Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control, power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often are given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food...
Do not ask your childrento strive for extraordinary lives.Such striving may seem admirable,but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples, and pears.Show them how...
The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures, and have courage when things go wrong.
Often hell is portrayed as a place of punishment and heaven as a place of reward. But this concept easily leads us to think about God as either a policeman, who tries to catch us when we make a mistake and send us to prison when our mistakes become too big, or a Santa...
If it [our framing story] tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during the maximum number of minutes of our short lives, then we will have little...
When people are empty of Christ, a thousand and one other things come and fill them up: jealousies, hatreds, boredom, melancholy, resentment, a worldly outlook, worldly pleasures. Try to fill your soul with Christ so that it’s not empty.
There is no mode of life in the world more pleasing and more full of delight than continual conversation with God.
All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for...
Is there no real difference between worship and entertainment? I believe there is a world of difference, even though I have some inkling as to why today’s culture has confused the two… ENTERTAINMENT typically results from the WORK OF OTHERS, for my interest, pleasure,...
The rich fool revels in his prosperity because he envisions that because of it he can "eat, drink, and be merry." His daydream is to spend his future indulging his whims and desires. The greatest good he can imagine is a life of maximizing his own pleasure. Leisure,...