Here is why distinguishing between straight-line and jagged-line issues is important: churches and pastors should bind consciences on straight-line issues, while leaving jagged-line issues in the domain of Christian freedom. The more something is a straight-line issue, the more the church will institutionally address it. Pastors will talk about it from the pulpit, and a church might exercise discipline over it. The more something is a jagged-line issue, the less pastors should lend their pastoral weight to addressing the matter, and Christians on both sides of an issue should be made to feel welcome. . . . So much political dialogue among Christians these days thoughtlessly and divisively treats everything as a straight-line issue.- Jonathan Leeman, How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age (Thomas Nelson, 2018)p. (90, 93)
Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love. —John Bunyan
The situation which was truly hopeless had the very majesty of God descend to us, since it was not in our power to ascend to him." ~ John Calvin
One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend to hear it a second time.- Rossini
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