Comfort my people

Yahweh, then, not only blasts Assyria’s pride (vv. 20-29) but is careful to quiet his people’s fears (vv. 29-31, 32-34). The latter is as essential as the former and Yahweh does not forget to do so. I occasionally have heard from friends who attend staunchly evangelistic churches. Every service, apparently for worship, is pitched to call the lost to repentance. Most every sermon targets the unsaved (at least at the end). The never-missed ‘invitation’ calls unbelievers to faith. No need to debate the merits or demerits of this – except to say that such ministries are neglecting a whole ‘audience.’ They seek the lost but fail to feed the sheep. They want to bring conviction to sinners but never bring encouragement to believers. They try to disturb the unrepentant but seldom comfort the saints. Yahweh is not like that. He deals with Sennacherib but never forges the fears and tremblings of his people. he has a word for the reprobate but is always eager to console his church.

Dale Ralph Davis, pages 283-4 in 2 Kings: the Power and the Fury

Control

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them “in their place.” The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious. It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it as freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived.

Introduction to the Letter to the Galatians, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language translated by Eugene Peterson. NavPress.

Shot in the foot

For the last thirty or so years the modern church has sat itself down in public places and proceeded, with solemn and generally rather repellent insensitivity, to show the world how good it is at shooting itself in the foot. Writing, painting, dance, music ... these are things that have been regarded with deep suspicion by whole sections of the church and particularly when they suddenly find they have access to public platforms such as radio and television. Complexity and creativity are sucked out of the message ... leaving it so thin and pale, and yet so dogmatically assertive, that those who are exhorted to let it revolutionise their lives end up more annoyed than anything else.

Adrian Plass
qtd. in Art & Soul