Individualism Has Brought Some Social Benefits

“One Puritan belief was an increased emphasis on the authority of individual experience in spiritual formation. This belief would have revolutionary consequences. The emphasis on the individual soul and its importance helped to move men and women toward greater spiritual equality. And such spiritual equality naturally had implications for other spheres; spiritual equality expanded into personal, political, and social equality.” -Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions

Sin as Self-Sovereignty

“The essence of sin is self-sovereignty. Repentance, therefore, isn’t simply feeling sorry for sin. It’s losing control—dying to the need to direct, defend, define, or do. It’s allowing the true King to reign at last.” -Duke Kwon

Despair, Arrogance, Self-Reliance

“Despair and arrogance are two sides of the same coin-and that coin is called self-reliance.” Andrew Davis, Revitalize

Wilbourne: How Unlimited Freedom Is a Let Down

“First, Choose Your Own Identity’s accent on unlimited freedom often leads to paralysis.

Second, and closely related to the first, this mindset leads to greater anxiety.

Third, having more choices actually makes us more discontent.

Fourth, the freedom-enthroning narrative of Choose Your Own Identity ends up robbing us of the very freedom it promises.

Fifth, this mindset affects how we view God.”

 

Want a Bigger, Brighter World? ‘You’ Need to Be a Smaller Part of It

“How much larger your life would be,” Chesterton says, “if your self could become smaller in it.”

 

Humble Perspective

“Take a bucket, fill it with water,
Put your hand in—clear up to the wrist.
Now pull it out; the hole that remains
Is a measure of how much you’ll be missed….

The moral of this quaint example:
To do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself, but remember,
There is no Indispensible Man!”

-Anonymous

Always Searching, But Never Coming to a Knowledge of the Truth

Neal: Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ’till we get there.’
Sal: Where we going, man?
Neal: I don’t know but we gotta go.

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Category-Shattering

“the original listeners were not melted into tears by this story but rather they were thunderstruck, offended, and infuriated. Jesus’s purpose is not to warm our hearts but to shatter our categories. Through this parable Jesus challenges what nearly everyone has ever thought about God, sin, and salvation. His story reveals the destructive self-centeredness of the younger brother, but it also condemns the elder brother’s moralistic life in the strongest terms.” -Tim Keller, The Prodigal God

I Need An Other

“Sanity has a deep awareness, ‘I need help. I can’t do life right on my own. Someone outside me must intervene.'” – David Powlison

God’s Tough Love

God intends to “break your schemes for earthly joy.” -John Newton

BTW NOTE: So we find lasting joy in him.