I am the recipient of the unconditional love, grace, and compassion of Jesus Christ. Therefore, my identity is based solely on the fact that Jesus has saved me and is saving me. My identity and my way of living are based exclusively on the fact that Jesus is Lord.
"This change should always be the desired outcome, rather than the pride of having won a battle and leaving an opponent flattened and humiliated in the dust." J. Crotts
"If the church is to be the conscience of the state, it must begin with the courage to tell the truth." S. Bezner in _Your Jesus Is Too American_
"At times, the evangelical church has been indistinguishable from Western, white American culture."
They knew that Jesus was guided by compassion for the weak and broken and not by some hard-edged interpretation of the law.
"Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it."
As a result, we are angrier and more divided within both our nation and our church than we have been in a very long time.
"God gives us real treasures; we are rich people, but only if we put this capital into use. Forgive your brother; then you will also get peace for yourself. Otherwise you are a dead spiritual capitalist."
"Often we need to be shocked into an awareness of the motives that really shape our thoughts and actions, and we must respond to these revelations by pleading for the mercy that will allow us to repair our ways. All of this must happen in contexts where the basic issues of sin and grace are … Continue reading Quote of Note #191: Motives and the Public Life of Christians
Christians, especially American Christians, can be really good at sanitizing the gospels in order to make Jesus less offensive. We want a version of Jesus that doesn’t make us uncomfortable, one that fits with our American way of seeing things. The story of Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus is a case in point. One of the … Continue reading Bible Note #57: Zacchaeus #1–The Real Zacchaeus and That Terrible Children’s Song
Gary Chorpenning's Notebooks 