Gold Stars To The Five Commenters From Yesterday...

...but we're not finished here, folks.

The entry from yesterday is still buzzing around in my brain, and I found it interesting that a pastor in Portland (that I met last year on my vacation), Bob Hyatt is engaging his blog community on a topic along the same lines as mine. And this was AFTER I wrote my entry.

He quoted Tim Keller, a pastor in New York City:

"This strategy (if we must call it that) will work. In every culture, some Christian conduct will be offensive and attacked, but some will be moving and attractive to outsiders. "Though they accuse you … they may see your good deeds and glorify God" (1 Peter 2:12, see also Matt. 5:16). In the Middle East, a Christian sexual ethic makes sense, but not "turn the other cheek." In secular New York City, the Christian teaching on forgiveness and reconciliation is welcome, but our sexual ethics seem horribly regressive. Every non-Christian culture has enough common grace to recognize some of the work of God in the world and to be attracted to it, even while Christianity in other ways will offend the prevailing culture.

So we must neither just denounce the culture nor adopt it. We must sacrificially serve the common good, expecting to be constantly misunderstood and sometimes attacked. We must walk in the steps of the one who laid down his life for his opponents."

You can read the rest of that article here, from Christianity Today's May archives

Grab a cup of coffee and mull yesterday's entry and today's quotes, folks. The Diner's going to stay on this theme for a bit.