Eric > Eric's Quotes

“Luther argues that when we fail to believe that God accepts us fully in Christ, and look to some other way to justify or prove ourselves, we commit idolatry.”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“Why do the Ten Commandments begin with a prohibition of idolatry? It is, Luther argued, because we never break the other commandments without breaking the first.”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“Christians agree that when we sell and market, we need to show potential customers that a product “adds value” to their lives. That doesn’t mean it can give them a life. But because Christians have a deeper understanding of human well-being, we will often find ourselves swimming against the very strong currents of the corporate idols of our culture.”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“took the opportunity to ask him about what he had seen in the case files. Horder responded that he reckoned only about a third of the problems that are brought to a physician”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“obviously different from everything that a nonbeliever does. That”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“all human work (especially excellent work), done by all people, as a channel of God’s love for his world. They will be able to appreciate and rejoice in their own work, whether it is prestigious or not, as well as in the skillful work of all other people, whether they believe or not. So this biblical conception of work—as a vehicle for God’s loving provision for the world”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“So when we say that Christians work from a gospel worldview, it does not mean that they are constantly speaking about Christian teaching in their work. Some people think of the gospel as something we are principally to “look at” in our work. This would mean that Christian musicians should play Christian music, Christian writers should write stories about conversion, and Christian businessmen and -women should work for companies that make Christian-themed products and services for Christian customers. Yes, some Christians in those fields would sometimes do well to do those things, but it is a mistake to think that the Christian worldview is operating only when we are doing such overtly Christian activities. Instead, think of the gospel as a set of glasses through which you “look” at everything else in the world. Christian artists, when they do this faithfully, will not be completely beholden either to profit or to naked self-expression; and they will tell the widest variety of stories. Christians in business will see profit as only one of several bottom lines; and they will work passionately for any kind of enterprise that serves the common good. The Christian writer can constantly be showing the destructiveness of making something besides God into the central thing, even without mentioning God directly.”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“Here Calvin is appreciating the way God blesses all those who are made in his image. Yet just prior to this, Calvin also writes that while “in man’s perverted and degenerate nature some sparks still gleam, [the light is nonetheless] choked with dense ignorance, so that it cannot come forth effectively. [His] mind, because of its dullness . . . betrays how incapable it is of seeking and finding truth.”173”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“Without an understanding of common grace, Christians will believe they can live self-sufficiently within their own cultural enclave. Some might feel that we should go only to Christian doctors, work only with Christian lawyers, listen only to Christian counselors, or enjoy only Christian artists. Of course, all non-believers have seriously impaired spiritual vision. Yet so many of the gifts God has put in the world are given to nonbelievers. Mozart was a gift to us—whether he was a believer or not. So Christians are free to study the world of human culture in order to know more of God; for as creatures made in His image we can appreciate truth and wisdom wherever we find it.”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“Christians’ disengagement from popular culture usually carries over into dualism at work. “Dualism” is a term used to describe a separating wall between the sacred and the secular. It is a direct result of a thin view of sin, common grace, and God’s providential purposes.”
― Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work

“Being “ordinary” means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren’t digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren’t serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves.”
― Michael S. Horton, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

“As Luther said, “God does not need our good works; our neighbor does.”
― Michael S. Horton, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

“God’s commands are focused on what it means to be in a relationship with others: to trust in God alone and to love and worship him in the way he approves and to look out for the good of our fellow image bearers.”
― Michael S. Horton, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

“Then the “teenager” was invented as a unique demographic in society. As a result, the youth group was created, offering adolescent-friendly versions of church. “In the second stage, a new adulthood emerged that looked a lot like the old adolescence. Fewer and fewer people outgrew the adolescent Christian spiritualities they had learned in youth groups; instead, churches began to cater to them.” Eventually, churches became them.18”
― Michael S. Horton, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

“We are the accumulation of our past experiences. How we channel those experiences and knowledge into wisdom as we move forward is critical.”
― Jack Carr, True Believer

“Stupid Americans. Didn’t they comprehend what was happening? They were killing themselves. While they foolishly spent their treasure and spilled their blood in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, the very ideology they were fighting to defeat was moving into their cities, their schools, their very government. The freedoms the West championed so proudly would be their ultimate downfall. Those freedoms would be targeted and exploited. Their freedoms were their weakness. Know thy enemy.”
― Jack Carr, True Believer

“Live Free or Die; Death is Not the Worst of Evils.”
― John Stark