THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE INCARNATION & THE CROSS

'What is more demeaning to God, what is more shameful - getting born or dying? To carry flesh or to carry a cross? To be circumcised or be hanged? To be fed at the breast or to be buried?...But you will not be wise unless, by believing God's "foolish things," you have become foolish in this age.'

Tertullian in Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human, p.46.

ANTHROPOLOGY STARTS WITH CHRISTOLOGY?

'I am convinced that only when we have grasped the implications of the humanity of Jesus will we be able to properly assess our own humanity. The doctrine that the Word became flesh means that God himself affirms our flesh as good, and that affirmation liberates us from apologizing for our creaturely limitations. If we believe that Jesus, who was free from all sin, was fully human, then this means that he considered creaturely restrictions to be part of his good creation and not evil at all. It means that we must not apologize for what the Son of God freely embraces.'

Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News, p.43.

DECISION-MAKING

'Whenever I don't know what to do, I watch what I am doing.'
Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! p.155.

THE LONELINESS OF GRIEF

'Grief is such a - oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.'

Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! p.3.

HOW THE "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" HAS FAILED WOMEN

'Women are learning to have sex like men. But peel back the layers, and it becomes obvious that this transition is not a reflection of their power but of their subjugation to men's interests. If women were more in charge of how their relationships transpired - more in charge of the "pricing" negotiations around sex - we would be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts by men, fewer hookups, fewer pre-marital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on (and perhaps even at a slightly earlier age too). In other words the "price" of sex would be higher: it would cost men more to access it. Instead, none of these things are occurring.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.214.

MARIAGE IS A GATEWAY DRUG

'...at its best, marriage is meant to leave us wanting more: it is a gateway drug to a far more fulfilling relationship.'

Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity, p.161.

THE BIBLE COMMANDS SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS

'People sometimes say the Bible condemns same sex relationships. It does not. The Bible commands same-sex relationships at a level if intimacy that Christians seldom reach. Jesus preached a gospel of radical intimacy: with him first and foremost, but through him also with each other.'

Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion, p.155.

HOW GENDER EFFECTS SAME-SEX SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

'Men and women tend to conduct their relationships differently and exhibit different preferences in their relationships. When the partnership diverges from sexual complementarity - that is, a man and a woman in relationship - decidedly sex-typed preferences are consolidated, not moderated. It means that same-sex couple are ironically more subject to deep-rooted gendered patterns and habits, their stated egalitarian attitudes aside. There is nothing political about this; it is just the empirical reality, one that sexual economics make ready sense of. If the sexes were a simple social construction, utterly malleable, we should see very little distinction in how men and women pursue relationships, how they act within them, how they act apart from them, what they prioritize about them and how they conclude them. But we see all of that.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.158. 

NEW IDENTITIES LEAVE US VULNERABLE

'...the identities we are chattering about today tend to be more rootless and directionless that those of the past. They do not instruct us in how we ought to live. In turn, this lack of social structure, as well as a dearth of tradition, means a lack of constraints, leaving people vulnerable.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.155.