The Human Context of the Preached Word, circa 1982

"It is difficult to imagine the world in the year A.D. 2000, by which time versatile micro-processors are likely to be as common as simple calculators are today.  We should certainly welcome the fact that the silicon chip will transcend human brain-power, as the machine has transcended human muscle-power.  Much less welcome will be the probably reduction of human contact as the new electronic network renders personal relationships ever less necessary.  In such a dehumanized society the fellowship of the local church will become increasingly important, whose members meet one another, and talk and listened to one another in person rather than on screen.  In this human context of mutual love the speaking and hearing of the Word of God is also likely to become more necessary for the preservation of our humanness, not less"

-John Stott, Between Two Worlds, written in 1982.

Also, this is why I won't ever preach via video or recommend a church where a member only sees his pastor on a giant TV screen.

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" - John 1:14

Accommodating Culture

"When religious groups compromise their foundational beliefs in order to coexist with the late sensate culture rather than challenging it or standing against it, they in effect consent to their own liquidation" (Harold O.J. Brown, The Sensate Culture, p. 67).

Gore Vidal on American Education

Link

Does anyone care what Americans think? They're the worst-educated people in the First World. They don't have any thoughts, they have emotional responses, which good advertisers know how to provoke.

How critical it is to raise a generation of people who know how to think, not just how to feel.

Machen on the Meaning of Freedom, Gal. 1:3-7

The Christian does indeed live still in this world.  It is a travesty on this Pauline doctrine when it is held to mean that when he escapes, inwardly, from the present evil world by the redeeming work of Christ the Christian can calmly leave the world to its fate.  On the conrary, Christian men, even after they have been redeemed, are left in this world, and in this world they have an important duty to perform.

In the first place, they do not stand alone, but are united in the great brotherhood of the Christian Church.  Into that brotherhood it is their duty to invite other men by the preaching of the gospel; and they should pray that that preaching, through the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit in the new birth, may be efficacious, and that the great brotherhood may expand yet more and more.

In the second place, Christians should by no means adopt a negative attitude toward art, government, science, literature, and the other achievements of mankind, but should consecrate these things to the service of God.  The separateness of the Christian from the world is not to be manifested, as so many seem to think that it should be manifested, by the presentation to God of only an impoverished man; but it is to be manifested by the presentation to God of all man's God-given powers developed to the full.  That is the higher Christain humanism, a humanism based not upon human pride but upon the solid foundation of the grace of God. 

But these considerations do not make any less radical the step of which Paul speaks.  It remains true that the Christian has escaped from this present age - from this present world with all its sin and all its pride.  The Christian continues to live in the world, but he lives in it as its master and not as its slave.  He can move the world because at last he has a place to stand.

J. Gresham Machen, Machen's Notes on Galatians, ed. John H. Skilton (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1972), 32-33.

Work and money

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. - Dr. Adrian Rogers

Dr. Rogers explains the natural results of disobedience to these commands:

Thessalonians 3: For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

Genesis 1: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Indeed. When men set aside their God given obligation and right (yes, "right" in the sense that "it is something we should want to do") and think that somebody else will do all the work and then hand it over, neither nation nor family can survive.