MOTIVE CHECKING

'First Corinthians 13 ought to encourage us to step back from even our most cherished projects and ask, "Why am I doing this?" If we cannot honestly say, "I am doing this for love and in love," then the legitimacy of the whole enterprise must come under serious doubt. This test applies, of course, not just to explicitly religious practices but to to everything we do: business, academics, politics.'

Richard B Hays, First Corinthians, p.232.   

A DIFFERENT ECONOMIC IMPERATIVE

'Practicing neighborly economics means you don't go for what's cheapest and easiest. You think about which relationships and stores you want to preserve in your town and you shop there.' 

Melody Warnick, This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are, p.59. 

BIBLE STUDY CHALLENGES

'There are two major difficulties frequently encountered in Bible study. Some passages are hard to understand, and so engage the mind at full stretch as we try to work out their meaning. Other passages are hard to accept, and so engage the will at full stretch as we try to respond to them in obedience. But this passage comes into both categories, so that as we approach it we need to do so in humility and dependence on God, expressed in prayer, that he will be pleased to make its message clear and plain to us, and give us grace to put it into practice.' 

David Jackman, Let's Study 1 Corinthians, p.183. 

THE CENTRALITY OF SEXUAL ETHICS TO CHRISTIANITY

'In the early Church, sexual morality was not baggage, afterthought, or accident. It was the plane on which Christians tried to live in the world, but not of it. Which is why adapting this sexual morality to the modern age has proven as simple as extricating a taut thread from a spider’s web.'

Kyle Harper, 'The First Sexual Revolution' in https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/the-first-sexual-revolution (Accessed 9th February 2019). 

THE CHALLENGE OF OUR CULTURAL MOMENT

'...the modern Church finds itself in an odd position. It is surrounded by a culture that bears some of its own values, but they are shorn of their enchanted origins and presented as neutral axioms of the universe. Ironically, some of the most unabashedly secular models of human sexuality also share with Christianity a belief in the central place of the erotic within the architecture of morality. This is utterly alien to Epictetus, and for that matter to most religions outside the Christian (and to some extent the Jewish) tradition. An avowed secularist is as likely as a Christian activist to proclaim the universal dignity of all individuals and insist upon the individual’s freedom. And yet, however moralized the domain of sex might be, the vast, vacant universe seems to have left only authenticity and consent as the shared, public principles of sexual morality. These axioms derive from a picture of the universe different from the one imagined by Paul, who always envisioned the individual—including the sexual self—within the larger story of the gospel and its picture of a created cosmos in the throes of restoration.' 

Kyle Harper, 'The First Sexual Revolution': https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/the-first-sexual-revolution (Accessed 6th February 201 9)

HUMAN LIMITATIONS

'..to be human is to be limited...'
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p.260. 

THE KEY TO EVANGELISM

'I was willing to be rejected. That's what allows you to be a good salesperson. You have to be willing to be rejected.' 

Bill Thomas in Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, p.113. 

DEATH & DOCTORS

'The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights toi the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert A. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't, someone who undestands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.' 

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine, and What Matters in the End, p.187.