Sublime

You and I are made by God and for God. Our home is in God. We are beloved. We are dependent. We need God, every second of every day, if we are going to be happy or good, much less both. Very little is worth knowing more than this.

Yet now the how of your own deeds means you’re free from needing God at all, as long as how you live your life makes you happy and not a jerk (to echo Moralistic Therapeutic Deism).

A congregation that carries children, as Meredith’s does, is a life-community, a community not hunting resources but encountering resonance. This congregation’s life is not in its innovation but in its encounter with the concrete others whom it ministers to and is ministered by.

When there is little direct connection to divine action, and no vision for something bigger, the pastor is left wondering

Henry shifted the pastoral identity from learned, serious professional to your beloved uncle. The point was no longer to show your difference but to show your sameness—living at the very same speed.

The way that this modern moral order takes shape around chosen identity makes it complicated for pastors. If the church or the pastor tries too hard to shape a person’s life, it will be a violation of the modern moral order.