Some Thoughts on Spirituality

“People change and needs change. So what was spirituality once is spirituality no more. What generally goes under the name of spirituality is merely the record of past methods.”

Don’t cut the person to fit the coat.

“When Christ bids you ‘Come,’ He bids you ‘Come and die.’” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Let's not pretend this is easier than it really is. If you want to live a morally pure life, here's what you have to do: You have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on a moral trash pile. And you have to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly. Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump.”

Jesus of Nazareth

"All I know is that I can’t keep pretending that I am immune to the things I spend my time doing, watching and listening to. I can’t keep thinking Proverbs was wrong and it is possible to put coals in your lap without getting burned.

At some point, I’ve got to be honest with myself. And God is making that harder and harder to ignore lately." Jon Acuff

Go to Church!

“My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the Churches and Gospel Halls … If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”

-- from “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” God in the Dock

The Sanctity of Unborn Human Life ...

"Joseph son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,
because
what is conceived in her
is from the Holy Spirit."

A Challenge to the Champions of the Right

"I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
Dr. Martin Luther King