"If we are the Lord's we possess the kingdom of heaven, and so inherit the earth. How many who call themselves by his name would have it otherwise: they would rather possess the earth and inherit the kingdom! Such as these fill our churches every Sunday: anywhere is suitable for the worship of Mammon."- George MacDonald
"If Mark 10 teaches anything, it teaches us that Jesus does sometimes call people to sell everything they have and give it to the poor. This means he might call you or me to do this. I love the way one writer put it. He wrote, 'That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command.'"- David Platt
"The Christian antidote to materialism is not asceticism; austerity for its own sake is a rejection of the good gifts of the Creator."- John Stott
"We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with.- David Platt
A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn't mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who, for that matter, wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream."
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true...and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."- J.B.S. Haldane
