Sublime

But virtue is different: virtue isn’t acquired intellectually but affectively.

What are the things you do that do something to you? What are the secular liturgies in your life? What vision of the good life is carried in those liturgies? What Story is embedded in those cultural practices? What kind of person do they want you to become? To what kingdom are these rituals aimed? What does this cultural institution want you to

“To desire the aid of grace is the beginning of grace.”

Of course every age has had its morally lax people, and people who have forsaken ideals and commitments to pursue their heart’s desire. In fact, every one of us Christians is like that at times; it’s called sin. What’s distinct about the present age, says Taylor, is that “today many people feel called to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel

Our households—our “little kingdoms”—need to be nourished by constant recentering in the body of Christ. Week after week we bring our little kingdoms into the kingdom of God. Communal, congregational worship locates the family in the sweep of God’s story and in the wider web of the people of God.

Jesus doesn’t encounter Matthew and John—or you and me—and ask, “What do you know?” He doesn’t even ask, “What do you believe?” He asks, “What do you want?” This is the most incisive, piercing question Jesus can ask of us precisely because we are what we want. Our wants and longings and desires are at the core of our identity, the wellspring from

What do I love when I long for achievement? That is the Augustinian question.