Classic & Contemporary Excerpts from August 12, 1996

TRAVELERS UNAWARE

Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? . . .

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of tnt to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

–Annie Dillard in

“Teaching a Stone to Talk”

PACKAGED TRUTH

Were he still broadcasting, Walter Cronkite might end his newscast with “and that’s the way we say it is” to better represent the tenor of today’s news media.

— “Connect” magazine (Spring 1996)

OF POVERTY AND LOSS

Far back in my boyhood I remember an old saint telling me that after some services he liked to make his way home alone, by quiet byways, so that the hush of the Almighty might remain on his awed and prostrate soul. That is the element we are losing, and its loss is one of the measures of our poverty, and the primary secret of our inefficient life and service. And what is the explanation of the loss? Preeminently our impoverished conception of God. . . . Men who are possessed by a powerful God can never themselves be impotent. But have we not robbed the Almighty of much of His awful glory, and to that extent are we not ourselves despoiled? We have contemplated the beauties of the rainbow, but we have overlooked the dim severities of the throne. We have toyed with the light, but we have forgotten the lightning. We have rejoiced in the fatherhood of our God, but too frequently the fatherhood we have proclaimed has been throneless and effeminate. We have picked and chosen according to the weakness of our own tastes, and not according to the full-orbed revelation of the truth, and we have selected the picturesque and rejected the appalling.

–John Henry Jowett in

“Listening to the Giants”

“HE MUST INCREASE. . .”

So much so-called “testimony” today is really autobiography and even sometimes thinly disguised self-advertisement, that we need to regain a proper biblical perspective. All true testimony is testimony to Jesus Christ, as he stands on trial before the world.

–John Stott in

“Authentic Christianity”

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

The knowledge of God without that of our wretchedness creates pride. The knowledge of our wretchedness without that of God creates despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle way, because in Him we find both God and our wretchedness.

–Blaise Pascal in

“PensEes” (trans. Kegan Paul)

LESSONS FROM THE AGES

Someone asked the American historian Charles A. Beard if he could summarize the lessons of history in a brief book. He said he could do it in four sentences: “(1) Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power; (2) The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small; (3) The bee fertilizes the flower it robs; (4) When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

–Warren W. Wiersbe in

“On Being a Servant of God”

OUR MOST BASIC VICE

Pride is a vice that ill suits those that would lead others in a humble way to heaven. Let us take heed, lest when we have brought others so far, the gates should prove too narrow for ourselves. For God, who thrust out a proud angel, will not tolerate a proud preacher, either. For it is pride that is at the root of all other sins: envy, contention, discontent, and all hindrances that would prevent renewal.

Where there is pride, all want to lead and none want to follow or to agree.

–Richard Baxter in

“The Reformed Pastor”