D.A. Carson > Quotes

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
― D.A. Carson

“If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior. ”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“...sometimes God chooses to bless us and make us people of integrity in the midst of abominable circumstances, rather than change our circumstances.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word, Volume 1

“However hard some things are to understand, it is never helpful to start picking and choosing biblical truths we find congenial, as if the Bible is an open-shelved supermarket where we are at perfect liberty to choose only the chocolate bars. For the Christian, it is God's Word, and it is not negotiable. What answers we find may not be exhaustive, but they give us the God who is there, and who gives us some measure of comfort and assurance. The alternative is a god we manufacture, and who provides no comfort at all. Whatever comfort we feel is self-delusion, and it will be stripped away at the end when we give an account to the God who has spoken to us, not only in Scripture, but supremely in his Son Jesus Christ.”
― D.A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil

“The Christian's whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“We are dealing with God's thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.”
― D.A. Carson

“Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.”
― D.A. Carson

“In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed is the talk show, where more often than not the primary aim is to entertain, even shock, not to think. When Geraldo and Oprah become the arbiters of public morality, when the opinion of the latest media personality is sought on everything from abortion to transvestites, when banality is mistaken for profundity because [it's] uttered by a movie star or a basketball player, it is not surprising that there is less thought than hype. Oprah shapes more of the nation's grasp of right and wrong than most of the pulpits in the land. Personal and social ethics have been removed from the realms of truth and structures of thoughts; they have not only been relativized, but they have been democratized and trivialized.”
― D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism

“All of us would be wiser if we would resolve never to put people down, except on our prayer lists.”
― D.A. Carson

“The broader problem is that a great deal of popular preaching and teaching uses the bible as a pegboard on which to hang a fair bit of Christianized pop psychology or moralizing encouragement, with very little effort to teach the faithful, from the Bible, the massive doctrines of historic confessional Christianity.”
― D.A. Carson

“Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself. Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset.”
― D.A. Carson, Worship by the Book

“We quickly learn that God is more interested in our holiness than in our comfort. He more greatly delights in the integrity and purity of his church than in the material well-being of its members. He shows himself more clearly to men and women who enjoy him and obey him than to men and women whose horizons revolve around good jobs, nice houses, and reasonable health. He is far more committed to building a corporate “temple” in which his Spirit dwells than he is in preserving our reputations. He is more vitally disposed to display his grace than to flatter our intelligence. He is more concerned for justice than for our ease. He is more deeply committed to stretching our faith than our popularity. He prefers that his people live in disciplined gratitude and holy joy rather than in pushy self-reliance and glitzy happiness. He wants us to pursue daily death, not self-fulfillment, for the latter leads to death, while the former leads to life. These essential values of the gospel must shape our praying, as they shape Paul’s. Indeed, they become the ground for our praying (“For this reason . . . I pray”): it is a wonderful comfort, a marvelous boost to faith, to know that you are praying in line with the declared will of almighty God.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“I would like to buy about three dollars worth of gospel, please. Not too much – just enough to make me happy, but not so much that I get addicted. I don't want so much gospel that I learn to really hate covetousness and lust. I certainly don't want so much that I start to love my enemies, cherish self-denial, and contemplate missionary
service in some alien culture. I want ecstasy, not repentance; I want transcendence, not transformation. I would like to be cherished by some nice, forgiving, broad-minded people, but I

myself don't want to love those from different races – especially if they smell. I would like enough gospel to make my family secure and my children well behaved, but not so much that I find my ambitions redirected or my giving too greatly enlarged. I would
like about three dollars worth of gospel, please.”
― D.A. Carson, Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians

“You cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself.”
― D.A. Carson, Worship by the Book

“Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder.”
― D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism

“effective prayer is the fruit of a relationship with God, not a technique for acquiring blessings.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“If we harbor bitterness and resentment, praying is little more than wasted time and effort.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“God’s purpose for the men and women he redeems is not simply to have them believe certain truths but to transform them in a lifelong process that stretches toward heaven.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“Some forms of absolutism are not bad; they may even be heroic.”
― D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications

“Be patient; it is better to be a chastened saint than a carefree sinner.”
― D.A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil

“Or have we ourselves become so caught up in the spirit of this age that we are content to be rich in information and impoverished in wisdom and godliness?”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“we will see profound spiritual renovation if by God’s grace we make it our commitment not to put anyone down—except on our prayer list.”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher’s sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity.”
― D. A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“The only thing of transcendent importance to human beings is the knowledge of God. This knowledge does not belong to those who endlessly focus on themselves. Those who truly come to know God delight just to know him. He becomes their center. They think of him, delight in him, boast of him.”
― D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry: An Exposition of Passages from 1 Corinthians

“When Postman wrote the introduction to his important book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he set forth the stance he adopts by contrasting the warnings of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think…. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.34”
― D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism

“On the last day, God will ask, in effect, “What have you done with the salvation I bestowed on you?”
― D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers

“To have faith in the gospel message is not the same thing as responding positively to the story of Superman, who is also said to invade our turf from beyond. Although biblical faith has a major ‘subjective’ or ‘personal’ or ‘existential’ component, it depends even more on its object - on the other side of the ‘window’.”
― D.A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (The Pillar New Testament Commentary

“Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.”
― D.A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word

“is it not nevertheless true that by and large we are better at organizing than agonizing? Better at administering than interceding? Better at fellowship than fasting? Better at entertainment than worship? Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration? Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying?”
― D.A. Carson, Praying with Paul: A Call to Spiritual Reformation