There’s something vulnerable about the human condition, where people can transmute into something so astonishingly altered that whatever is left is wholly unrecognizable.

Given the lethal enormity of sin and the inestimable value of a single soul, a baby in a manger and a man on a cross makes more sense that anything else I will ever be able to possibly imagine.

The problem with holiness is that once we look into the face of it we are no longer capable of taking that which is odious and filthy and somehow pretending that it’s translucent and clean. In other words, we have to do one of the most revolting things possible; we have to face ourselves.

We have watched men and women expend the whole of their lives brilliantly form-fitting the Word of God to the ever-changing contour of the culture. Yet, true brilliance is found in recognizing that the ‘ever-changing’ contour of the culture is a result of the fact that we’ve refused to form-fit it to the ‘never-changing’ contour of scripture. And anything less than that is brilliance brilliantly faked.

Running from God creates the illusion that I’m actually creating space between myself and that from which I’m running. And I’m not certain that I want to run with that illusion.

No value system formed by man will ever manage the men who formed it.

Possibly the most debilitating deception of all is to create a god of my own making, fool myself into believing that this limp god of mine is the true God, and then construct the entirety of my life on this flamboyantly fictional character. Possibly the most devastating realization of all is when the real God shows up, and in the showing up all of this come crashing down.

In a relationship with God, our most secret places once thickly cloaked and meticulously hidden away now stand before us utterly and entirely exposed. And it may be that this dreaded fear is the single thing that keeps us an arm’s length from God, and forever a single step away from His blessings.

It is the fool who thinks that he can live in the darkness and not become dark.