relationships and community on clichés

In his thoughtful book, Unquestioned Answers, Jeff Myers attempts to uproot some of the widely-held clichès that keep Christians from engaging difficult topics. Here are his top ten “Unquestioned Answ...

Ikea: We throw in extra parts just to mess with you. Lays: Flavored Air Maybelline: Maybe it’s Photoshop Wikipedia: You’re Welcome, College Students Perrier: Rich People Water Bic: You Probably D...

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one.

When I say “New Testament” or “a theological seminary,” in most cases I can see from their reaction that they immediately and radically reverse their evaluation. From a relatively high place in their ...

Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment a...

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

We are all to some extent the products of an exploitive society, and it would be foolish and self-defeating to pretend that we do not bear its stamp.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

The child became a man and the man became a preacher whose sermons were full of commonplace things: seeds and nets, coins and fishes, lilies of the field, and birds of the air. Wherever he was, he had...

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that...

Much of gossip is envy in disguise.

“All that glistens is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.

The greatest of all illusions is the illusion of familiarity.

Once described a second marriage as the “triumph of hope over experience

Don’t allow yourself to become so nostalgic, rigid, or judgmental about the way God chooses to demonstrate his message that you miss a new way forward.

Blessed are the liars, / For the truth can be awkward.

According to the groundbreaking book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, his research tells us that cravings drive our “habit loops.” Some of us crave escape or relaxation through the habit of a g...

Assumptions are the termites of relationships.

But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of k...

I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike and Claudia, who had recently returned from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. We were sitting in a booth at one of those chai...

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

Culture consists of concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior and are widely shared by people. . . . [These] are transmitted generation to generation, rarely with explicit instr...

…there is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a wa...

Our culture often suggests that we are “entitled” to a long, fulfilling life, and if that doesn’t happen, there must be someone to sue, someone to blame. When the word “cancer” is spoken, looking to t...

Remember how you felt that Christmas when your sister opened the gift you wanted? Or when your brother got a T-bird for graduation and you got stuck with the family Nova? Fast-forward to today and ask...

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.