My friend Ashish came from Northern India to visit me in Chicago. We were eating at Gino's Pizzeria one day and ran into a youth pastor I know, along with his youth group. Just returned from Central America, they were debriefing. "So what did you learn from your trip?" Ashish asked. Student after student obsessed about the poverty of "those poor people." After they left, Ashish said, "Why do they ...

Christians, of all people, should understand that the MasterCard mentality is not the way to master life. The pattern Jesus established was one of deferring desires--not because the fulfillment of desiring is wrong, but because "my time has not yet come." Most of us think our time has come five minutes after the desire first pops into our minds.

We must strive for sanctity, for holiness, to the point that we show up at Heaven's gates "squeezed out like a lemon." This image is vivid and challenging--at once heroic, romantic, and intimidating. Indeed, it is in striking, almost shocking contrast to the consumerist, hedonist, and materialist deliriums of our decadent society.

What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living."

If the result of commercialism is no worse than to make a husband give a gift to his wife, and a father a gift to his child, and to enable us all to be extravagantly generous for once, then there could be much worse things.

We must be aware of trivializing the gospel, of presenting it in a form that compromises the radicality of its message. If someone is used to seeing or hearing "Coke adds life," he or she will, most likely, understand "Christ adds life" in the same commercial way: Christ is just another consumer item vying for attention. Christ doesn't speak as crucified King, but as a tricky salesman; not as Lord ...

The essence of life today is not having--it is having to have.

Money will buy a bed but not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; finery but not beauty; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusements but not happiness; religion but not salvation--a passport to everywhere but heaven.