Kevin Stilley

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November 18, 2012 by kevinstilley

Legalism – select quotes

The good news is that Christ frees us from the need to obnoxiously focus on our goodness, our commitment, and our correctness. Religion has made us obsessive almost beyond endurance. Jesus invited us to a dance… and we’ve turned it into a march of soldiers, always checking to see if we’re doing it right and are in step and in line with the other soldiers.
~ Steve Brown, in A Scandalous Freedom

One of the most serious problems facing the orthodox Christian church today is the problem of legalism. One of the most serious problems facing the church in Paul’s day was the problem of legalism. In every day it is the same. Legalism wrenches the joy of the Lord from the Christian believer, and with the joy of the Lord goes his power for vital worship and vibrant service. Nothing is left but cramped, sober, dull, and listless profession. The truth is betrayed, and the glorious name of the Lord becomes a synonym for a gloomy kill-joy. The Christian under law is a miserable parody of the real thing.
~ S. Lewis Johnson, from the article “The Paralysis of Legalism”

If we get our information from the biblical material, there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.
~ Eugene Peterson

Filed Under: Blog, Ethics / Praxis, Quotes Tagged With: grace, law, morality, quotations, Quotes

May 28, 2012 by kevinstilley

Do Christians Have A Sin Nature?

The greatest truth we can ever be told is that our old self has gone. I can deal with the body of sin only as I realize that my old self has gone, and I have a new self. This is the most striking and amazing truth.
~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

If you are a Christian, it’s a serious misunderstanding to think of yourself as having both an old and new nature. We do not have a dual personality! Assuming the dual nature of the believer could easily lead one to excuse all kinds of sins by blaming them on the old nature. The popular theological concept of the old man and the new man fighting each other is not biblically accurate.
~ John MacArthur

We live as though our ‘old man’ is still alive, even though we are dead to him. He has no right to be in our conscious thinking. We serve a new Master who has walked us across the threshold, who has awakened us to new life, new love, to a new relationship and to an entirely different future.
~ Chuck Swindoll

Filed Under: Anthropology, Blog, Ethics / Praxis, Soteriology Tagged With: Christian Living, Ethics, morality, sanctification, sin

May 25, 2012 by kevinstilley

Ethics & Morality – select quotes

Whatever is, is right.
~ Democritus

Tell me what a person believes and I’ll tell you what he’ll do.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To expect Christian conduct from a person who is not born again is heresy.
~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
~ T.S. Eliot, in Murder In the Cathedral

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
~ Edward Roscoe Murrow

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
~ Leon Trotsky

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  • Trivia Index

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Axiology, Blog, christian, Emerson, Ethics, morality, sin, temptation, values

July 19, 2010 by kevinstilley

Abortion – select quotes

The wealthy, in order that their inheritance may not be divided among several, deny in the very womb their own progeny. By use of parricidal mixtures the snuff out the fruit of their wombs in the genital organs themselves. In this way life is taken away before it is given.
~ Ambrose of Milan

What reason would we have to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are murderers and will have to give account of it to God? For the same person would not regard the fetus in the womb as a living thing and therefore an object of God’s care.
~ Athenagorus of Athens

Moreover, those, too, who give drugs causing abortion are [deliberate murderers] themselves, as well as those receiving the poison which kills the fetus.
~ Basil of Caesarea

Why sow where the ground makes its care to destroy the fruit? where there are many efforts at abortion? where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murder also…. Why then do you abuse the gift of God, and fight with his law, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing and make the chamber of procreation as chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter?
~ John Chrysostom

Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the matter completely dead, abort at the same time their human feelings.
~ Clement of Alexandria

Women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow…. Behold, into how great impiety one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time.
~ Hippolytus

A plant is a plant the moment the seed begins to sprout. It has all that is essential to its nature, not only as a plant, but as a plant of a certain genus or species…. So with regard to every animal. I should suppose it must be granted that it has its specific character from the commencement of its organization. If this is so, why must it not be allowed that the human being is a human being from the beginning? There is no greater difference between the newborn infant and the embryo, than between the infant and a full-grown man. I should say, therefore, that he moment life begins, it is the life of a human creature, having all the essential attributes of such a being…. The human soul, as I understand the matter, has no separate existence (in this world) from the body, nor the body from the soul.
~ Charles Hodge

[They] drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived. Some, when they learn they are with child through sin, practice abortion by the use of drugs. Frequently they die themselves and are brought before the ruler of the lower world guilty of three crimes: suicide, adultery against Christ, and murder of an unborn child.
~ Jerome of Bethlehem

Let me put the issue plainly. If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.
~ Greg Koukl

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
~ Mother Teresa in her National Prayer Breakfast speech in Washington, D.C. on February 3, 1994

Murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy the foetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed
~ Tertullian

For it was you [God] who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mothers’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
~ Bible, Psalm 139:13-16

The word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.
~ Bible, Jeremiah 1:5

Filed Under: Blog, Ethics / Praxis, Quotes Tagged With: abortion, Ethics, morality, murder

November 7, 2009 by kevinstilley

Right and Wrong – select quotes

Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
~ William Penn

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Ethics, morality, quotations, quote

October 24, 2009 by kevinstilley

Morality – select quotes

There is not a significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintain a moral life without the aid of religion.
~ Will Durant

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education of minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
~ George Washington

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Ethics, morality, morals

July 7, 2009 by kevinstilley

Is Adultery Morally Wrong?

The last national election illustrated just how divided the American people can be on the issues that we consider important. However, there is no such division when it comes to the question of the extra-marital affairs. In a recent Gallop poll, 92% of those surveyed indicated that it is morally wrong for married men or women to have an affair.

See the chart below for how this compared with other social issues.

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gallop-ethics

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I was a bit surprised that the percentage of those thinking cloning, gambling, and the wearing of animal skins morally wrong were as high as they were. How do the numbers on the chart compare to what you would have expected?

Filed Under: Blog, Ethics / Praxis, Politics, What Do You Think?, Worldview Tagged With: adultery, Ethics, Gallup, morality, sex

December 11, 2008 by kevinstilley

Dishonest Churches

Click on image

This Sunday, many preachers will stand in the pulpit and proclaim the virtue of honesty and the primacy of Truth. And, then the church will run an ad in the local paper that seems to ignore that message. Consider the following account shared by Larry Osborne in his book Sticky Church.

“When I first came to North Coast, we were a small church meeting in an old high school cafeteria. I hadn’t been there long when someone showed me an adveertisement we were putting in the local newspaper each weekend. You know the drill: We weere supposedly the friendliest church in town, with great preaching, great worship, and a world-class children’s program.

“The truth was, we had none of those things. Not even close. I’m not sure I would have kept coming if I hadn’t been the pastor.

“The cafeteria was old and smelly. Remnants of food fights hung from the wall. One whole side of the room was a large Plexiglas window, which was cool–except when skateboarders started showing off in the middle of a sermon. That was hard to compete with. Most of the time they’d win. They were a lot more interesting than my early sermons. They’d probably still be more interesting. That’s one reason we moved.

“So I did the only reasonable thing. I canceled the ad. I had enought issues on my hands. I didn’t need the Federal Communications Commission hassling me for false advertising.”

When was the last time you checked your promotional literature for accuracy?

I hasten to say that I think one of the most critical skills of leadership is storytelling. We tell the stories of who we are and in the process we become what we say we are. In this instance, ontology recapitulates philology.

However, leaders need to be circumspect to avoid dishonest misrepresentation. It may not be true that your church is the most loving church in your town, but a similar message can be sent by saying, “We want to be the most loving church in town.” With this alteration you are still casting a transformative vision, you are still painting a picture with which people can identify and an ideal to which people can aspire, but you are not misrepresenting yourself.

So, tell your church’s story, cast your churches vision, but please, please, please be honest about it.

Filed Under: Blog, Graffiti Tagged With: Blog, church advertising, church promotions, Ethics, Graffiti, Honesty, Leadership, morality, storytelling, truth, virtue

May 4, 2008 by kevinstilley

Do Pain And Suffering Disprove God’s Existence?

Does pain and suffering disprove God’s existence? William Lane Craig, Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California, addresses the issue during one of his debates.

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Books By William Lane Craig

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: antinomy, Apologetics, Atheism, Axiology, Blog, Ethics, evidence, evil, God, morality, morals, Philosophy, polemic, suffering, theism, Theology, William Lane Craig

May 4, 2008 by kevinstilley

Can The World Have Morals Without God?

Can the world have morals without God? William Lane Craig, Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California, argues that objective moral values require the existence of God.

[The video may take up to one minute to load.]

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Books By William Lane Craig

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: antinomy, Apologetics, Atheism, Axiology, Blog, Ethics, evidence, evil, God, morality, morals, Philosophy, polemic, suffering, theism, Theology, William Lane Craig

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