MY 2021 READING

Those in bold are my top 10: 

January 

1. Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again 
2. Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God
3. Bryan Washington, Lot 
4. Dr Lisa Oakley & Justin Humphreys, Escaping the Maze of Spiritual Abuse: Creating healthy Christian cultures

February 

1. Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing your community from emotional and spiritual abuse 
2. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
3. Katherine May, Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times 
4. Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The clarity of Scripture 
5. Bryan Washington, Memorial
6. Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church 
7. Tana French, The Wych Elm

March 

1. Wade Mullen, Something's Not Right: Decoding the tactics of abuse and freeing yourself from its power 
2. Stephen McAlpine, Being the Bad Guys: How to live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn't 
3. Suzanne Heywood, What Does Jeremy Think? Jeremy Heywood and the Making of Modern Britain
4. Simon P Walker, Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership 

April 

1. Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours: Sermons for Good Friday
2. Andy Friend, Ravilious & Co.: The Pattern of Friendship
3. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
4. Tim Pears, In the Place of Fallen Leaves
5. Greg Johnson, Still Time to Care: What we can learn from the church's failed attempt to cure homosexuality

May 

1. Alan Don, Faithful Witness: The confidential diaries of Alan Don, Chaplain to the King, the Archbishop and the Speaker, 1931-1946 (Edited by Robert Beaken) 
2. Scott McKnight & Laura Barringer, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture  That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing 
3. Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing 
4. Fiona Stafford, The Brief Life of Flowers
5. Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God
6. David Nicholls, Sweet Sorrow
7. Fiona Robertson, Rules of Belonging: Change your organisational culture, delight your people and turbo-charge your results  
8. Susan Howatch, Scandalous Risks

June 

1. Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the grace of lament
2. Cathy Rentzenbrink, Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books 
3. Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young men on hookups, love, porn, consent, and navigating the new masculinity 

July 

1. Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths 
2. Catherine Lacey, Pew 
3. William Trevor, The Old Boys 
4. Grayson Perry, The Descent of Man 
5. Samantha Harvey, The Western Wind 
6. Adam Sisman, John le Carré: The Biography 
7. RC Sheriff, The Fortnight in September 
8. Katherine Langrish, From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my Nine Year-Old Self   
9. Francis S Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World
10. Matthew Mullins, Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures
11. Rachel Gardner, The Sex Thing: Reimagining conversations with young people about sex

August

1. Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
2. Andrew Wilson, God of All Things: Rediscovering the sacred in an everyday world 
3. Jan Morris, Thinking Again
4. Brad House & Gregg Allison, MultiChurch: Exploring the Future of Multisite 
5. John le Carré, Absolute Friends

September 

1. Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals 
2. An Yu, Braised Pork

October 

1. David James Poissant, Lake Life 
2. Natalia Ginzburg, The Dry Heart
3. Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story
4. Natalia Ginzberg, The Little Virtues
5. John Stott, But I Say To You....Christ the Controversialist 
6. Darrin W Snyder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church 
7. Susan Howatch, Mystical Paths 
8. Christos Tsiolkas, Loaded 
9. Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex 

November

1.  Michael Jenkins, A House in Flanders 
2. Henry "Chips" Channon, Diaries (Volume 1) 1918-38 (Edited by Simon Heffer) 
3. Gregg A Ten Elshof, I told me so: self-deception and the Christian life

December

1. Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You
2. Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth 
3. Margaret Bullard, Endangered Species: Diplomacy from the Passenger Seat
4. Karen Soole, Liberated: How the Bible exalts and dignifies women 
5. Peter Davidson, The Lighted Window: Evening Walks Remembered
6. Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession 
7. Jenny Offill, Weather 
8. Toby Faber, Faber & Faber: The Untold Story
9. Alistair Macleod, No Great Mischief

HOW SEXUAL LIBERATION HAS FAILED TO LIBERATE

'According to its claims, sexual liberation ought logically to have brought in a time of "naturalness," ease, and candor between men and women. It has, on the contrary, filled the country with sexual self-consciousness, uncertainty, and fear.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.141.

PRACTICING LOVE WHEN WE DON'T FEEL IT

'The proper question, perhaps, is not why we have so much divorce, but why we are so unforgiving. The answer, perhaps, is that, though we still recognize the feeling of love, we have forgotten how to practice love when we don't feel it.'
Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.140.

THE PRACTICE OF LOVE

'...marriage, family life, friendship, neighborhood, and other personal connections do not depend exclusively or even primarily on justice - though, of course, they all must try for it. They depend also on trust, patience, respect, mutual help, forgiveness - in other words, the practice of love, as opposed to the mere feeling of love.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.139.

THE INDUSTRIALSATION OF SEX

'The triumph of the industrial economy is the fall of community. But the fall of community revels how precious and how necessary community is. For when community falls, so must fall all the things that only community life can engender and protect: the care of the old, the care and education of children, family life, neighborly work, the handing down of memory, the care of the earth, respect for nature and the lives of wild creatures. All of these things have been damaged by the rule of industrialism, but of all the damaged things probably the most precious and the most damaged is sexual love. For sexual love is the heart of community life. Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.133.

CHOOSING COMMUNITY OVER TECHNOLOGY

'To this day, if you say you would be willing to forbid, restrict, or reduce the use of technological devices in order to protect the community - or to protect the good health of nature on which the community depends - you will be called a Luddite, and it will not be a compliment. To say that the community is more important than machines is certainly Christian and certainly democratic, but it is also Luddism and therefore not to be tolerated.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.131.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU DESTROY

'If you destroy the ideal of the "gentle man" and remove from men all expectations of courtesy and consideration towards women and children, you have prepare the way for an epidemic of rape and abuse. If you depreciate the sanctity and solemnity of marriage, not just as a bond between these two people but as a bond between these two people and their forbears, their children, and their neighbors, then you have prepared the way for an epidemic of divorce, child neglect, community ruin, and loneliness. If you destroy the economies of household and community, then you destroy the bonds of mutual usefulness and practical dependence without which the other bonds will not hold.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.125.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

'It's everything that matters against everything that mustn't be allowed to matter.'

Geoffrey Faber in Toby Faber, Faber & Faber: The Untold Story, p.158.

AGE-BASED WORRY

'Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?
Old person worry: What if everything I do does?'
Jenny Offill, Weather, p.21

BOOKS AS PORTABLE ISLANDS

'...often in adult life I've considered books as portable islands, in the way they grant isolation from one's surroundings, offering relief from immediate demands and space for contemplation.'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams, p.80.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GROWN-UP PERSON

'André Malraux, the French novelist, adventurer and Resistance fighter, relates in his Anti-Memoirs what a priest felt a lifetime of hearing confessions has taught him (an assessment that could just as easily have been uttered by a physician as a priest).

"First of all people are much more unhappy than one thinks...and then..." He raised his brawny lumberman's arms in the starlit night; "And then, the fundamental fact is that there is not such thing as a grown-up person."'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams, p.28. 

THE HEALING POWER OF ISLANDS

'...through adolescence, medical school, and working as a doctor in specialty training, it began to dawn on me that I sought out islands to recalibrate my sense of what matters. Their absence of connection, their isolation, was therapeutic in a way I found difficult to articulate.'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession, p.18.

THE POLICING OF SEXUALITY

'...not long ago conservatives policed discourse concerning human sexuality, today liberal voices have replaced them. The only thing that has remained constant is the presence of policing.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: the transformation of men, marriage, and monogamy, p.19.

THE CHALLENGE OF FORGIVENESS

'At the moment, the cycle of insincere public apologies is probably making everyone suspicious of forgiveness. But what should people who have done terrible things in the past actually do? Spontaneously advertise their own sins in order to pre-empt public exposure? Just try never to accomplish anything that might bring them increased scrutiny of any kind? Maybe I'm wrong, but I do believe the number of people who have done seriously bad things is not insignificant. I mean honestly, I think that if every man who has ever behaved somewhat poorly in a sexual context dropped dead tomorrow, there would be like eleven men left alive. And it's not only men! It's women too, and children, everyone. I suppose what I mean is, what if it's not only a small number of evil people who are out there, waiting for their bad deeds to be exposed? What if it's all of us?'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.135.

THE PUZZLING POWER OF SEXUALITY

'It seems to me we walk around all the time feeling these absurdly strong impulses and desires, strong enough to make us want to ruin our lives and sabotage our marriage and careers, but nobody is really trying to explain what the desires are, or where they come from. Our ways of thinking and speaking about sexuality seem so limited, compared to the exhausting and debilitating power of sexuality itself as we experience it in our real lives.'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.92.

SEXUALITY IS ABOUT MORE THAN SEX

'I wish there was a good theory of sexuality out for me to read. All the existing theories seem to be mostly about gender - but what about sex itself? I mean, what even is it? To me it's normal to meet people and think of them in a sexual way without actually having sex with them - or, more to the point, without even imagining sex with them, without even thinking about imagining it. This suggests that sexuality has some "other" content, which is not about the act of sex. And maybe even a majority of our sexual experiences are mostly this "other". So what is the other?'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.91.

THE PRECIOUS GIFT OF LOVING DISAGREEMENT

'The occasion to have a safe and thoughtful discussion with someone who genuinely loves you and disagrees with you passionately is a rare and precious gift.'

Gregg A Ten Elshof, I told me so: self-deception and the Christian life, p.119.

WHY WE DO DISAGREEMENT BADLY

'We tend not to have a category for disagreement between equally sincere, intelligent, and well-informed people where there is a genuine and discoverable truth of the matter. And without such a category, we're faced with a choice between (i) giving up on the idea that we know the truth on the issue in question or (ii) thinking of our opponent as insincere, stupid, or ill-informed. If our cause is one we cherish, the second option will be the most attractive. And once we've got our opponent characterized as insincere, stupid, or ill-informed, then mistreatment, mockery, and exclusion from serious discussion - all for the sake of the cause, of course - will come more easily.'

Gregg A Ten Elshof, I told me so: self-deception and the Christian life, p.92.

THE LIMITS TO LEGAL PROTECTION

'The belief that as sex worker will be helped by the criminalisation of her trade rests on the assumption that she has other choices available to her - that it is prostitution, rather than, say, poverty or immigration law, that is her fundamental problem.. Likewise the, the belief that incarceration is the way to deal with domestic violence does not take into account the women whose fates are bound up with the men who perpetrate it: the women who are financially dependent on the men who beat them, and who have a large stake in how the men in their communities are treated by the police, courts or prison.'

Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex, p.162.

THE CHURCH AS THE ANSWER TO CHRISTIANITY'S CREDIBILITY PROBLEM

'How is it possible that the gospel should be credible, that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? I am suggesting that the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.'

Lesslie Newbiggin in Belousek, Marriage, Scripture and the Church, p.290.

WHAT GOD DESIRES

'God's desire for us is that we should live in him.'
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p.18.

WHY I'M AN EVANGELICAL

'My sincerely held belief as an evangelical is that it is my very loyalty to Christ which requires me to hold evangelical views.'

John Stott, But I Say To You..., p.202.

PARENTING THE VIRTUES

'As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbour and self-denial ; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.151.

EVERY DAY RELATIONSHIPS

'Human relationships have to be rediscovered and reinvented every day. We have to remember constantly that every kind of meeting with our neighbour is a human action and so it is always evil or good, true or deceitful, a kindness or a sin.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.150.

FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON

And we leave home and go to live with this person for ever; not because we are sure that he is the right person: in fact we are not entirely sure, and we can always suspect the right person for us is hiding away goodness knows where in the city. But we don't want to know where he is hiding; we feel that we have by now very little to say to him, because we say everything to this person - who is not perhaps the right person - with whom we now live; and we want to receive the good and the evil of our lives from this person and with him Every now and then violent differences between us and this person erupt into the open; and yet they are unable to destroy the infinite peace we have within us. After many years, only after many years, after a thick web of habits, memories and violent differences has been woven between us, we at last realise that he is, in truth, the right person for us, that we could have put up with anyone else, that it is only from him that we can ask everything that the heart needs.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtus, p.140.

ADOLESCENCE

'We become adolescents when the words that adults exchange with one another become intelligible it us; intelligible, but of not interest because we longer care whether peace reigns in the house or not. Now we are able to follow the ins and outs of family rows and to foresee their course and how long they will last; and we are are not afraid of them any more, doors slam ad we do not jump. The house is no longer what it was for us before, it is no longer the point from which we look out on the rest of the universe, it is a place where - by chance - we eat and live: we eat quickly, lending our inattentive ear to the adults' conversation - a conversation which is intelligible to us but which strikes us as useless; eat and quickly escape to our rooms so that we don't have to listen to their useless conversation, and we are able to be perfectly happy even if the adults around us are arguing and sulking day in day out. The things that matter to us no longer happen within the walls of our house but outside, in the street and at school; we feel that we cannot be happy if the other children at school look down on us in any way. We would do anything to escape their contempt; and we do anything.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.121.

THE PROBLEM OF OUR RELATIONSHIPS

'The problem of our relationships with other human beings lies at the centre of our life: as soo as we become aware of this - that is, as soon as we clearly see it as a problem and no longer as the muddle of unhappiness, we start to look for its origins, and to reconstruct its course throughout our whole life.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.119.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE IS NOT NATURAL

'When we go to be psychoanalysed we are told that we must stop hating ourselves so violently. But in order to free us from this hatred, free us from this guilt, this feeling of panic, this silence, we are told we must live according to nature, that we must indulge our instincts, that we must follow our desires: that we must make a free choice of our lives. But to make a free choice of your life is not to live according to nature; it is to live unnaturally, because man is not always given a free choice; he does not choose the hour of his birth, or his face, or his parents, or his childhood; he does not normally choose the hour of his death. A man has no choice but to accept his destiny: and the only choice he is permitted is the choice between good and evil, between justice and injustice, between truth and lies.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.115.

A TEST OF REAL FRIENDSHIP

'...a friendship which, like all real friendships, has passed through the fire of violent disagreements.'

Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, p.xvii.

SCRIPTURE & TRADITION

'The history of the church is a history of debate in which the truths of the Bible have been been successively defined so as to exclude the opinions of those who have questioned, obscured or denied them.'

John Stott, But I Say To You...Christ the Controversialist, p.35.

CHURCH IS FAMILY

'A church true to Jesus will organize congregational life around the family of believers and order domestic life toward God's kingdom.'

Darrin W Synder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church, p.83. 

LOOOKING WITH JESUS AT MARRIAGE

'When we look back with Jesus to creation, we see marriage established: God's purpose at creation's beginning for marriage as man-woman monogamy. And we look forward with Jesus to resurrection, we see marriage surpassed: God's promise at creation's completion of life-beyond-marriage in life-beyond-death. When we look with the vision of Jesus in the Gospels - whether from the beginning or toward the end - same-sex union does not appear on either horizon.'

Darrin W Synder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church, p.78.

WHAT IS MARRIAGE?

'Theologically, marriage is a living icon of the divine economy - an embodied and enacted reflection of God's design in creation and plan of salvation.'

Darrin W Synder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church: Theological Discernment on the Question of Same-sex Union, p.51.

CHARACTER TRUMPS POLITY

'Considering God's immense love for the church, it may come as a surprise to some that Scripture provides few details on how the church should be governed. Scripture does, however, tells us a fair amount about the character of church leaders. This disparity highlights a key axiom for church government: great character overcomes the weakest polity, and poor character undermines the strongest polity. In either case the character of church leaders trumps governing structure.'

Brad House & Gregg Allison, MultiChurch: Exploring the Future of Multisite p.143.

DIVINE REVELATION THROUGH CREATION

'The God of the Sahara must be vast, boundless, and expansive. The God of quarks must have an unimaginable eye for detail. The God of wombats must have a sense of humor. Everything in creation has theological implications, and one of the joys of being human is figuring out what they are.'

Andrew Wilson, God of All Things: Rediscovering the sacred in an everyday world, p.3.

HOW READING BREEDS EMPATHY

'One great beauty of literature in its difference from everyday life is that you may be brought to a point of identifying with characters would never get to know in real life because you wouldn't spend nearly as much time with them.'

Matthew Mullins, Enjoying the Bible, p.98.

THOUGHT NEEDS EMOTION

'Thinking without emotion is impoverished thinking.'
Matthew Mullins, Enjoying the Bible, p.71.

THE NEED FOR A LIMITED RANGE OF MEANINGS

'If a work of literature can mean anything to anyone then its's not very meaningful at all. But if a work of literature has a limited range of meaning that cannot be boiled down to a single idea, then it can be meaningful for many readers.'

Matthew Mullins, Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures, p.64.

CHRISTIANITY AS A CIRCLE

'Christianity is not to be considered as a single point or a narrow, repetitive line, but as a circle which provides form but within which there is freedom to move in terms of understanding and expression. Christianity is a circle with definite limits, limits which tend to be like twin cliffs. We find ourselves in danger of falling off on one side or on the other; that is, we have to be careful not to avoid one sort of doctrinal error by backing off into the opposite one.

We must ask God to help us, and we must hep each other, not to fall off the cliffs. There is room for discussion within each circle, but we must not forget that there is a circle to be in.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.93.

DOCTRINE MATTERS

'There is no Christian doctrine that does not have a meaning in the existential, moment-by-moment, life. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity is affirmed in our Christian lives as we practise the reality, and the importance, or personality at this present moment. This is true both of the practice of personal relationship towards God and towards people.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.88.

YOU NEED GOD'S SPIRIT TO BE A BALANCED CHRISTIAN

'...in the flesh we can stress purity without love or we can stress the love of God without purity, but ...in the flesh we cannot stress both simultaneously. In order to exhibit both simultaneously, we must look moment by moment to the work of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.45.

THE POINT OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE

'We find that the man-woman relationship of marriage is repeatedly stressed in Scripture as a picture, an illustration, a type, of the wonder of the relationship of individual and Christ and the church of Christ.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.39.

CHRISTIAN WORD PLAY

'Historic Christianity and either the old or the new liberal theology are two separate religions with nothing in common except certain terms which they use with totally different meanings.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.35.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

'The real difference between liberalism and biblical Christianity is not a matter of scholarship but a number of presuppositions. Both the old and new liberalism operate on a set of presuppositions common to both of them, but different from those of historic, orthodox Christianity.'

Francis A Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World, p.12.

GOD SCREAMING WITH US

'It makes all the difference to know there's someone else screaming alongside you - and that's the point of the Incarnation...God came into the world and screamed alongside us.'
Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths, p.368.

BOOKS & MEMORY

'Every book holds a memory. When you hold a book in your hand, you access not only the contents of that book but the fragments of the previous selves that you were you read it.'

Cathy Rentzenbrink, Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books, p.225.

PRO-CHOICE IS NOT PRO-WOMEN

'Throughout history the vast majority of babies who have died by abortion (before birth) or infanticide (after birth) have been girls. This is still true globally today. The idea that being "pro-choice" (in favor of abortion means) being pro-women does not fit with this reality.'

Rebecca McLaughlin, 10 Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity, p.141.

THE PERFECT MAN

'Some people think real men don't cry. But Jesus cried. Some people think real men sleep with lots of women. But Jesus never even had a girlfriend. Some people think real men don't stand for insults. But Jesus took insults all day long. He defended the weak, but he wouldn't fight back to defend himself. Some people think real men don't cook or care for kids. But Jesus did both these things. If we want to know what it means to be a perfect man, we must look at Jesus.'

Rebecca McLaughlin, 10 Questions Every Should Ask (and Answer) about Christianity, p.138. 

LAMENT DEFINED

'Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God's goodness.'

Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament, p.26.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LITURGY

'He was suddenly aware of the fact that he was defending the liturgy of the church. That had never happened before. But he sensed the danger of a new enslavement to forms developing which would force the spiritual life into an arbitrarily tailored straightjacket, which was both poorer and more rigid than the one that come down from their forebears.'

Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God, p.210.

A PASTOR'S BEST TEACHER

'The congregation is the best teacher the pastor can have.'
Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God, p.148.

THE NEED TO RUN A RISK ASSESSMENT ON OUR BELIEFS

'A crucial task... for those with any convictions is surely to identify the risks peculiar to those convictions.'

Mark Meynell, Roots of the Malaise? The "O Tempora! O Mores!" Blogposts, p.82.

ENVY

'Envy is being unhappy at other people's happiness.'
Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.127.

THE LINK BETWEEN ANGER & LOVE

'Anger is energy released to defend something you love. God is angry toward the evil that dishonours him and ruins that which he loves. But the problem with human anger is this - we tend to overlove the wrong things.'

Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.120.

MISSION AS SPIRITUAL CONFLICT

'The deepest motive for mission is simply to be with Jesus where he is, on the frontier between the reign of God and the usurped dominion of the devil.'

Lesslie Newbigin in Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours, p.78.

FROM FEAR TO FAITH

'...the life of a Christian is lived in the tension between "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."'
Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours, p77.

THE KINDNESS OF JESUS

'Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,
That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected, 

O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus hath undone thee.

'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee,

I crucified thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered; 

The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;

For our atonement, while we nothing heeded,

God interceded.

For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,

Thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation;

Thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,

For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee.

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,

Think on thy pity, and thy love unswerving,

Not my deserving.'

Johann Heermann in Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours: Sermons for Good Friday, p.12.

WISDOM COMES THROUGH WORSHIP

'The best way to guard your heart for wisdom is worship, in which the mouth, the mind, the imagination, and even the body are all orientated to God.'

Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.85.

SELF-DECEPTION

'Self-deception is not the worst thing you can do, but its the means by which we do the worst things. The sin that is most distorting your life right now is the one you can't see.'

Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.84.

TRUE LEADERSHIP

'...leadership is, at its purest, concerned with truth. In its highest calling, it's not concerned with pragmatic solutions, with getting the job done: it is a matter of seeing something more truly than others around you.'

Simon P Walker, Leading out of Who You Are, p.124.

LEADER, KNOW THYSELF

'...all of us create worlds in our own image, but the difference for leaders is that they have the positional authority to do so. If I am right in this, then it is vital for leaders to appreciate that they have the mandate and the power to impose their personality on the community around them. Within the environment over which we have authority and for which we have responsibility (be it a family, a classroom, an office, a voluntary society or the boardroom of a global multinational), we impose our own personal strategy on those around us and seek to create a world that meets our own needs. The community becomes an extension of us, and our followers become performers on our stage, using our script to tell our story. There is an identification of the person of the leader with the performance of the organization they lead.

For us, therefore, there is a moral responsibility and ethical imperative to know ourselves, not for our own benefit but for the benefit of our followers. And not only to know ourselves but to be free from ourselves. It is freedom that is the critical factor: freedom to make decisions and choose courses of action that in the end may lead to personal loss rather than personal gain.'

Simon P Walker, Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership, p.47. 

PREACHING INTO THE RIGHT LIVES

'If you're a church leader...prepare your people for the week they will be having, not the the week you will be having.'

Stephen McAlpine, Being the Bad Guys, p.115.

AN AUTHENTIC APOLOGY

'How can you tell the difference between an apology and a simple concession? An authentic apology, especially when it is offered in response to significant and long-term harm, will be so clearly distinct from every prior experience that it will be unquestionably received. It will appear like a flash of light in a darkened room, like an exploding clap of thunder in the dead of night, like the unveiling of a hidden treasure, like a resurrection from the dead - not because of any of the apologizer's qualities but because of the innate power of truth.'

Wade Mullen, Something's Not Right, p.131.

WHY CHURCHES ARE SO SUSPECTIBLE TO ABUSERS

'The danger of environments that are structured around sacred roles is this: communities need someone to fulfil their keystone roles, and narcissistic individuals eagerly search for opportunities to occupy them. We look for charismatic leaders who promise us a grand future. But, once found, we often discover these leaders were looking for us before we were looking for them. We willingly provide them with the power they desire because they provide us with something we want in return. And over time, narcissistic leaders slowly turn their organizations into monuments to themselves. The role becomes their identity, and success means proving through performance their right to occupy the role. Exposure, then, isn't just a threat to the role; it's a threat to who these leaders are. And for systems structured around keystone personalities, exposure threatens the entire system. So together, a narcissistic leader and a system that fuels and enables narcissism cooperate to maintain the performance to keep the structure intact. The show must go on.'

Wade Mullen, Something's not right: Decoding the hidden tactics of abuse and freeing yourself from its power, p.27.

WHAT IS BLESSEDNESS?

'The Bible is filled with promises of "blessedness." The Hebrew word means far more then mere happiness. It means multidimensional flourishing. In Genesis 3 we see that sin puts us in a condition where we are in contradiction with God, our true selves, other human beings, and even nature itself. We are out of alignment with the creation order in all its dimensions, and so our normal human state consists of spiritual emptiness, inner anxiety and crises of identity, conflicts between nations, classes, and races, and the destruction of our natural environment.

To be blessed, then, is to know partial but substantial healing of each of these areas as God's salvation repairs our hearts and out behavior. Spiritually we reconcile with and grow closer to God. Psychologically we come to understand ourselves and find our feelings and actions coming more more under the Spirit's control. Relationally we discover the added depth and dimension that common faith can add to human friendship. Socially we find ways to serve neighbors and the broader civic community, no longer captive to political ideologies. Salvation is not merely forgiveness and admission to heaven. It means life is healed, slowly but surely, in all its dimensions.'

Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.58.

PACIFISM NEEDS A JUST GOD?

'...the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance.'
Miroslav Volf in Timothy with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.54.

CHRISTIAN LEADERS ARE SHEEP FIRST

'Have you been called to shepherd the lambs of God in some fashion? You may shepherd as a pastor, a teacher, a counselor, or a parent. Do not forget that long before God called you to shepherd, he called you first and foremost to be his lamb - a silly, stupid lamb who does stupid things, follows others into ravines, and allows themselves to get devoured. You are a lamb who must stay very close to the Great Shepherd. That is the best and wisest way to lead other lambs. They will follow you there. Your value as a shepherd depends on your life as a lamb, a weak, foolish lamb utterly dependent on the Shepherd. How will you know anything about shepherding if you do not stay close to the Good Shepherd?'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.150.

THE DANGER OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE

'Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service to him.'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.149.

THE LACK OF PASTORAL CARE FOR PASTORS

'Pastors and leaders often live with little to no oversight. I cannot tell you how many pastors, young and old, have shared with me, often with tears, their longings for good mentors. They long for someone to listen and ask hard questions. They are eager to be taught about faithful ministry and about integrity in ministry and in the home. They have no-one in their lives for whom they are not also responsible as a shepherd.'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.131.

THE CLARITY OF SCRIPTURE IS FOUNDED ON THE CHARACTER OF GOD

'...a confession of the clarity of Scripture is an aspect of faith in a generous God, who is willing and able to make himself and his purposes known. God has something to say and he is very good at saying it.'
Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word, p.170. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHURCH FAMILIES

'The loose communities that we find in spiritual or religious gatherings were once entirely ordinary to us, but now it seems like it is more radical to join them, a brazen challenge to the strictures of the nuclear family, the tendency to stick within tight friendship groups, the shrinking away from the awe-inspiring. Congregations are elastic, stretching to take in all kinds of people, and bringing up unexpected perspectives and insights, We need them now more than ever.'

Katherine May, Wintering, p.134.

PRAYER IS A NATURAL INSTINCT

'I struggle to imagine a god that I would be willing to pray to, but still I am drawn to prayer for prayer's sake. It is an act that my mind knows, that happens without my intervention. "Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer / utter itself" begins Carol Anne Duffy's most famous poem. "Prayer," which later goes on to show the faithless turning to piano scales and the Shipping Forecast to capture a little of the quality of prayerfulness. Praying is something that I can do, and so I do it. It seems to represent an atavistic impulse on my part, a desire to find life in the world around me, the trees and stones and bodies of water, the birds and mammals that enter my line of sight. Mine is a personal animism, hushed by my conscious brain, nurtured by unconscious.'

Katherine May, Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times, p.133.

INTEGRITY

'...our words spoken, no matter how true, are not real unless they are incarnated.'
Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.57.

CHRISTIAN ETHICS 1.1

'There is no human being you will ever meet, no matter however wounded, disordered, or evil, no matter their theology, style of worship, or ways of thinking who was not created by the God we love. Any culture - nation, denomination, city, church, or family - that leads us to treat someone otherwise is seducing us to behave in ways that break the heart of God.'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.56.

OUR DECEITFUL WORDS

'People use words to construct promised realities that attach to longings such as freedom, order, protection, work, or love. No abuser says, "Come with me so I can rape you." No-one says, "Marry me so I can batter you." No-one says, "Elect me so I can defraud you." No pastor or counselor says, "Let me counsel you so can sex with you." Instead, we say, "I love you." "I will protect you." "I will help you." "I will bring dignity to you." In Christendom, we can use spiritual language to cloak selfish ambition, hide abuses of many kinds and do incalculable damage in the name of God.'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.53.

JESUS WORDS AND ACTIONS DEFINE TRUTH

'...anything that does not look like God incarnate is not truth...'
Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, p.41.

A CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO POWER

'Are you verbally powerful? The Word gave you that power. Are you physically powerful? The mighty God, who breaks down strongholds and sustains the universe, gave you that power? Do you have a a powerful position? It is from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Do you have power of knowledge or skill? The Creator God, whose ways are beyond finding out, gave that power to you. Do you hold emotional power with others? That power came from the Comforter, the Wonderful Counsellor. Do you hold great financial power? If so, it is merely a small portion from the One who holds all riches. Any power that you and I hold is God's and has been given to us by him for the sole purpose of glorifying him and blessing others. It all power is derivative, then Christians should hold it with great humility. We are creatures, no more and no less,. We follow the one who became flesh.. Jesus models for us the humility of power.'

Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church, p.11.

HOW GRACE LEADS TO LOVE

'...loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.1124.

THOSE WHO MAKE HISTORY DON'T KNOW IT?

'In historical events what is most obvious is the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Only unconscious activity bears fruit, and a man who plays a role in historical event never understands its significance. If he attempts to understand it, he is struck with fruitlessness.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.944.

HERMENEUTICS IS HALF-DRESSED?

The hermeneutical emperor is certainly not naked, but we might say he is not properly attired for a meeting with the word of the living God.'

Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word, p.139.

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS GRACE FROM GOD

'The knowledge of God is a gift not an achievement.'
Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word, p.134.

THE NEED TO BE AWARE OF HOW WORD PLAY IS POWER PLAY

'Awareness of the way an authoritative text, or appeal to the clear meaning of an authoritative text, can be used to coerce or manipulate others adds a somber note to the practice of biblical interpretation. The Bible has been repeatedly misused in the interests of power over the past two thousand years. There have been sub-Christian understandings of biblical authority, which have led to torture, murder and forced conversions. The refrain "this is the word of the Lord" is meant to provoke thanksgiving, yet it can also be used as a weapon to bludgeon people into conformity, to shortcut the process of Christian persuasion. We cannot afford to close our eyes to our own history - even, perhaps, especially, evangelical history. Yet the answer is not to jettison the text or locate real authority elsewhere. This is the word of the Lord. It is his gift to us and by this means he rules his people. Believers seek to be shaped in thinking and behaviour by God's revelation of himself and his purposes. The problem is not with the word God has given, but with the use made of it by sinful men and women. Hard questions need to be asked about just whose interests are being served by our explanation of a particular biblical text. Are we prepared to have those interests challenged by the text? This does not mean surrendering at the first sign questions such as these are asked by those who oppose what we might be saying. After all, the claim that a particular interpretation is in reality a covert exercise of power may turn out to be itself a covert exercise of power. What it does mean is that we should be asking those questions of ourselves.'

Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word, p.131.

HUMAN COMPLEXITY MEETS GOD'S LOVE

'We are complex, a vast immensity, a mystery to ourselves, known only and ultimately by a God who seems fearless in the face of our complexity, capable of loving each of us and all of us in our beauty and brokenness.'

Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church, p.149.

THE CHRISTIAN'S HEART

'Within the heart are unfathomable depths. There are reception rooms and bedchambers in it, doors and porches, and many offices and passages. In it is the workshop of righteousness and of wickedness. In it is death; in it is life. The heart is Christ's palace: there Christ the King comes to take his rest, with the angels and spirits of the saints, and he dwells there, walking within it and placing his kingdom there. The heart is but a small vessel: and yet dragons and lions are there, and there poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough uneven places are there, and gaping chasms. There likewise is God, there are the angels, there life and the Kingdom, there light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace. All things are there.'

Macarius in Churck DeGrot, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing your community from emotional and spiritual abuse, p.149.

MATURITY COMES THROUGH SUFFERING

'Depending on God in trouble is a spiritual skill that can be learned only in trouble.'
Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.42.

HOW GOD'S SPIRIT DISCIPLES THROUGH GOD'S WORD

The Holy Spirit, therefore, has generously and advantageously planned Holy Scripture in such a way that in the easier passages He relieves our hunger; in the more obscure He drives away our pride. Practically nothing is dug out from those obscure texts which is not discovered to be said very plainly in another place.'

Augustine of Hippo in Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The clarity of Scripture, p.110.

THE DANGER OF THEORISTS

'...one of those theorists who so love their theory that they forget the purpose of the theory - its application in practice; in his love for theory, he hated everything practical and did not want to know about it. He was even glad of failure, because failure, proceeding from departures from theory in practice, only proved to him the correctness of his theory.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.640.

THE CONFIDENCE OF DIFFERENT NATIONS

'...only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea - science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe if possible to know anything fully. A German in self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, because he imagines he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.639.

STRATEGY VS. TACTICS & PEOPLE-WATCHING

'He had already managed to draw from his military experience the conviction that in military matters the most profoundly devised plans meant nothing...that everything depended on how one responded to the unexpected and unpredictable actions of the enemy, that everything depended on how and by whom the action was conducted.'

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, p.632.

TRUE LEADERSHIP

'True greatness, true leadership, is found in giving yourself in service to others, not coaxing or inducing others to serve you.'

Oswald Sanders in Lisa Oakley & Justin Humphreys, Escaping the Maze of Spiritual Abuse, p.117.

GOOD LEADERS ARE UNWILLLING LEADERS

'A true and safe leader is likely to be the one who has do desire to lead, but is forced into a position by the inward leading of the Holy Spirit and the press of circumstances.'

AW Tozer in Lisa Oakley & Justin Humphreys, Escaping the Maze of Spiritual Abuse: Creating healthy Christian Cultures, p.114.

WISDOM IS A COMMUNITY PROJECT

'Wisdom is to see things through as many other eyes as possible, through the Word of God and through the eyes of your friends, of people from other races, classes, and political viewpoints, and of your critics.'

Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.24

GODLINESS NEEDS GOD'S GRACE

'The grace of God is as necessary to create a right temper...on the breaking of a china plate as on the death of an only son.'

John Newton in Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Way of Wisdom, p.21

A HEAVENLY SWIM

'...heaven will be an eternal swim in the ocean of God's love.'
Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.174.

DEATH IS NOT LOSS WITH JESUS

'When a saint dies he has no cause at all to grieve because he leaves his friends and relations that he dearly loves, for he doth not properly leave them. For enjoys them still in Christ; because everything that he loves in them and loves them for, is in Christ in an infinite degree; whether it be nearness of relation or any perfection and good received, or love to us, or a likeness in dispositions, or whatever is a rational ground of love.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.173.

THE HAPPINESS OF HOLINESS

'They that walk in a way of holiness, do obtain in this world the gratification of those spiritual appetites in a degree for the discoveries of God's glory , and the views of Christ's beauty, and in the incomes of the holy spirit, whereby the soul is filled with joy of the Holy Ghost. They feed on angel's food, on the bread which came down from heaven and have the foretastes of heaven's dainties.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.163.

THE GOOD TEMPTATION BRINGS IN GOD'S GOODNESS

'Though it is to the eternal damage of the saints, when they yield to, and are overcome by temptations, yet Satan and other enemies of the saints by whom these temptations come, are always wholly disappointed in their temptations, and baffled in their design to hurt the saints, inasmuch as the temptations and the sin that comes by it, is for the saints' good, and they receive a greater benefit in the issues, than if the temptation had not been, and yet less than if the temptation had been overcome.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.152.

TRUE LEADERSHIP

'Any immature man can be a forceful, unheeding, unloving "leader." Only a true man can be gentle.'
Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.100.