Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 73

My Favorite Quotes on Curiosity

Curiosity is a concept that can be hard to quantify or qualify and even hard to justify. Yet I wrote a whole book about, The Curious Christin: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life. Quotes like the ones that follow were part of what shaped, influenced, and flavored my thinking and writing, which is why they all ended up scattered throughout the book. You’ll see scientists, journalists, theologians, politicians, CEOs, and more represented. That’s because Curiosity affects every part of thinking and life.

The ability to retain a child’s view of the world with at the same time a mature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremely rare – and a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking.

― Mortimer J. Adler

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

– C.S. Lewis

The modern view seems to me to involve a false conception of growth. They accuse us of arrested development because we have not lost a taste we had in childhood. But surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things? . . . Where I formerly had one pleasure, I now have two.

– C.S. Lewis

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one’s adult enjoyment of what are called ‘children’s books.’ I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty – except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.

– C.S. Lewis

Let our teaching be full of ideas. Hitherto it has been stuffed only with facts.

– Anatole France

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

– Albert Einstein

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.

– Gloria Steinem

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

– John Lennon

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

– Steve Jobs

We’re trying to leverage everything we can to be better at what we do and what God has called us to do.

– Andy Stanley

True does not mean factual (though it may be factual); true means accurately reflecting human experience.

– Daniel Taylor

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

– Leo Burnett

“Curiosity killed the cat”

– Agent Vega.

“It also cured polio.”

– Simon, The Mentalist

When you lose your curiosity you basically have started to give up on life.

– John Maxwell

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands.

– Jeremy Taylor

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.

– Eleanor Roosevelt

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

– Albert Einstein

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.

– Clay P. Bedford

A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.

– Smiley Blanton

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing that it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is . . . learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

– Stanley Hauerwas

Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the Word of Jesus has not yet full seized us.

– Dallas Willard

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

– Elbert Hubbard

I think the key to the future is curiosity. I look at the people I admire most and they’re curious people, they’re open, they’re interested, they haven’t arrived.

– Carey Nieuwhof

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

– Albert Einstein

Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.

– Aaron Swartz

I learn from as many people all the time, anywhere, as I can.

– Craig Groeschel

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

– Dr. Seuss

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

– Charles William Eliot

We were successful because we were curious guys.

– Paul McCartney

We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that He is full of joy. Undoubtedly He is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of His love and generosity is inseparable from His infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.

– Dallas Willard.

A lot of leaders stop in their growth because they lose their curiosity.

– John Maxwell

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

– Leo Rosten

You must have an enormous appetite for humanity and for life and for the world. You really have to feel like you cannot fill yourself up enough with this amazing place we live in. If you have that feeling, like sincerely have it, you’ll do ok.

– Sebastian Junger

I think curiosity is everything. It’s the underlying motivation to learn. It’s a characteristic where you acknowledge you don’t know everything and perhaps there are better ways to do things. I’m always nervous about people who aren’t curious about anything in the world.

– Simon Sinek

Curiosity has occasionally gotten me in trouble. But even when curiosity has gotten me in trouble, it has been interesting trouble.

– Brian Grazer

Everything in life conspires against our sense of wonder: age, experience, our jobs, even our church.

– Andy Stanley

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

– James Stephens

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

– Samuel Johnson

What made Mr. Merrill infinitely more attractive was that he was full of doubt ; he expressed our doubt in the most eloquent and sympathetic ways. In his completely lucid and convincing view, the Bible is a book with a troubling plot, but a plot that can be understood. . . Although he knew all the best— or, at least, the least boring— stories in the Bible, Mr. Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith’s opposite.

– A Prayer for Owen Meany

Love is curiosity sometimes. Concentrated wondering about the other one.

– Kij Johnson

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.

– Roy T. Bennett

The best leaders learn from anything and anybody . . . The greatest leaders are the curious ones.

– Louie Giglio

Persistently poke assumptions.

– Dan Rockwell

Church leaders have so much to learn from business leaders and business leaders have so much to learn from Christian and church leaders. We should be students of each other all the time.

– Craig Groeschel

“We will never be of much use in this life until we’ve developed a healthy obsession with the next.”

– Sam Storms

It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship; for when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God’s glory, though it may not express itself in song, or even utter its voice with bowed head in humble prayer, yet it silently adores.

– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

And one thing I know about curiosity: it’s democratic. Anyone, anywhere, of any age or education level, can use it.

– Brian Grazer

You can take a free (and fast) evaluation to see just how curious you are at CuriousChristianBook.com. 

New Happy Rant: Game of Thrones, Osteen, and T-Swift

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie and Barnabas tackle three big issues that hit in recent weeks.

Kevin DeYoung’s article saying Christian’s should not watch Game of Thrones
The criticism of Joel Osteen for his church’s slowness to help Flood victims
Old dudes who think it’s counter-cultural to like Taylor Swift

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

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Episode #159

3 Things Pastors’ Kids Need From Their Churches

Everyone in church notices the pastor’s kids. People don’t think about noticing them, it just happens. I grew up as a PK, the son of John Piper, and even I notice PKs. It’s almost impossible to avoid. They’re like the first children of the church.

Don’t think you notice them? Here’s what it looks like.

You know things about their personal lives you don’t know about any other kid in the church: where they’re going to college, who they took to prom, that they just got braces, that they got pulled over for speeding last week. You make comments about their behavior to them or to anyone else. “Did you see his new tattoo?” “You can’t talk like that; you’re the pastor’s kid.” “Can you believe she wore that to church?” “Pastors’ kids should know better than to run in church.” You expect them to speak out in Sunday school, to pray, to lead. You have a tacit standard for them as PKs. You hold them to a higher standard than their peers in church, and you’re not even trying to do so.

What you might not realize is how this makes PKs feel.

They feel like people are always watching. The fact that you know personal things about them makes them hyper aware of you watching, listening, knowing.

They feel like there is no room for mistakes. People watch them. People tell them how to act. People have a standard for them. What pressure! They know they’re going to screw up, but how can they with everyone watching?

They feel as if they have to have it all together, to have a firm faith and a solid family life. No room for questions or doubts. No chance to wonder or wander. No struggles allowed. And really, who could they ask any way?

But you can help them. You can encourage PKs. Here are three ways.

1) Let PKs be themselves.

For better and worse, let PKs be themselves. One of the hardest parts of being a PK is being what others expect you to be without ever being able to find out who you are. Remember how you came to faith? Remember how you’ve grown in faith? I bet it was through struggles, through mistakes, through seeing the profound grace of God when you needed it most. I bet it came when you connected with Jesus in the deeply personal way instead of trying to be perfect or live up to someone else’s expectations. That’s exactly what PKs need—the room to connect with Jesus like that. And it might be a winding road with mistakes along the way, in fact it probably will be. But that’s OK.

2) Don’t ask anything of a PK you wouldn’t ask of anyone else.

One of the hardest things about being a PK is being known of by so many people you don’t know. It’s compounded when you interact as if you’re friends even though they can’t even remember your name. When you delve into their personal life, it doesn’t feel like friends talking; it feels like an invasion of privacy. Even more so when you demand that they act a certain way. When seven boys are sprinting around the church lobby, why stop the PK? When all the high school girls are dressing a certain way, why call out the PK? Step back and realize that you might be unwittingly piling expectations and scrutiny on them even though your motives are pure.

3) Befriend them as a friend, not as a novelty.

PKs need friends they can trust, friends who care nothing about their last name and everything about their personhood. They need friends who will love them for who they are not because of their daddy’s position in the church. They need friends who will help them, push them, listen to them and not judge them. These kinds of friends are the ones around whom PKs can begin to figure out who they really are, who God really is, and what it means to love Jesus in a personal way, not just a way that meets expectations.

For more on serving pastors’ kids well and the challenges they face check out my book The Pastor’s Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity. If this blog is all the reading you can handle you can get the audio book which I read instead. I’m no Morgan Freeman, but it’s not too bad.

This post was originally published at ChurchLeaders.com

New Happy Rant: NFL Season Preview

In this episode of the Happy Rant Ted and Barnabas bring you a solid hour of NFL talk including the following:

The Colin Kaepernick Saga
Boring Good Teams
Intriguing Bad Teams
Super Bowl Picks
Offensive Player of the Year
Defensive Payer of the Year
Stories that need to go away

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

To listen you can:

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Episode #158

He Reads Truth: How Great Thou Art

I have the privilege of contributing to He Reads Truth, a website of whose purpose is “To help men become who we were made to be, by doing what we were made to do, by the power and provision that God has given us to do it, for the glory of Jesus Christ.” They do this by providing scripture reading plans accompanied by reflections that can be accessed for free online or purchased as print books. For those of you looking to engage scripture in a fresh way – either because you are dried up or have been away from it, these studies/plans will refresh your soul and engage your mind.

What follows is one of the pieces I wrote on the hymn, How Great Thou Art. You can find the full plan HERE.

Psalm 121:1-8, Psalm 145:3-7, 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

Does your soul ever sing? That phrase sounds a bit odd. We sing in the car when a favorite tune comes on. We sing the national anthem at sporting events. We sing in church (sometimes). We say that good news is music to our ears and the sound of bacon frying is sweet music too. But do our souls sing?

That’s the refrain of “How Great Thou Art”— “Then sings my soul…”

But what does that mean?

My guess is that each of us knows what it means even if it is not the phrase we’ve used. Maybe we’ve never put words to the experience of the soaring, lifting, and filling of the soul—to the passion and joy that sometimes wells up in us— or maybe we can’t put words to it. But each verse of this hymn paints a picture of those things that might make a soul sing.

Verse one looks at the cosmos, the whole universe. It sees the power and bigness and majesty of God’s creation expanding beyond our sight, bigger than our comprehension. I think about lying in a canoe at night in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota, staring at a sky so full of stars that it’s nearly as bright as the dawn. That makes my soul sing.

Verse two focuses in on the tangible creation—the sounds of birds and beautiful mountain views. I think of climbing House Mountain in East Tennessee, scrambling over boulders and pulling myself up on saplings and over fallen trees so that I could step onto a rocky outcrop and see the view of the valley below. The breeze cooled me and the quiet was so still that I could hear my soul sing then too.

While those verses offer hints of what it is that fills our soul, verses 3 and 4 dive deep into what the song of our souls really is. Yes, God created a majestic beautiful world that makes us feel and yearn, but we don’t find fullness in that. He did something more. He sent His Son to take our sins from us, to suffer and die on our behalf, to bear the burden we could not bear. Indeed, “I scarce can take it in.”

But that is not all.

The final glorious stanza of the hymn reveals the final glorious stanza of God’s mission – Christ shall come and will be greeted with shouts of praise. We will “bow in humble adoration” because His glory will be so great. Wrongs will be made right. Sin and pain will be abolished. There is only one response to this: “My God, how great Thou Art!”

What makes your soul sing? Don’t stop at the song of nature, no matter how beautiful it is. Find the truest soul song there is in the work Jesus Christ has done for you.

How Great Thou Art

Carl Gustav Boberg, 1885; Stuart K. Hine, c. 1920

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds thy hands have made,

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed:

Refrain

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:

How great thou art! How great thou art!

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:

How great thou art! How great thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander

And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,

When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,

And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:

Refrain

And when I think that God, his Son not sparing,

Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in,

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died to take away my sin.

Refrain

When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation

And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!

Then I shall bow in humble adoration,

And there proclaim, My God, how great thou art!

New Happy Rant: Blue Checks, Greeting Times, and Leading Yourself

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas take on there following topics:

Blue checks and being verified
Greeting times in church
The eclipse
When people talk about “Leading yourself”

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

To listen you can:

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Episode #157

Missions Without Curiosity is Dead

The world is so much larger than us. It is beautiful and terrible and majestic and sublime. It holds the lives of seven billion unique image bearers of God from tens of thousands of cultures and millions of subcultures. Most of these seven billion people do not know Christ.

None of this matters to the uncurious person – this is most people most of the time – because all he can think about is what’s for lunch or when new episodes of Daredevil will be on Netflix for his binge watching pleasure. He is wrapped up in his personal budget, vacation plans, work to-dos, and what is in front of his face in today’s waking hours. Uncuriosity not only doesn’t care about the world. It cannot because all it sees it what is convenient and available and comfortable right here right now.

What is the greatest obstacle to missions, to reaching the lost? Some would say apathy. Some would say a lack of awareness. Some would say comfort or laziness. All these are correct, and all of them are direct results of being uncurious.

Curiosity is a sense of things imprinted on our hearts by God so that we can be image bearers of God. It is how we observe and absorb God’s truth, God’s presence, and God’s work and it’s how we carry the message of these into the world too. When we lack curiosity we lose touch with who God is, what God has done, what God is doing, and who we are in light of that. And we lose the ability to care about those who don’t know the true God at all.

Curiosity and Crossing Cultures

Western Christians often think we have a corner on the gospel. We think of Christian culture as western culture and vice versa. But it is not “our” gospel. One of the greatest miracles of the gospel is that it transcends every culture. That’s because it is the truth of a transcendent God who created all people. When we attach cultural values and implications to the saving truth of the gospel we often hinder it and limit its effect for those from different cultures. The gospel is not mono-cultural, we are. This is why we must be curious and open-minded enough to learn other cultures and expressions of the gospel.

Don Richardson, in his excellent book Peace Child, shares the story of how curiosity can connect the gospel to the lost. He shares his own family’s story of going to Papua New Guinea to reach the cannibalistic Sawi people. The Sawis so highly valued treachery and deceit that when the Richardsons began to share with them the story of Jesus’ life Judas, not Jesus, was the hero. By any measure their culture was one of counter-gospel.

How could the Richardsons explain the gospel to a people whose greatest values appeared to be antithetical to gospel values? The villain was their hero. The betrayer was their archetype. Don and his wife saw a way through a ritual the tribe held called the “peace child” in which warring tribes exchanged a child in order to make a truce. Through this ritual, the giving of a child by his father for the sake of peace, the Richardsons were able to introduce the gospel, showing how our heavenly Father gave His Son for the sake of our eternal peace. Could that have happened if they had not been open-minded, curious, looking for the cultural connection to truth?

This story shows how every culture intersects with truth somewhere. Every heart yearns for it. It takes curiosity, open-mindedness, and a lot of patience to see it often times. But it is there.

Curiosity and Gospel Conviction

What we need is curious conviction – both as missions senders and missions goers. We must welcome cultural differences and perspectives without wavering in our commitment to Jesus. We must recognize that what and how we see it we see is not the entirety of truth. We must be humble enough to realize that we could be wrong in our expression and application of convictions. We often are. And we must constantly be looking for where truth and people intersect because that point is where the gospel can land.

Curiosity is not the trite trait of a hobbyist – it’s the catalyst for connecting truth to life. It is the engine that moves deeper in our understanding of God and broader in our love for His people – and for those who are not yet His people. For a sender curiosity opens the eyes to the needs of the missionary and the mission field. For a missionary curiosity opens the eyes to the fertile soil in any culture where the seeds of the Word can grow. For both senders and goers curiosity breeds empathy, a care for others in their context and need.

Such empathy is the motivation to go into all the world to make disciples. It is the tug at the heart to be the feet that bring good news (or to support those feet). So it is that curiosity is vital to missions here at home and to the ends of the earth.

For more on curiosity, ministry, life, and faith check out my latest book, The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life.

If you would like to take a short (FREE) evaluation of your own curiosity visit CuriousChristianBook.com.

Video: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

Doubt and faith seem like opposites, but are they really? In this short video, recorded at the Legacy conference in Chicago, I do my best to explain how the two are not always in opposition. In fact, doubt can even strengthen faith and that means that our questions are not off limits and mystery is an invitation to believe.

For more about the relationship  between faith and doubt, how to ask questions well, and how our questions can lead us into deeper faith check out my book, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith.

New Happy Rant: Charlottesville, God Things, and Self Care

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas cover a huge range from the most (genuinely) serious to the ranty and absurd.

The church’s response the events in Charlottesville, both good and bad
How should we respond to racial conflict and overt racism?
What exactly is a “God thing” and why to Christians insist on using this phrase?
Is “self-care” a good thing? Is it just another excuse to be self-absorbed?

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there! While supplies last you can get a free copy of Hello, I love You: Adventures in Adoptive Fatherhood by Ted when you place an order with Lagares Roasters too!

To listen you can:

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Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
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Episode #156

New Happy Rant:

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas cover a huge range from the most (genuinely) serious to the ranty and absurd.

The church’s response the events in Charlottesville, both good and bad
How should we respond to racial conflict and overt racism?
What exactly is a “God thing” and why to Christians insist on using this phrase?
Is “self-care” a good thing? Is it just another excuse to be self-absorbed?

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there! While supplies last you can get a free copy of Hello, I love You: Adventures in Adoptive Fatherhood by Ted when you place an order with Lagares Roasters too!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #156