#sm

God is calling us to live for the sake of Christ and to do that through suffering. Christ chose suffering; it didn’t just happen to Him. He chose it as the way to create and perfect the church. Now He calls us to choose suffering. That is, He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him on the Calvary road and deny ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of ministering to the church and presenting His sufferings to the world. ↗

— John Piper

#love #mission #missionary #missions #love

The ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#love #technology #love

I've bled for you. I've killed for you. I've held you in my arms and done my best to make love to you. I'd give my life to protect you. Now I sit beside you, askin' you to trust me. ↗

— Pamela Clare

#scotsman #life

Nationality was the most pernicious, depersonalizing, homogenizing label that could ever be attached to the human individual. ↗

— Rolf Hochhuth

#love

The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. ↗

— Freeman John Dyson

#scientism #science

I felt my mouth go dry, my throat constrict. What possible interpretation could Peter place on those words, other than that they were about him? - that the entire song was about him? ↗

— Jennifer Paynter

#jane-austen #love #mary-bennet #mortification #peter-bushel

Smite,” she asked softly, “do you have any idea what to say to me in a situation like this?” “Of course I do,” he retorted. “I have plenty of ideas.” He met her gaze ruefully. “Of course, they’re all wrong, and so I’m totally at sea.” She patted the cushion next to her. He crossed the room and lowered himself down. And then, because he didn’t seem inclined to do it himself, she picked up his hand and slid it around her shoulders. ↗

— Courtney Milan

#love

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. ↗

— Jürgen Habermas

#freedom #justice #politics #postmodernism #rights

«“Looks like your sci-fi prediction came true right away, Xavier.” “That can be gratifying,” mused the novelist. “But not all the time.”» ↗

— Bruce Sterling

#prediction #scifi #love

It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. ↗

— John Fowles

#humanity #pacifism #violence #love