Good News Quote #48

From Chapter Nine, Why "Applying It to Your Life" Is Boring: Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful.

The "application" part of the sermon works by making people anxious about whether they're living the way "we as Christians are supposed to: faithful, loving, caring, experiencing the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and so on. It's a trap. Either you believe that stuff about yourself, which makes you self-righteous, or you don't, which makes you anxious. Either way you're stuck. You can try to convince yourself you're oh-so-loving (so much more loving than your neighbors -- now isn't that nice!) or you can worry about how shabby your Christian life is (haunted by that feeling, "what's wrong with me?"). There's no escaping the trap unless you believe that Christ came to save sinners and that includes you. As the apostle Paul wonderfully put it: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost" (1 Tim. 1:15). For each one of us, the foremost sinner is the one we're talking about when we say the word "I."

Good News Quote #21

From Chapter Four, Why You Don't Have to "Find God's Will for Your Life": Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom.

The way my students talk about it, God's will is out there waiting to be found, like the one person they're convinced God has for them to marry. But how do you know where to look? And how do you know when you've really found it? (Once again, the "how do you know?" questions, with their accompanying anxieties, are a sign that something's gone wrong). What happens if you mistake the will of God and don't marry "the one" that God has for you? (Do you wonder why evangelical Christians have as high a divorce rate as everyone else?) Or what happens if you only get God's "second best" will for your life? (Do you wonder why "disappointment with God" is such a trend among evangelicals?) A whole boatload of anxieties is tied up with this notion of "finding God's will."

Good News Quote #1

From the Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious

"Do not be anxious about anything," says Scripture (Phil. 4:6). The problem is: this makes us anxious! We have enough things to be anxious about already in life, and now we have to worry in addition about how to manage not to be anxious about any of it. And so the way we respond to this word from God, which is clearly meant to comfort us, actually adds a whole extra dimension to our burdens.