Carol

“This is the great failing of today’s evangelical lobby. Instead of testifying confidently to the presence of a supreme and sovereign God—a celestial chess master rolling His eyes at our earthly checkerboard—Christian conservatives have acted like toddlers lost at the shopping mall, panicked and petrified, shouting the name of their father with such hysteria that his reputation is diminished in the eyes of every onlooker.”
― Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

“Beauty, mystery, wonder. They all three go together.

The primary human response to an encounter with overwhelming beauty is wonder. Wonder is the transcendent sensation we experience when we find ourselves in the presence of an awe-inspiring sunset, artistic masterpiece, or newborn baby. Wonder is the uniquely human reaction to the sublime. Wonder is a large part of what it means to be human.

Wonder defined is, "a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, or inexplicable."

We wonder at two things - the beautiful and the mysterious.

A life stripped of beauty and mystery is a life barren of wonder, and a life without wonder is a kind of deep poverty.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World

“I’m trying to square this,” he said to Volf. “How can Christianity accommodate itself to such appalling anti-Christian conduct? And once you get to a point where you can say anybody’s conduct can be excused because God has a larger plan and uses flawed vessels, then what is left of an actual Christianity at that point?” Volf could only shake his head, searching for the words. “I think you’ve identified the problem really well,” the professor said.”
― Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

“Two things can be true. First, most of America’s founding fathers believed in some deity, and many were devout Christians, drawing their revolutionary inspiration from the scriptures. Second, the founders wanted nothing to do with theocracy. Many of their families had fled religious persecution in Europe; they knew the threat posed by what George Washington, several weeks into his presidency in 1789, described in a letter to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia as “the horrors of spiritual tyranny.” Washington was hardly alone: From skeptics like Benjamin Franklin to committed Christians like John Jay, the founders shared John Adams’s view that America was conceived not “under the influence of Heaven” or in conversation with the Creator, but rather by using “reason and the senses.”
― Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism