Quotes from Andy Crouch

Because technology is devoted primarily to making our lives easier, it discourages us from disciplines, especially ones that involve disentangling ourselves from technology itself.

Just as the only real antidote to the temptations of money is lavish generosity, so the only real antidote to the temptations of power is choosing to spend our power in the opposite of the way the world encourages us to spend it: not on getting closer to the sources of additional power or on securing our own round-the-clock sense of comfort and control, but spend it on getting closer to the relatively powerless.

Evangelism is not an end in itself. It is the means to an end: restoring the image bearers' capacity for relationship and worship, where the true Creator God is named, known and blessed.

To live fully, in these transitory lives on this fragile earth, in such a way that we somehow participate in the glory of God—that would be flourishing. And that is what we are meant to do.

Technology is in its proper place when it helps us bond with the real people we have been given to love. It's out of its proper place when we end up bonding with people at a distance, like celebrities, whom we will never meet.

if the work of creating consistently leaves us depressed or drained, it is likely that we have somehow missed the path.

We are continually being nudged by our devices toward a set of choices. The question is whether those choices are leading us to the life we actually want. I want a life of conversation and friendship, not distraction and entertainment; but every day, many times a day, I'm nudged in the wrong direction. One key part of the art of living faithfully with technology is setting up better nudges for ourselves.

Grace is not a shortcut around our effort; it is the divine blessing on efforts that are undertaken in dependence and trust on God.

Poverty is the absence of linkages, the absence of connections with others

How many times have I been put at the front of the line without even knowing there was a line? How many times have I walked through a door that opened, invisibly and silently, for me, but slammed shut for others? How many lines have I cut in a life of privilege?

power is nothing—worse than nothing—without love.

A sabbathless life ends up with neither true work nor true rest, but with frantic and ineffective activity punctuated by couch-potato lethargy.

If progress is not the right word for buildings or poems, what is the right way to evaluate cultural change? I suggest integrity.

We only get one life to live. Wouldn't it be better spent enjoying and serving the world God made rather than a glowing screen?

So here's where we have to start if we are going to live as flourishing families in an age of easy everywhere: we are going to have to decide, together, that nothing is more important than becoming people of wisdom and courage. We are going to have to commit to make every major decision, and many small decisions, on the basis of these questions: Will this help me become less foolish and more wise? Will this help me become less fearful and more courageous?

The only biblical prosperity gospel is a posterity gospel—the promise that generation after generation will know the goodness of God through the properly stewarded abundance of God's world.

And when we do put on a video or otherwise fire up a screen for a purpose, we'll follow another principle: never entertain your children with anything you find unsatisfying, just like you shouldn't feed your children anything you don't enjoy eating yourself. Feed them with food that is both tasty and nutritious—and entertain them with movies, books, and stories that are both tasty and nutritious too.

Here is what we need to discover about power: it is both better and worse than we could imagine.

If you are looking for a single proximate cause of the loneliness that is epidemic in our world, it is the dearth of households.

Build into every single day an hour, for everyone in the household, free from the promises and demands of our devices.

True greatness and true power is faithful all the way down, including humbly quick to admit limitedness, sin and brokenness, and to ask for forgiveness.

Very few institutions thrive when they are left solely to "professionals," people who have made it their life's work to master a given domain of culture.

Zombie churches exist to keep the lights on rather than to be the light in dark places; they turn inward rather than outward; they serve insiders and ignore outsiders. The paradox of institutional life is very much like the paradox of individual life: only those who are willing to die can truly live. Only institutions that squarely face their own decay and decline can avoid the fate of the zombies.

The risk in thinking "worldviewishly" is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyze it. We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books. These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural