Sublime
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“The consequence of a distorted will is passion. By servitude to passion, habit is formed, and habit to which there is no resistance becomes necessity. By these links, as it were, connected one to another (hence my term a chain), a harsh bondage held me under restraint.”
James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
the moral act is significantly moral only when it is free, without the compulsion of a reason or necessity. This is also the deepest meaning of the Christian doctrine of free will, for to act “in union with God” is to act, not from the constraint of fear or pride, nor from hope of reward, but with the baseless love of the “unmoved mover.”
Alan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
Yet now the how of your own deeds means you’re free from needing God at all, as long as how you live your life makes you happy and not a jerk (to echo Moralistic Therapeutic Deism).
Andrew Root • The Pastor in a Secular Age (Ministry in a Secular Age Book #2): Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God
The therapeutic—that God wants to endorse my life and keep me happy—is contrasted with kenosis, which makes life not about the therapeutic but about the ministerial.
Andrew Root • Faith Formation in a Secular Age : Volume 1 (Ministry in a Secular Age): Responding to the Church's Obsession with Youthfulness
The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives is the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt, upon ins
... See moreDallas Willard • The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
The God of Calvinism demanded of his believers not single good works, but a life of good works combined into a unified system.
Max Weber • The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
He created the church to meet your five deepest needs: a purpose to live for, people to live with, principles to live by, a profession to live out, and power to live on. There is no other place on earth where you can find all five of these benefits in one place.
Rick Warren • The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?
WHOSE HEART ISN’T prodigal? One of the gifts Augustine offers is a spirituality for realists. Conversion is not a “solution.” Conversion is not a magical transport home, some kind of Floo powder to heaven. Conversion doesn’t pluck you off the road; it just changes how you travel.
James K. A. Smith • On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts
But this would avoid the source of the malaise, which is the opaqueness of divine action. We must speak of God’s being in and through God’s action in order to have something to talk about in a pastor’s identity and function in this age. People find it impractical to talk about God, but the only way to get to something practical is to talk about God
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