In the area of social righteousness we cannot be right on the inside and not do it. We cannot! Of course we have people who pretend that they can, but it simply isn't true.

There is absolutely nothing in what Jesus himself or his early followers taught that suggests you can decide just to enjoy forgiveness at Jesus' expense and have nothing more to do with him.

What we can do with these means (our own unassisted strength) is still very small compared to what we could do in acting in union with God himself, who created and ultimately controls all other forces.

There is no cure for the social battles that we fight in our culture - and there's so much grief around race, gender, and so forth - until you eliminate "withdrawal" and "attack" and replace them with "acceptance" and "help." Once you do that and not just talk about it, these other issues will fall into place quickly. They will not fall into place at all unless it is done this way.

As Augustine say clearly, God being God offends human pride. If God is running the universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who isn't running the universe and does not get to have things as they please.

We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.

If we do not make formation in Christ the priority, then we're just going to keep on producing Christians that are indistinguishable in their character from many non-Christians.