Gary Thomas > Quotes

“Bruner discusses the need for teachers to understand that children should want to study for study's own sake, for learnings's sake, not for the sake of good grades or examination success. The curriculum should, in other words, be interesting. (Yes, it sounds too obvious even to say, but sometimes the emphasis on content has trumped all other considerations, including that of making learning interesting.)”
― Gary Thomas

“Aside from the straightforwardly visible curriculum, there is the hidden curriculum. This exists in the wider set of beliefs and values pupils acquire because of the way that a school is run and its teaching organized. It is about the behaviour of the teachers, the textbooks chosen, the school rules.”
― Gary Thomas, Education: A Very Short Introduction

“When I'm in a toxic situation, I change my tactics. I don't expect the other person to act in a nontoxic way. That just leads to disappointment. Instead, I am focused on speaking the truth, guarding my sanity (trying to understand crazy behavior just makes you crazy), and doubling down on prayer: 'Heavenly Father, how do I best honor and serve you in this situation?”
― Gary Thomas

“Rather than falling into the trap of wanting an explanation or validation from the gaslighter, turn to self-validation. When you reaffirm the reality of the abuse you’ve experienced, you’ll get one step closer to healing from the narcissist. Anchor yourself in what happened and don’t let anyone rewrite reality for you.”
― Gary Thomas

“..we're not asking the right questions. What if your relationship isn't as much about you and your spouse as it is about you and God? "We have to stop asking of marriage what God never designed it to give — perfect happiness, conflict-free living, and idolatrous obsession... Finding a 'soulmate' — someone who will complete us: the problem with looking to another human to complete us is that, spiritually speaking, it's idolatry. We are to find our fulfillment and purpose in God and if we expect our spouse to be 'God' to us, he or she will fail every day. No person can live up to such expectations. Everyone has bad days, yells at his or her spouse, or is downright selfish. Despite these imperfections, God created the husband and wife to steer each other in His direction. If happiness is our primary goal, we'll get a divorce as soon as happiness seems to wane. If receiving love is our primary goal, we'll dump our spouse as soon as they seem to be less attentive. But if we marry for the glory of God, to model His love and commitment to our children, and to
reveal His witness to the world, divorce makes no sense.”
― Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? Library Edition

“Romance is built on loud and unreserved displays of affection, but such displays can be evidence of an undisciplined heart. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to limit your displays of affection by submitting to God's greater good for this person. Many couples tend to be undisciplined and hasty in declaring their affection. They rush in and blurt out their feelings before seriously even knowing the other person. And then they tend to be very self-centered, wanting the other person to respond in kind and begin meeting their romantic fantasies with equal desperation. Displays of public affection, verbal commitments that are born out of sheer emotion, false promises based on temporary emotions- these are all "useless" gifts we can be so generous with. But then we're too stingy with the costly gifts essential for the other person's well-being: we don't consider his or her welfare before we pronounce our commitment or affection; we don't consider whether our displays of affection will be healthy or cause possible confusion and later hurt. How do you truly know whether you are committed to this person and that you truly love him or her? Here's how you know: analyzing your feelings is the worst way of arriving at a measure of friendship; to count the cost is the best way. If you would rather not declare your love because you want to make sure the relationship is wise, that's counting the cost. That's love. If you would rather know whether your feelings are returned before you even know whether the relationship would honor God, that's selfishness. Analyzing your feelings is a waste of time (though that's what many singles focus on). Analyze instead the fruit of love, your willingness to sacrifice, and your commitment to the other person's welfare.”
― Gary Thomas, The Sacred Search: What if It’s Not about Who You Marry, but Why?

“The highest bond of friendship is forged in the fire of discipline, and it is true to experience to say that the greater cost of the forging, the greater will be the friendship.”
― Gary Thomas, The Sacred Search: What if It’s Not about Who You Marry, but Why?

“Each day provides “a multitude of ways to improve the way we shelter the Holy Spirit of God.”
― Gary Thomas, Every Body Matters

“Grieving isn’t sinful. It’s healthy to admit to God where you hurt, how you hurt, and what makes you hurt. Mixed with an attitude of surrender, grieving is a necessary step toward spiritual health, maturity, and a life of faith.”
― Gary Thomas

“Though undoubtedly deplorable sexism existed in this movement, astute women supporters picked up the truth behind muscular Christianity and challenged women as much as men. Fitness advocate Helen McKinstry asked what man contemplating marriage would choose a “delicate, anaemic, hothouse plant type of girl” over a “strong, full-blooded, physically courageous woman, a companion for her husband on the golf links and a playmate with her children? “2 Of course, even this sounds sexist to contemporary ears (getting in shape because otherwise men won’t want you), but some, such as YWCA secretary Mary Dunn, called women to fitness for the sake of the spiritual challenge that lay before them: Muscular women wanted, young women. What kind? Those to whom the Lord can say, “Do this or that for me,” and who can respond to the hardest command, the carrying out of which will mean endurance, a knowledge of the principles of the conservation of energy and the putting forth of will power through bodily power. It will mean the clear shining of a flowing soul through a transparent medium, instead of the cloudy glass of an … ill-used body.3”
― Gary Thomas, Every Body Matters

“The curriculum is not, in practical terms, simply about knowledge being transmitted, but about how that knowledge is handled – or even how it is transcended – by teachers to enable understanding in their charges. The subject matter itself, the knowledge, while important, is less important than the opportunities it offers for the development of thinking. Knowledge, Stenhouse suggested, should principally be seen in the curriculum as a medium for thinking.
His point is perhaps doubly true today, when knowledge pure and simple – facts, information – is so easily located. [...] what can now be found in seconds may have taken days or weeks to find, so the more that could be stored in the head, the better equipped a person was for life. The world of knowledge has been turned on its head in a period of only two decades or so by the Internet, and in our thinking about the curriculum we haven’t yet worked out the consequences.”
― Gary Thomas, Education: A Very Short Introduction

“Albert Einstein asserted that ‘Education is what remains when we have forgotten everything that has been learned at school.”
― Gary Thomas, Education: A Very Short Introduction

“Stoicism has never been a Christian philosophy. We serve a passionate God who feels deeply.”
― Gary Thomas

“When a toxic person doesn't get his or her way, their next gambit is often to make your motives sound sinister. They will lie to others about why you won't meet. They will insist you stop what you're doing and interact with them or else pay the price.

When to Walk Away”
― Gary Thomas

“Romance is build on loud and unreserved displays of affection, but such displays can be evidence of an undisciplined heart. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to limit your displays of affection by submitting to God's greater good for this person. Many couples tend to be undisciplined and hasty in declaring their affection. They rush in and blurt out their feelings before seriously even knowing the other person. And then they tend to be very self-centered, wanting the other person to respond in kind and begin meeting their romantic fantasies with equal desperation. Displays of public affection, verbal commitments that are born out of sheer emotion, false promises based on temporary emotions- these are all "useless" gifts we can be so generous with. But then we're too stingy with the costly gifts essential for the other person's well-being: we don't consider his or her welfare before we pronounce our commitment or affection; we don't consider whether our displays of affection will be healthy or cause possible confusion and later hurt. How do you truly know whether you are committed to this person and that you truly love him or her? Here's how you know: analyzing your feelings is the worst way of arriving at a measure of friendship; to count the cost is the best way. If you would rather not declare your love because you want to make sure the relationship is wise, that's counting the cost. That's love. If you would rather know whether your feelings are returned before you even know whether the relationship would honor God, that's selfishness. Analyzing your feelings is a waste of time (though that's what many singles focus on). Analyze instead the fruit of love, your willingness to sacrifice, and your commitment to the other person's welfare.”
― Gary Thomas, The Sacred Search: What if It’s Not about Who You Marry, but Why?

“For now let me just state that when interacting with a toxic person I have two aims: I want to do the right thing—keep seeking first God’s kingdom—and be the right person—nontoxic in return and acting out of love (whether that leads to confrontation or walking away depends on the situation). I can’t control a toxic person. I can’t change a toxic person. I can’t understand a toxic person. But I can guard my mission and maintain my character. Those are the only two things you can control when you live or work around toxic people.”
― Gary Thomas

“Love must be learned, and learned again and again; there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but waits only to be provoked.”
― Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? Library Edition

“Release. Engage in rejuvenating activities like yoga and meditation to release stressful emotions and to relax and reset your body, especially if it is tense. Trauma tends to get trapped within the body. Yoga and meditation can be useful outlets to “detox” from the impact of negative situations.”
― Gary Thomas

“If we don’t learn to turn disappointment into determination, helplessness into hope, and frustration into faith, our marriage won’t go far in a hostile world.”
― Gary Thomas

“It helps when we view our struggles in light of what they provide for us spiritually rather than in light of what they take from us emotionally”
― Gary Thomas

“One of the most significant consequences of the proliferation of tests over the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21th has been this tendency of assessment to direct the curriculum. Like a huge magnet, assessment drags curriculum toward it. It should, of course, even if we accept the need for tests, be the other way round: the curriculum should be shaped independent of any consideration of tests: tests should be constructed and administered in another space, both literally and metaphorically, hermetically sealed not only form the teacher’s gaze but also – and even more importantly – from the teacher’s consideration.
In practice, though, this never happens. It is inevitable that if you decide regularly to test children's performance on the curriculum, and if, furthermore, you make teacher’s careers and school’s futures depend on the result, the tests will very quickly come to dominate what is taught. Not only the content, but also the style and manner of the teaching will be influenced by the tests. Teaching will be about getting the right answer, irrespective of understanding.”
― Gary Thomas, Education: A Very Short Introduction

“Sometimes couples fight about everything but what they’re afraid of. Fear unaddressed can become anger, defensiveness, resentment, shame, and any number of secondary emotions. That’s why it can help so much to pull up the roots and face your fears by naming them as fears.”
― Gary Thomas