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.