Join The Underlines // The Best Of What I Read

A batch of the best highlights from what Joshua's read, .

Institutions are our beliefs and ethics enfleshed. They bring ideas down from the ether and ensure that they are operating within the actual life of a community. They are creedal in nature.

Disappearing Church

Mark Sayers

Jesus is more than an example to be followed; he’s a Savior to be trusted. This is why we miss the point if we see Jesus’ wilderness temptation as only how to overcome temptation, with advice like “Jesus used Scripture, so you should too.” This focuses on a flea and misses the elephant in the room. The point is not, “He did it; you can too!” The point is, “You don’t do it; so Jesus did it for you.”

The Pursuing God

Joshua Ryan Butler

Ever since returning from China, I’ve had an abiding interest in asking this question: “How is it that the West can be re-evangelized?”4 One of the reasons I’m so compelled by the life of habit is that I see habits as a way of light in an age of darkness. Cultivating a life of transcendent habits means that our ordinary ways of living should stand out in our culture, dancing like candles on a dark mantle. As Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe . . . but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”5

The Common Rule

Justin Whitmel Earley

...catch up on these, and many more highlights