INSATIABLE IDOLS

'...idols always ask for more and more, but give less and less, until in the end they have everything and you have nothing...' 

Glynn Harrison, A Better Story, p.12. 

WE NEED A SETTLED SENSE OF SELF

'The ability to act effectively and confidently, to give love and receive it...requires a sense of self-worth and significance. But if the self is constantly in flux, a shifting sand of doubt and reinvention, how can such a delicate thing sustain a sense of its own worth and value?'  

Glynn Harrison, A Better Story, p.118. 

PLAUSIBILITY STRUCTURES

'Because of the strength of the plausibility structures supporting the majority views in a society, if you have ideas different from everybody else, it is generally a good plan to be part of a support network...Kindred spirits are crucial to keeping minority ideas alive. And so cognitive minority groups, if they want to survive as a minority, must start to act like a minority. They need to make active efforts to nourish their beliefs and patterns of life in ways that make them plausible to their members. They need intellectual leaders, attractive role models and the opportunity for members to rehearse and consolidate their ideas in the conversational fabric of their group, juts like the majority outside.' 

Glynn Harrison, A Better Story, p.72.  

EVERY HUMAN HEART

'...the heart is the wanting, loving, seeking epicentre of the person...'
Glynn Harrison, A Better Story, p.57. 

WHY PEOPLE CHANGE

'What the heart  loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies.'
Thomas Cranmer in Glynn Harrison, A Better Story, p.57. 

CULTURAL CHANGE

'Many of the key players in the sexual revolution understood the need...for cultural embodiment. They showed they were willing to swim against the flow. They braved the stigma of difference, marched the streets, formed pressure groups and conjured up the determination to show the world what love could like. And if there's to be a Christian sexual revolution capable of turning the the tide, it will need to do the same.'  

Glynn Harrison, A Better Story: God, Sex & Human Flourishing, p.48.

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE

'A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not "die to itself" that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of "adjustment" or "mental cruelty." It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed towards the Kingdom of God.' 

Alexander Schmemann in James KA Smith, You Are What You Love, p.116. 

WHAT BAPTISM TEACHES US ABOUT FAMILIES

'Our promises in baptism - as parents and congregation - signal that what counts as "family" is not just the closed, nuclear unit that is so often idolized as "the family." Thus, if Christian congregations are truly going to live out of and into the significance of baptism, they will need to become communities in which the bloodlines of kin are trumped by the blood of Christ - where "natural" families don't fold into themselves in self-regard.' 

James KA Smith, You Are What You Love, p.116. 

OUR HEARTS

'Our hearts are like stringed instruments that are plucked by story, poetry, metaphor, images.' 

James KA Smith, You Are What You Love, p.91. 

VIRTUES

'...a virtue is a disposition that inclines us to achieve the good for which we are made.' 

James KA Smith, You Are What You Love, p.89.