The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works, but rather who God is.
Stanley HauerwasThe most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers.
Stanley HauerwasOur hope in life beyond death is a hope made possible, not by some general sentimental belief in life after death, but by our participation in the life of Christ.
Stanley HauerwasA social order bent on producing wealth as an end in itself cannot avoid the creation of a people whose souls are superficial and whose daily life is captured by sentimentalities. They will ask questions like “why does a good God let bad things happen to good people ” such people cannot imagine that a people once existed who produced and sang the psalms. If we learn to say “God ” we will do so with the prayer “My God my God why have you forsaken me?
Stanley Hauerwas