Conservative evangelicals don't want government support for our faith, because we believe God created all consciences free and a state-coerced act of worship isn't acceptable to God. Moreover, we believe the gospel isn't in need of state endorsement or assistance. Wall Street may need government bailouts but the Damascus Road never does.
Interpretation
True faith should come freely, without government influence or coercion.
This quote emphasizes the belief that authentic religious faith should arise from individual conscience and conviction rather than being imposed or supported by governmental authority. It suggests that genuine worship and belief in the gospel do not require external validation or assistance, contrasting the needs of financial institutions with the innate and autonomous nature of spiritual faith.
In practice
During a sermon, to discuss the importance of personal faith without government influence.
For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to “invite Jesus into your life.” Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life is a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life. And his life isn’t boring or purposeless or static. It’s wild and exhilarating and unpredictable.
When we adopt—and when we encourage a culture of adoption in our churches and communities—we’re picturing something that’s true about our God. We, like Jesus, see what our Father is doing and do likewise (John 5:19). And what our Father is doing, it turns out, is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters.
Ultimately, the transgender question is about more than just sex. It's about what it means to be human.
The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange.
You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.
People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
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