relationships and community on Standards

In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wal...

Imagine you have an invisible recorder around your neck that, for all your life, records every time you say to somebody else, “You ought.” It only turns on when you tell somebody else how to live. In ...

Lord Jesus Christ, you call us to high standards, and we continuously fall short. You tell us to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile; to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. No...

Gracious God, you call us to a life of intimate relationship with you and with one another. You call us to a life of community, where we actively seek the needs of others before our own. We acknowledg...

The disciples are to be a moral disinfectant in a world where moral standards are low, constantly changing, or non-existent.

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...

Judged in the light of any ordinary standards of regal splendor, military display, political campaigning, or effective advertising, it was a rather pathetic and anti-climactic affair. Jesus rode from ...

To have Abraham-like faith brings blessing (v 9). The result of living by the law is that we are “under a curse” (v 10). This “curse” has two aspects. Theologically, anyone who says-. I can be saved b...

I sit in a bright-lit June meadow at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. It is early afternoon, and I have been here since morning in what can only be described as an uneasy sol...

For some reason I have always had a tendency to be a hero worshiper…Unfortunately I carried this tendency into my life in the church. Even those I learned to love and admire let me down. From an early...

The Christian’s self-understanding is that she is precious before God—however much a sinner, however much a failure (or success) she may be by the standards of worldly comparisons—and that every other...

Only at the cross of Christ does man see fully what it is that separates him from God; yet it is here alone that he perceives that he is no longer separated from God. Nowhere else does the inviolable ...

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

In Essentials Unity; In Non-Essentials Liberty; In All Things Charity

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...

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

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

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.

Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.

A people can be judged as better or worse according to what they love, and their nation can be assessed as healthy or unhealthy according to the condition of what they love.

Nothing can stand against You Nothing No sin, no death No prejudice, no division Nothing can stand against our God You’re making us whole and holy in your mercy and grace Standing together in truth an...

Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. Don’t be conformed to this world, bu...

In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

George Herbert Mead, an influential early 20th-century sociologist, coined the term “generalized other” to describe the vague group we consider when shaping our actions. How often do we behave a certa...

Leadership is often a matter of failing people’s expectations at a rate they can stand.

Leader: Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience All: bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against an...

Grace frees us from having to earn God’s acceptance by meeting others’ expectations, and it also frees us from the unholy pride and prejudice of determining others’ acceptance by God on the basis of o...

Desires are best understood as our most honest experiences of ourselves, in all our complexity and depth, as we relate to people and things around us

The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P...