christian living on Stupidity

Jesus doesn’t just use the shepherd metaphor when he refers to himself as the door. Over and over in the Bible, we are compared to sheep. Some people think it’s heartwarming. But I hate to tell you, i...

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of sil...

Lord of families, tribes, peoples, nations and all the world: it’s for freedom You’ve set us free from sin, guilt, and judgment; free to do what is right and just, what is compassionate, gracious and ...

He who believes his doctrine to be perfectly right and true has only to lift his hands and touch his ears and discover they are the long furry ears of a donkey.

Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.

The first type of fool in the Bible is the character that might be called the fool proper. Folly in a fallen world is obviously partly relativistic, and we are always wise to say, “Says who?” Differen...

He who provides for this life but takes not care for eternity is wise for a moment but a fool forever.

In our culture slow is a pejorative. When somebody has a low IQ, we dub him or her slow. When the service at a restaurant is lousy, we call it slow. When a movie is boring, again, we complain that it’...

All: Oh kind and generous God, You have condescended so graciously to our humble needs. You have given us holy baptism to teach us such a simple truth: the blood of Christ washes away our sins. Great ...

Our goodness is our biggest self-delusion, and all of us seem to be living with it.

The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.

Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.

A college professor met his new class on the first day of school. He stood before the students and gave a nice introduction to the class and about himself. Upon completion of his monologue, he looked...

Becoming a teachable person has two prerequisites: There must be a teacher and a person willing to be taught. Increasingly, Western culture has become an environment that celebrates and platforms the ...

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodox. It was sanity: and to be sane i...

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 compromis...

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? . . . In doing so, he must, of course, stoop far below his...

Conversation would be much improved by the frequent use of three words: I don’t know.

But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low As high he sor’d, obnoxious first or last To basest things.

In the summer of 1986, two ships collided in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia. Hundreds of passengers died as they were hurled into the icy waters below. News of the disaster was further darkened...

I found what I was looking for and purchased a paperback copy of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. The Idiot was published in 1868 and was Dostoevsky’s attempt to create a perfect soul in the character of Princ...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

Humility rests upon a Holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naug...

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Badness is only spoiled goodness.

Of all the values at our disposal, humility seems to be the least attractive. You don’t see many television ads or billboards extolling the virtues of humility, do you?

But to reject, marginalize, trivialize, or be suspicious of the sacraments (and quasi-sacramental acts such as lighting a candle, bowing, washing feet, raising hands in the air, crossing oneself and s...