIENCE

'...nothing can be more precise, certain and punctual than is the performance of mercy at the time and season which God has appointed, however long it is, or however many obstacles lie in the way of it.' 

John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence, p.190. 

THE CHURCH

'A community of the forgiven must be a forgiving community.'
Dick France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT), p.702.  

WORK

'It is creative and assertive. It is rearranging the raw material of God's creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.

This pattern is found in all kinds of work. Farming takes the physical material of soil and seed and produces food. Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we push a broom and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take an unformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve their relational disputes, when we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art - we are continuing God's work of forming, filling, and subduing.' 

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.58. 

WORK

'Whether it's a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source....the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.' 

Ayn Rand in Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.45. 

WORK

'Whatever your work, you need to know this: There really is a tree. Whatever you are seeking in your work - the city of justice and peace, the world of brilliance and beauty, the story, the order, the healing - it is there. There is a God, there is a future healed world that he will bring about, and your work is showing it (in part) to others. Your work will be only partially successful, on your best days, in bringing that world about. But inevitably the whole tree that you seek - the beauty, harmony, justice, comfort, joy, and community - will come to fruition. If you know all this, you won't be despondent because you can only get a leaf or two out in this life. You will work with satisfaction and joy. You will not be puffed up by success or devastated by setbacks.' 

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavour, p.30.