"Body Piercing..." quotes part two

I have TONS of quotes to put up, and I don't want to force you to read them at once. So here's installment #2.

" 'The biggest category of God's word' in the Psalms, [Kaiser] says, 'has to do with pain, struggle suffering...God doesn't answer every one of our prayers; nor should He." (32) Reminds me of when Michael Card came to ENC and talked about laments.

a cliche: "Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable."(49)

"Some people, they have a kind of narrow focus that usually widens later on. But I think Christians don't have a monopoly on truth. You can learn about truth from any other religion...pull truth from various sources." (52-DvP) The part about a narrow focus becoming wider is what has been happening to me since going to college, I think. But as far as the truth thing, you can find things that are true, you can also find things that reflect the Truth.

"In focusing on individual belief, evangelicals have necessarily focused on individuals....Poverty, hunger, abortion, drug abuse, and other such issues are approached as personal failings rather than social problems. Systemic elements simply aren't included in the equation" (65 from the book Apostles of Rock)

(Mark Driscoll) "In the Bible, we are told to be culturally relevant, love people who disagree with our Christian beliefs, and have friends and fun like Jesus did. Jesus was often invited to parties by scandalous people, was surrounded with large crowds who liked hanging with him, and was accused by stuffed shirt religious types of eating too much, drinking too much, and having the wronge kind of friends. But, Jesus never sinned. For example, he drank alcohol but did not get drunk, ate a lot but was not a glutton, and had some messed-up friends but never shagged any of the loose women who considered him a friend." (110) This is interesting considering one of my youth leaders once advised our teens to not hang out with their friends anymore if they started smoking or something. I've never been in that situation exactly, but I talk to friends that cuss and I don't cuss. Granted, maybe, in high school, I never let myself get close enough to people that I thought were too "out there" for my tastes, and maybe I could have, and not done the same things they did.

Ballmer about "dispensational premillenialism" (about end times): "this idea 'relieved evangelicals of the obligation to labor for the amelioration of social ills' and that they 'increasingly stood in judgement of culture and awaited its destruction, which would follow their translation into heaven.' In other words, all is not lost for unbelievers, but their salvation, much like their socioeconomic status, is their own responsibility." (122)
Sounds like they just sat there. And waited and twiddled their thumbs and waited some more. Interesting that the Nazarene denomination had such a great emphasis on helping the people on the streets (I think so anyway), and so much of the focus now is on international aid. Not a problem, mind you, but it seems at my church that if we just put some money in the offering plate we are making a REAL difference. Sometimes that's all we can do, but what if we took more of an interest in helping our neighbors....the ones that need help watching their kids, or need help learning to read, or to know English, or tutoring, or opening our homes to disconnected individuals? Instead of keeping in our own little Christian circles, and having people come to us, we should take the initiative and look in our own backyards.

"'As far as I'm aware, drink is mentioned in the Gospels three times,' Stockman replied--none of them having to do with prohibition. Social justice, on the other hand, is something Jesus talks about a lot." (135)