Quotes from Jon Ward

But I was not really shown how to take up my cross and actually follow Christ. The crisis of American Christianity basically boils down to this failure. I still don't claim to know how to walk the way of the cross or the path of resurrection very well. But I think that the quest to do so is still at the heart of a meaningful faith. What does it look like to live sacrificially but also incarnationally? Christ was God incarnate, made flesh. How do we walk through death to life, here, now?

Evangelicals love the Bible. They live their entire lives by it. But they have hugged the Bible so tightly that they have suffocated it.

Culture is not a territory to be won; it is instead a resource we are called to steward."4

The wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr. had been long forgotten. "The church must be reminded that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state—never its tool," King said. "As long as the church is a tool of the state it will be unable to provide even a modicum of bread for men at midnight.

If we care about knowledge, freedom and peace, then we need to stake a strong claim: anyone can believe anything, but liberal science—open-ended, depersonalized checking by an error-seeking social network—is the only legitimate validator of knowledge, at least in the reality-based community.

I was reminded that retribution does not break cycles of violence and injustice, but grace might.

More than one person I know said that many of the deaths from COVID-19 were among older people or those with bad health. The clear implication was that, well, these people were going to die anyway. But this wasn't something they said in lament, sad that we had been unable to protect people by doing as much as we could to value life.

Do you want to be known for your demands for your rights, even at the potential cost of other people's lives? Or do you want to be known as the type of Christian who is happy to be inconvenienced to serve the weak around us?

The Advent season offers something remarkable to the church—the calling to live in two places at once," Rutledge said in a 2016 sermon.

Much of this war mentality came from their theology. They rejected the idea that the line between good and evil runs through the human heart. Rather, they saw the dividing line as running through an invisible world of angels and demons.

Piper talked forcefully about how the greatest strength of true Christianity is that it gives people the courage to endure defeat and even suffering without bitterness and that this is the way that the faith will advance, not through vanquishing enemies.

As I looked around me in 2016, I saw conservative White Christians demonstrating much more fear than faith.

Telling the truth often elicits hostility and anger.

Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much," Christ said (Luke 16:10).

let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth" (Prov. 27:2).

It was weak to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rather, you should do unto others as you feared they were going to do unto you. Better to preemptively strike than to let "them" get you first.

It all brought to mind the words of C. S. Lewis: "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

when Jesus was crucified, "the image of God was one of absolute vulnerability.