Daniel Ligon

“In investigating the lumpings that have shaped societies past and present, we should, I believe, be charitable toward those who merely inherited the classifications that were dominant in their own times. But we should be less patient with those, like Calhoun and Sanger, who pressed to enforce their preferred categories, to encode them in law and make them permanent. Such people are immensely dangerous, and for the health of our public world we need to become alert to the compelling power of lumping: having seen the ways lumping helps us manage information overload and create group solidarity, we should become aware of the temptations it poses to us—to all of us.”
― Alan Jacobs, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

“A faithful preacher starts the sermon preparation process by paying attention to a biblical text’s original audience and a text’s purposes for those readers. He 1) gives the biblical context control over the meaning of the text; 2) listens intently until he knows how the text fits within the overall message of the book; 3) sees the structure and emphasis of the text.”
― David R. Helm, Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God's Word Today

“Aristotle thought it impossible that humans could be friends with a god, because friends have things in common, and can say, “You, too?” But in becoming human, God‘s first great act of friendship, he became like us, drawing near to us so we could draw near to him. Since he humbled himself to get near us, only the humble, not the haughty, can be his friends. In his second great act of friendship, he gave his life for us (John 15:13). In our suffering, then, we can look at Jesus and say, “You, too?”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Songs of Jesus

“If family were easy, we could do it in our own fleshly self-propelled willpower. If we could do it on our own, we would not bear a cross. And if we are not bearing a cross, then what we are doing would not matter in the broad sweep of eternity. Family matters. That’s why it is hard.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home