The only thing that frees you from the need to pretend in order to make people believe you are something when you are actually not is the gospel because the gospel tells you that identity, my meaning, my security, and all of those things are in Christ.

Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly with our performance and accomplishments.

To focus on how I'm doing more than what Christ has done is Christian narcissism

...this culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.

Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn't have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves.

What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root.

Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of Evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain.