Emmanuel Boston

“I propose that so much of what drives our responses to our kids is an unannounced set of laws that are more about what we want for ourselves and our lives than what God wants for and from our children. In our allegiance to our law, we end up breaking God’s law in our interactions with our children. In this way we are just like our children: people who need to be rescued from ourselves.”
― Paul David Tripp, Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family

“Theology that steps back in time only to hide there from the problems to be faced in the present ends up hidebound and moribund. Or, worse, it becomes an empty scholasticism that refuses to attend to the needs of the present, accepting only what has been hallowed by time and use, as if it is sufficient to look backward without looking forward.”
― Oliver D. Crisp, Christology, Ancient and Modern: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics

“If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get my children to believe.”“I will discipline the hell out of my children.”“It’s my job to ensure that they do what is right.”“If I do nothing else, I will send children out into the world who are prepared to live right.”“After I’m done with him, he’ll never even think of doing that again.” The assessment in these statements that children need to change is right. The deep desire for that change which motivates a parent is right. The commitment to work for that change is right. Then what is wrong with each of these statements? Each of them assumes power on the part of parents that no parent has, and that assumption creates all kinds of parenting trouble. If you are going to be what God has designed you to be as a parent and do what he’s called you to do, you must confess one essential thing. This confession has the power to change much about the way you act and react toward your children. It is vital that you believe and admit that you have no power whatsoever to change your child.”
― Paul David Tripp, Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family

“A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter and thinking himself a good Christian.”
― George MacDonald, An Anthology: 365 Readings