Quotes about Flexibility

he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required.

From the beginning no serious Christian has been able to say 'This is my culture, so I must adapt the gospel to fit within it', just as no serious Christian has been able to say 'This is my surrounding culture, so I must oppose it tooth and nail'. Christians are neither chameleons, changing colour to suit their surroundings, nor rhinoceroses, ready to charge at anything in sight.

It all becomes so complicated, people grumble—when what they really mean is, "I am so used to reading this passage one way that I find it hard to switch and consider other options.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

The faithfulness principle (of the conservative) and the flexibility principle (of the liberal) are two sides of the same coin. They are both necessary if Christians are to follow their instructions and remain simultaneously "in" the world but not "of" it.

Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative.

When we become simply a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies.

First develop a strategy that utilizes everything around you. The best way to prepare for a challenge is to cultivate the ability to call on an infinite variety of responses.

adapting the past to speak to changing circumstances in the present.

Without its unwavering commitment to adaptation over time, the Bible would have died a quick death over two thousand years ago. Its existence as a source of spiritual truth that transcends specific times and places is made possible by its flexibility and adaptive nature—one of the many paradoxes we need to embrace when it comes to the Bible.

Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will spill, and the wineskins will be ruined. Instead, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”