Deacon Quotes

Yeah, I'm great. Nothing like witnessing a death match between gods when I'm trying to get some Cheetos. -Deacon

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?

What is it with the St. Delphi brothers and their attraction to halfs?

Deacon laughed. "Oh, you're so going to be the next person who gets hit. I'm putting money on that." "You need to add yourself to that list." Aiden looked about seventy-percent serious. "And I'm putting money on that," Luke threw in.

We're not robbing him," Skulduggery said." But I'm afraid I have some bad news." "Is it Deacon?" Francine asked, her eyes wide. "It is." "Is he sick?" "It's a little worse than that." She gasped. "He's dying?" "He was briefly dying," said Skulduggery. "Now he's dead.

It's just... wow, I'm happy for you. I think this is great. Its love- the real kind you make sacrifices for. The kind where you scream 'screw it' to everyone else. That's envy-worthy.

Okay," Crick said, rolling his eyes. "I give. Which part of my body is more interesting than my ass?" Deacon rewarded his obtuseness with a smack to the head. "Your heart, you fuckin' moron...

My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In Germany I became a freethinker and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer. I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war. I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.

Flipping to the front, I caught Aiden's gaze and offered a sympathetic smile. "Skittles?" "Please." I dumped some into his open palm, then picked out the green ones. Aiden grinned at me. "You know I don't like the green ones?" Shrugging, I popped them in my mouth. "The few times I've seen you eat them, you leave the green ones behind." Deacon popped his head between our seats. "That's true love right there." "That it is." Aiden's gaze flicked to the road. I flushed like a little schoolgirl and focused on the remaining pieces of candy until Deacon drifted back into his seat. I handed all the red ones to Aiden.

Just so you know, I get incredibly bored quite easily and you will be forced to be my source of entertainment. You'll kind of be like my own personal jester." I flipped him off. "Well that wasn't funny at all.

When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.

Something in what Deacon said caused Aiden to string together an atrocity of f-bombs. My brows flew up. Aiden rarely cussed or lost his cool, but boy, he was a grenade whose pin had just been pulled.

Sometimes I worry for you, Deacon,” he said, his lips curving up on one side. “I ain’t who you should be worrying about.” Deacon jerked his head at me. “Little Miss ‘I Gotta Be A Martyr’ over there is the one you should be concerned with.

She's Awakening,' Aiden said, voice tight. 'But the blood...' I heard Marcus move closer. 'Why is she bleeding?' I eased onto my side. 'I'm being tattooed by a giant, mother fu-' Another strangled scream cut of my words as a different type of pain settled in, moving under my skin. It was like lighting racing through my veins, frying every nerve ending. 'This is... wow,' Deacon said, and I pried my eyes open. There was a whole audience by the door. 'Get them out of here!' I screamed, jackknifing on the floor. 'Gods, this sucks!' 'Whoa,' I heard Deacon murmur. 'This is like watching a chick give birth or something.' 'Oh my gods, I'm going to kill him.' I could feel the beads of blood breaking out under my jeans. 'I'm going to punch him-' 'Everyone leave,' Aiden ground out. 'This isn't a godsdamn show.' 'And I think he's like the father,' Luke said. Aiden rose to his feet. 'Get. Out.

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture

Deacon looked up from under the mop of curls. "I'm becoming a fire bug." The humour was lost on Aiden. "I know what you're thinking.

We, all of us, must be left alone to make good on our own consciences. And no county magistrate or judge or deacon can separate us from the truth, for they are only men.

And vampires never sparkle unless they just ate a stripper.

Apollo was still a no-show and the cabin out in the middle of nowhere had become a god-free zone. A good thing, but I figured one would just pop in, most likely in Deacon's bed or something, where we'd least expect them.

Nobody should have to die to a crappy soundtrack

It's a beautiful war, baby." He dipped so close, the tips of our noses brushed but his eyes never left mine. "And I...just… won.

Look at me, kitten.” I did and felt safe. Deacon wouldn’t let anything happen to me. “Who do you see?” he asked. “My master.” “I have you, darling.” He gripped my chin tightly. “I have you.

If we have daughters I’m starting How to Deal with Badasses when they’re five.” His eyes were lit but his expression was full-on tender when he returned, “We have boys , they get How to Deal with Stubborn Bitches Who Argue About Meaningless Shit starting at three.

A truck that’s not dirty is not a truck. It’s a pussy wagon.

A man who doesn't trust cannot be trusted

Don’t be playful when I’m feeling emotional,” I ordered. To this, he strangely replied, “You get I’m a badass.” “Hard to miss, Deacon,” I returned. “Then don’t tell me when to be playful. Badasses don’t like that shit.

Wasn't that a season finale on Supernatural?' When the boys nodded, my eyes rolled. 'Seriously? Are Sam and Dean going to be there?

What about me?” I choke. “Do you owe me something? I was just as wasted as she was. Why do I get driven home and kept safe but not her? Why not just leave me to Dooney and Deacon and the boys in the basement?

God was forever generous with His gifts: hope, love, truth, and the belief in the indestructability of the good in all people.

Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. The lies they tell each other sound better to them than the truth does when it comes out of our mouths.

I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening playing Scrabble with Deacon. I think he regretted asking me to play, because I was one of those Scrabble players - the kind who played three-letter words every chance I got.

He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.

He’s a drunk. One of those guys who dies at twenty and is buried at eighty.

Please, Deacon," she begged. "Come inside me. Fuck me. Please." "There's nowhere in the world I'd rather be," he whispered against her wet nipple. "God, Mackenzie, I think you own me, Darlin'.

Heart and soul, gut and balls, I love you. There’s no one I’d rather hold. Not until I’m eighty. Not until the day I die.

We’re takin’ Faye home.” “Got that.” “Son, I need to know which home we’re takin’ her to.” Jesus. Was the church deacon Dad of the virgin girlfriend he’d deflowered asking him which bed he wanted to sleep in with his daughter that night? “Yours or hers?” Silas continued. Fucking hell, he was.

After this is over, I want a shower in a really big bathroom." "I'll get us the penthouse." "What makes you think you'll be sharing it with me?" "I live in hope.

Tried to be dead again when I let you go, Cassie. Dead doesn’t hurt. Tried fuckin’ hard to find it. But I couldn’t find it. You lived in me

You don't apologise,' (Deacon) said, pressing a kiss to my greasy head, unlocking best friend status.

Sunset was only thirty minutes gone when some pissant vampire waylaid Deacon on his way to Theriault's. One of those younger shits who wrote poetry to Mother Darkness and thought becoming a vampire would make him sparkle.

You’re a vulnerability,” he ground out. “My vulnerability. I have no vulnerabilities. I spent years shavin’ every last one away from me so there was nothin’ left. Now I got one, a big one, and I do not give one fuck.

Badasses know what they want, definitely know what they need, and don’t settle for anything less.

Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.

In June, Deacon noticed a pattern where Thursday was concerned. Woman, fight, brood alone in angry silence, rinse, and repeat

while in Manhattan the buses ran on time, the lights never went out, the death of a single white child in a traffic accident was a page one story, while phony versions of black and Latino life ruled the Broadway roost, making white writers rich—West Side Story, Porgy & Bess, Purlie Victorious—and on it went, the whole business of the white man’s reality lumping together like a giant, lopsided snowball, the Great American Myth, the Big Apple, the Big Kahuna, the City That Never Sleeps, while the blacks and Latinos who cleaned the apartments and dragged out the trash and made the music and filled the jails with sorrow slept the sleep of the invisible and functioned as local color.

One of the reasons for his drinking, Henry said, was John's mama used to make the whole family get down on their knees and pray like fury everytime John's daddy--Henry's first cousin, I believe--would come home boozed, and John never quite got it straight that they weren't thanking the good Lord for his blessing same as they did at the supper table. So according to Henry booze come to be sort of holy to him and with faith like that John grew up religious as a deacon.

Woman, if you don’t already know that you’ve been on my mind every day for the last six years, I got no clue how to communicate that to you. Now that I’ve had you, that shit has not changed. It’s just got worse.” My back straightened and I started glaring. “Worse?” “Worse,” he confirmed on a downward jerk of his chin. “Now it’s not every day. It’s every hour. I don’t fight it, every minute. Fuck, every second, I don’t keep it in check. Every second, I’m thinkin’ of you, thinkin’ of gettin’ shit done, but only so I can get back to you.” That was very, very sweet. I was still pissed. And this was because I got nothing from him, not one thing for a month! “You didn’t tell me that, Deacon.” “I fuckin’ did, Cassidy.” “When?” I snapped. He leaned toward me and shot back, “Every moment I was with you.

Anything. You want it, I got it in me to give it to you, you got anything from me.

A man ain’t got to stand in church every Sunday to do God’s work.

You ain’t got to worry about your skin.” “I do worries about my skin. It covers my body.

Are you fighting evil tonight?...Then you are doing the Lord's work. Shut the fuck up.

I slipped some... surprises in the tea after y’all left. Ma and Dad should both sleep ’till noon. I might have killed Grandpa, we’ll see in the morning.

From the pastor who has an affair with his secretary, to the jerk at the office who happens to be a deacon, to the overbearing boss who can’t miss his Monday night Bible study, Christians today cause more problems for the gospel than all the devil’s demons put together.

Many people believe they know true darkness, but until it has been experienced it cannot be imagined. Without even a flicker of light, the mind begins to play tricks. There is a constant feeling that there is a wall before you, that you must stop. The eyes open as wide as they can, hungry for light. The only thing that helps is to shut them tight.

Did you need something?” Seth’s attention shifted back to me. “Do I need something to walk over here?” My fingers curled inward. “Yeah, I think you do.” “I missed them together,” Deacon said … “They’re so warm and fuzzy, don’t you think? So cute.

He felt like a radio tuning in to a new channel, one that was beginning to fuzz into range, slowly coming in clear, proper, the way his Hettie had always wanted him to be. The new feeling humbled him.

See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.” “Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco —” “That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.” “General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.” “No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.

On a scale of one to ten, how important is this?” I queried. “Me doin’ my bit so I don’t feel like you’re keepin’ me?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered. “Eighty-five.

There's nothing that keeps its youth, so far as I know, but a tree and truth.

Son, a blessing favors them that needs it. Don’t matter how it comes. It just matters that it does.

You’ve got to be strong to get old.

a solitary middle-aged man in the August of life looking for a few more Aprils, an

Woman, if you don’t already know that you’ve been on my mind every day for the last six years, I got no clue how to communicate that to you. Now that I’ve had you, that shit has not changed. It’s just got worse.

This was fresh, rich, heavenly, succulent, soft, creamy, kiss-my-ass, cows-gotta-die-for-this, delightfully salty, moo-ass, good old white folks cheese, cheese to die for, cheese to make you happy, cheese to beat the cheese boss, cheese for the big cheese, cheese to end the world,

In this bed, out of it. Naked or not. No boundaries. All in. Nothin’ held back.” He pressed his hips between my legs and I drew in a sharp breath. “You’re all mine, Cassidy, every fuckin’ inch. And I’m all yours, just the same.

Why we got to have the police around every time we has a simple party? Ya'll don't watch out for us. Y'all watch over us. I don't see y'all out there standing over the white folks in Park Slope when they has their block parties

Because of that, because my life ended fifty-two Thursdays ago, because...I have nothing left to live for. God damn it, suck me, you asshole. You made me want you, always staring at me like I'm candy or something. Suck me, I want to come in your mouth, you motherfucking..." Deacon lifted him off his body and flipped him onto his back. He landed on the hard floor, out of breath. "Demanding little foul-mouthed whelp, aren't you? I like that, Thursday. Unbutton your jeans. Slowly. While I watch." "Fuck you." "Later, sweetheart. Right now I want to see your cock. Show me your cock, Thursday.

A nightmare is the best kind of dream. The only one that brings happiness when it ends.

To navigate in a world without value is to be without rudder or destination, and yet without science, we navigate blind. To many, apparently, blindness is preferable.

Showed me a strong woman doesn’t need keeping, but feels good to take care of her all the same. Better, you gotta fight for that privilege.

So he drinks and grows plants and goes to church,” Potts said. “So far, he sounds Catholic.

Her smile displayed a raw, natural beauty that caught Potts off guard. The woman, he thought, was all good handwriting.

What hair she had looked like scrambled eggs in string form, in wild clumps and in single strands, giving her the appearance of a wired, harried, ancient, terrified professor.

Just because you toast marshmallows with a kid on a camping trip doesn’t mean he’ll become a Boy Scout.

Women already come equipped with a core of steel fiber strength, depths of resolve a man cannot comprehend. It’s not the dynamic strength men have, all power and show. It’s a strength of endurance, fortitude. It is the strength that allows women to conceive life and to carry that life until the day it can stand on its own.

You're kind of gross. Might want to think about shaving, too, unless you're going for the homeless look with no chance of getting laid.

The one. The world. The man made for me. The man I was going to fall in love with. The only man I’d ever really love.

nothing and then selling it at triple cost to buyers in Wyandanch,

The woman, he thought, was all good handwriting.

The Star-Spangled Banner,’” she scoffed. “I never did like that old lying, lollygagging, hypocritical, warring-ass drinking song. With the bombs bursting in air and so forth.

Most times I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel like I don’t hardly know enough to tie my own shoes.

I think he was a gangster.” “Why you say that?” Miss Izi asked. “He had a lot of pockmarks on his face.” “That’s nothing,” Miss Izi said. “That could be from learning to use a fork.

powerless suckers who believed in the American dream scrambling to the suburbs because they, the big boys, wanted a bigger percentage. He felt it, or thought he felt it, as they stood by the front door. There was a connection: a man whose father was dead and a woman whose father was about to die, a sense of wanting to belong, standing in the warm vestibule, she in her farm-girl dress, with a job that paid taxes and drew no cops, no Joe Pecks, no complicated phone calls from complicated people trying to pick your pocket with one

Everybody went to jail in the Cause eventually. You could be the tiniest ant able to slip into a crack in the sidewalk, or a rocket ship that flew fast enough to break the speed of sound, it didn’t matter. When society dropped its hammer on your head, well, there it is.

After practice on lazy summer afternoons, he’d gather the kids around and tell stories about baseball players long dead, players from the old Negro leagues with names that sounded like brands of candy: Cool Papa Bell, Golly Honey Gibson, Smooth Rube Foster, Bullet Rogan, guys who knocked the ball five hundred feet high into the hot August air at some ballpark far away down south someplace, the stories soaring high over their heads, over the harbor, over their dirty baseball field, past the rude, red-hot projects where they lived. The Negro leagues, Sport said, were a dream. Why, Negro league players had leg muscles like rocks.

In that moment he realized that all the experience of thirty-two years in the NYPD and all the formal police training in the world was useless when the smile of someone you suddenly care about finds the bow that wraps your heart and undoes it.

Isn’t it something,” Hettie said softly, “what ol’ New York really is? We come here to be free and find life’s worse here than back home. The white folks here just color it different. They don’t mind you sitting next to ’em on the subway, or riding the bus in the front seat, but if you asks for the same pay, or wants to live next door, or get so beat down you don’t wanna stand up and sing about how great America is, they’ll bust down on you so hard pus’ll come out your ears.

But the deacon said that the Holy Spirit told him, 'You don't have to come back. You just have to go.' So he did. . . . Long after I heard that story, I kept thinking about God's final instruction to the deacon: 'You just have do go.' You don't have to come back. You just have to go. As it turns out, he did come back. Even so, the instruction is so clear. You just have to go. You just have to go. Even if there is no clarity about your return, you just have to go.

Here,” he growled and I blinked. “Deacon, I’m not a big fan of—” “Future,” he cut me off. “Assert your feminism when I’m not three seconds away from fuckin’ you on your porch. I come to you, that’s gonna happen. You come to me, maybe it won’t.” Maybe? I didn’t ask that. I asked , “So if you get your way and I come to you, you can miraculously control your base instincts?” His reply? “One.” My body jerked and my brows shot together as the meaning of that word hit me. “Are you counting down—?” “Two.” I planted my hands on my hips. “You are!” I cried angrily. “You’re counting—” “Fuck it,” he muttered, took two long strides, and I was in his arms.

AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not.

Ever since he repented of religion and shaved off his clerical beard and mustache, he has had the constant feeling that he has taken off his trousers, and that his nose protrudes altogether indecently and must at all cost be covered. It's sheer torment! With one hand over his nose, the deacon knocks again and again. No one responds. And yet Martha is home; the gate is locked from within. And that means - what? It means that she is with someone else... The deacon punctuates the scene inwardly with the three dots we have graphically depicted just above, and, tripping over them at every second step, he proceeds to Rosa Luxemburg Street. ("X")

It was my turn to let my eyes travel over his features. Take in his male beauty. Memorize it. Do it knowing that as crazy as it sounded, I’d never forget him. For reasons I didn’t know and would never have the opportunity to understand, there would always be a part of me that would long for him. There would always be thoughts in the back of my mind plaguing me, haunting me, making me wonder, if he let me in, even just a little, how it could have been. I stopped thinking these thoughts when the pad of his thumb whispered across my lips. That was when the tears pricked my eyes. Because I knew that was when he was going to let me go. For always.

She laughed, and as she did, Potts felt as if he were watching a dark, silent mountain suddenly blink to life, illuminated by a hundred lights from a small, quaint village that had lived on the mountainside for a hundred years, the village appearing out of nowhere, all the lights aglow at once. Every feature of her face glowed. He found himself wanting to tell her every sorrow he ever knew,

Latchkey! I mean . . . I want to talk to you . . .' He fell silent, glancing behind him and shifting from foot to foot, his waterproof trousers rattling like the bulls' bladders that boys use to learn swimming. Sterlingov angrily spat out his cigarette. 'Well? What about?' 'A . . . about a secret matter ,' Alyoshka whispered. Dozens of ears floated around them in the dust waves; the whisper was heard, and it ran on like a spark along a gunpowder wick. Alyoshka's secret message, the mysterious special clothing, the deacon's catastrophe-all this was too much. The atmosphere was charged with thousands of volts, and something was needed to discharge the electricity, to clear the air. ("X")

And there they stayed, a sole phenomenon in the Republic of Brooklyn, where cats hollered like people, dogs ate their own feces, aunties chain-smoked and died at age 102, a kid named Spike Lee saw God, the ghosts of the departed Dodgers soaked up all possibility of new hope, and penniless desperation ruled the lives of the suckers too black or too poor to leave, while in Manhattan the buses ran on time, the lights never went out, the death of a single white child in a traffic accident was a page one story, while phony versions of black and Latino life ruled the Broadway roost, making white writers rich—West Side Story, Porgy & Bess, Purlie Victorious—and on it went, the whole business of the white man’s reality lumping together like a giant, lopsided snowball, the Great American Myth, the Big Apple, the Big Kahuna, the City That Never Sleeps, while the blacks and Latinos who cleaned the apartments and dragged out the trash and made the music and filled the jails with sorrow slept the sleep of the invisible and functioned as local color.

Meaningless fucks are just that and I don’t do a lot that’s meaningless, definitely not something important like connecting with a woman’s body. Also found it’s not hard to go without when going with doesn’t work for me.” “But… you’re a badass,” I pointed out. “And?” he prompted, brows drawing together, apparently well aware he was a badass. “Badasses need to get them some,” I explained. “Badasses know what they want, definitely know what they need, and don’t settle for anything less.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its occasional astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. It is accused by Protestant dervishes of withholding the Bible from the people. To some extent this is true; to some extent the church is wise; again to the same extent it is prosperous. ... Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone. Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs, and listen to an ignoramus try to prove that he is a better theologian than the Pope. This folly the Romans now slide into. Their clergy begin to grow argumentative, doctrinaire, ridiculous. It is a pity. A bishop in his robes, playing his part in the solemn ceremonial of the mass, is a dignified spectacle; the same bishop, bawling against Darwin half an hour later, is seen to be simply an elderly Irishman with a bald head, the son of a respectable police sergeant in South Bend, Ind. Let the reverend fathers go back to Bach. If they keep on spoiling poetry and spouting ideas, the day will come when some extra-bombastic deacon will astound humanity and insult God by proposing to translate the liturgy into American, that all the faithful may be convinced by it.

there was nothing to believe but that one colored in the room is fine, two is twenty, and three means close up shop and everybody go home; all living the New York dream in the Cause Houses, within sight of the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic copper reminder that this city was a grinding factory that diced the poor man’s dreams worse than any cotton gin or sugarcane field from the old country. And now heroin was here to make their children slaves again, to a useless white powder. She looked them over, the friends of her life, staring at her. They saw what she saw, she realized. She read it in their faces. They would never win. The game was fixed. The villains would succeed. The heroes would die. The sight of Beanie’s mother howling at her son’s coffin would haunt them all in the next few days. Next week, or next month some time, some other mother would take her place, howling her grief. And another after that. They saw the future, too, she could tell. It would continue forever. It was all so very grim. But then, she thought, every once in a while there’s a glimmer of hope. Just a blip on the horizon, a whack on the nose of the giant that set him back on his heels or to the canvas,

Life in the Cause would lurch forward as it always did. You worked, slaved, fought off the rats, the mice, the roaches, the ants, the Housing Authority, the cops, the muggers, and now the drug dealers. You lived a life of disappointment and suffering, of too-hot summers and too-cold winters, surviving in apartments with crummy stoves that didn’t work and windows that didn’t open and toilets that didn’t flush and lead paint that flecked off the walls and poisoned your children, living in awful, dreary apartments built to house Italians who came to America to work the docks, which had emptied of boats, ships, tankers, dreams, money, and opportunity the moment the colored and the Latinos arrived. And still New York blamed you for all its problems. And who can you blame? You were the one who chose to live here, in this hard town with its hard people, the financial capital of the world, land of opportunity for the white man and a tundra of spent dreams and empty promises for anyone else stupid enough to believe the hype. Sister Gee stared at her neighbors as they surrounded her, and at that moment she saw them as she had never seen them before: they were crumbs, thimbles, flecks of sugar powder on a cookie, invisible, sporadic dots on the grid of promise, occasionally appearing on Broadway stages or on baseball teams with slogans like “You gotta believe,” when in fact there was nothing to believe but that one colored in the room is fine, two is twenty, and three means close up shop and everybody go home; all living the New York dream in the Cause Houses, within sight of the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic copper reminder that this city was a grinding factory that diced the poor man’s dreams worse than any cotton gin or sugarcane field from the old country. And now heroin was here to make their children slaves again, to a useless white powder. She looked them over, the friends of her life, staring at her. They saw what she saw, she realized. She read it in their faces. They would never win. The game was fixed. The villains would succeed. The heroes would die.