WHY HAVE WE BEEN CREATED IN GOD'S IMAGE?

'If you are very great and you fill the earth with seven billion images of yourself, what is your aim? Your aim is to be well known and admired for your greatness.' 

John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally, p.47. 

AN UNDER-APPRECIATED EFFECT OF THE FALL

'One of the greatest tragedies of the fall is that we get tired of familiar glories.' 

Clyde Kilby in John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally, p.42. 

MIRACLES

'...a miracle was simply a break in the continuity of an order itself more miraculous.' 

Bruce Marshall, The Fair Bride, p.119. 

EPISCOPAL PLATITUDES

'The Bishop had the clerical gift of pronouncing platitudes so fervently that they sounded original.' 

Bruce Marshall, The Fair Bride, p.24. 

THE BEST PLACE TO MEDITATE

'Coasts provide the ultimate sites for meditation.'
Ronald Blythe, The Time by the Sea, p.239. 

BEAUTY

'The plainness of her face was itself so total that it had become beautiful.' 

Ronald Blythe (on Imogen Holst), The Time By the Sea, p.109.  

CONTENTMENT

'...one of those people who claim little because they know they have enough.' 

Ronald Blythe (on Fidelity Cranbrook), The Time by the Sea: Aldeburgh 1955-58, p.71. 

INTERNAL CONFLICT

'They cease not fighting, east and west,
On the marches of my breast.

Here the truceless armies yet
Trample, rolled in blood and sweat,
They kill and kill and never die;
And I think each one is I.'

AE Housman in Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life, p.130. 

MARTIN LUTHER ON SUFFERING

'The good God permits such small evils to befall us merely in order to arouse us snorers from our deep sleep and to make us recognize, on the other hand, the incomparable and innumerable benefits we still have. He wants us to consider what would happen if He were to withdraw His goodness from us completely. We also are to look at our misfortunes in no other way than that with them God gives us light by which we may see and understand His goodness and kindness in countless other ways. Then we conclude that such small misfortunes are barely a drop of water on a big fire or a spark in the ocean.' 

Martin Luther in Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life, p.124. 

THE DANGERS OF CHURCH PURITY

'...once the Machenites found themselves in a "true Presbyterian church" they were unable to moderate their martial impulses. Being in a church without liberals to fight, they turned on one another.' 

John Frame, 'Machen's Warrior Children' in Alister E McGrath & Evangelical Theology: A Dynamic Engagement, p.143. 

SEX & BEAUTY

'Sex is held hostage by beauty and its ransom terms are engraved in girls' minds early and deeply with instruments more beautiful than those which advertisers or pornographers know how to use: literature, poetry, painting and film.' 

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p.158. 

A SENSE OF BEAUTY

'Male or female we all need to feel beautiful to be open to sexual communication: "beautiful" in the sense of welcome, desired, and treasured. Deprived of that, one objectifies oneself or the other for self-protection.' 

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p.148. 

SEX & CONSUMERISM

'Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable, and dictated by the market. The beautiful object of consumer pornography has a built-in obsolescence, to ensure that as few men as possible will form a bond with one woman for years or for a lifetime, and to ensure that woman's dissatisfaction with themselves will grow rather than diminish over time. Emotionally unstable relationships, high divorce rates, and a large population cast out into the sexual marketplace are good for business in a consumer economy. Beauty pornography is intent on making modern sex brutal and boring and only as deep as a mirror's mercury, anti-erotic for both men and women.' 

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p.144. 

ADMITTING DEFEAT

'If you do not believe in Satan, how can you fight him?'

Michael Green, I Believe in Satan's Downfall, p.248. 

GOD'S LOVE CONTRASTED WITH HUMAN LOVE

'The love of God does not find but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.' 

Martin Luther in Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life, p.66. 

GETTING A DENOMINATION TO LISTEN

'It criticizing indulgences, Luther also did what is always guaranteed to precipitate a reaction: he hit the church where it hurts most, in her revenue department.' 

Carl Trueman, Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom, p.39. 

IDOLATRY

'...idolatry is essentially the pursuit of the counterfeit.'
Michael Green, I Believe in Satan's Downfall, p.125. 

PAVLOV & PORNOGRAPHY

'...pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.' 

Naomi Wolf, 'The Porn Myth' in New York Magazine (20th October, 2003) via: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/index1.html 

THE EFFECTS OF PORNOGRAPHY

'The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.'

Naomi Wolf, 'The Porn Myth' in New York Magazine (20th October, 2003) via: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/index1.html