Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more "natural" it will both seem and actually be. Spontaneity, left to itself, can begin by excusing bad behavior and end by congratulating vice.

My aim has been to expound Scripture and to expound Scripture in such a way that I do not set one Scripture over against another.

Worship is humble and glad, worship forgets itself in remembering God; worship celebrates the truth as God's truth, not its own.

Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.

Arguments about God are like pointing a flashlight toward the sky to see if the sun is shining.

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world ... That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us.

Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth.