Christian Consiousness

   Christian consciousness begins in the painful realization that what we have assumed was the truth is in fact a lie….

   The lies are impeccably factual. They contain no errors. There are no distortions or falsified data.  But they are lies all the same, because they claim to tell us who we are and omit everything about our origin in God and our destiny in God. They talk about the world without telling us that God made it. They tell us about our bodies without telling us that their temples of the Holy Spirit. They instruct us in love without telling us about the God who loves us and gave Himself for us.

—Eugene H. Peterson, from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

Growing old in God

It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terribly difficult to sustain the interests. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate.  Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In art and culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty it goes on the garbage heap. There's a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

—Eugene H. Peterson, from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society