"One sign that you have made success an idol is the false sense of security it brings. The poor and the marginalized expect suffering, they know that life on this earth is 'nasty, brutish, and short.' Successful people are much more shocked and overwhelmed by troubles. As a pastor, I've often heard people from the upper eschalons say, 'Life isn't supposed to be this way,' when they face tragedy. I have never heard such language in my years as a pastor among the working class and the poor. The false sense of security comes from deifying our achievement and expecting it to keep us safe from the troubles of life in a way that only God can."--75
"The idol of success cannot be just expelled, it must be replaced. The human heart's desire for a particular valuable object may be conquered, but its need to have some such object is unconquerable... Only when we see that Jesus, our great Suffering Servant, has done for us will we finally understand why God's salvation does not require us to do 'some great thing.' We don't have to do it, because Jesus has."--93
"The increasing political polarization and bitterness we see in U.S. politics today is a sign that we have made political activism into a form of religion. Dutch-Canadian philosopher Al Wolters taught that in the biblical view of things, the main problem in life is sin, and the only solution is God and his grace. The alternative to this view is to identify something besides sin ad the main problem with the world and something besides God as the main remedy. That demonizes something that is not completely bad, and makes and idol out of something that cannot be the ultimate good." --100
"Ideology can be used to refer to any coherent set of ideas about a subject, but it can also have a negative connotation closer to its cousin word, idolatry. An ideology, like an idol, is a limited, partial account of reality that is raised to the level of the final word on things. Ideologues believe that their school or party has the real and complete answer to society's problems. Above all, ideologues hide from their adherents their dependence on God."-- 104
"The reality is much less simplistic. Highly progressive tax structures can produce a kind of injustice where people who have worked hard go unrewarded and are penalized by the high taxes. A society of low taxes and few benefits, however, produces a different kind of injustice, where the children of families who can afford good health care and elite education have vastly better opportunities than those who cannot. In short, ideologues cannot admit that there are always significant negative side-effects to any political program. They cannot grant that their opponents have good ideas too. In any culture in which God is largely absent, sex, money, and politics iwll fill the vacuum for different people. This is the reason that our political discourse is increasingly ideological and polarized. Many describe the current poisonous public discourse as a lack of bipartisanship, but the roots go much deeper than that. As Neibuhr taught, they go back t the beginning of the world, to our alienation from God, and to our frantic efforts to compensate for our feelings of cosmic nakedness and powerlessness. The only way to deal with all these things is to heal our relationship with God."--107
"Putting Nation in the place of God leads to cultural imperialism, and putting Self in the place of God leads to many of the dysfunctional dynamics we have discussed throughout this book. Why did our culture largely abandon God as its Hope? I believe it was because our religious communities have been and continue to be filled with these false gods. Making an idol out of doctrinal accuracy, ministry success, or moral rectitude leads to constant internal conflict, arrogance and self-righteousness, and ooppression of those whose view differ."--132
"Grace is grace. If it is truly trace, then no one was worthy of it at all, and that made all equal." --138
"Archbishop William Temple once said, 'Your religion is what you do with your solitude.'"--168
"The gospel asks, What is operating in the place of Jesus Christ as your real, functional salvation and Savior?"--174
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