What the meaning of God the Creator is and what is involved in the work of creation, is itself not less hidden from us men [sic] than everything else that is contained in the Confession. We are not nearer to believing in God the Creator, than we are to believing that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. It is not the case that the truth about God the Creator is directly accessible to us and that only the truth of the second article needs a revelation. But in the same sense in both cases we are faced with the mystery of God and His work. For the Confession does not speak of the world, or at all events it does so only incidentally, when it speaks of heaven and earth. It does not say, I believe in the created world, nor even, I believe in the work of creation. But it says, I believe in God the Creator. And everything that is said about creation depends absolutely on this Subject.

Karl Barth quoted in Hauerwas,’ With the Grain of The Universe, 183

Religions are seen as comprehensive interpretative schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and heavily ritualized, which structure human experience and understanding of self and world. Not every telling of these cosmic stories is religious, however. It must be told with a particular purpose or interest. It must be used, to adopt a suggestion of William Christian, with a view of identifying and describing what is taken to be “more important than everything else in the universe,??? and to organizing all of life, including both behaviors and beliefs, in relation to this. If the interpretative scheme is used or the story told without this interest in the maximally important, it ceases to function religiously. To be sure, it may continue to shape in various ways, the attitudes, sentiments, and conduct of individuals and of groups. A religion, in other words, may continue to exercise immense influence on the way people experience themselves and their world even when it is no longer explicitly adhered to.

Nature of Doctrine, George Lindbeck p.32)

To be authentic, mission must be thoroughly theocentric. It begins in God’s redemptive purpose and will be completed when that purpose is fulfilled. The God-given identity of the church thus arises from its mission. This order of priority is foundational. Yet for some sixteen centuries Christians have been taught to think of church as the prior category and mission as one among several functions of the church.

Wilbert Shenk, Changing Frontiers of Mission, 7

“Why is it that you have to be at least thirty-five years old to run for President?” asked the Toluca Lake resident. Matthew proposed a constitutional change that would let kids vote and give grade-schoolers a shot at leading the free world, not that it doesn’t seem like we’re already there.

One “good thing that comes out of a kid being President is we wouldn’t know how to start wars so there would not be any. . . . Also, I have a few more statements. Who cuts down the tropical rain forests? Grown-Ups! Who uses up the earth’s natural resources? Grown-Ups! Now am I right or am I right?”

From Steve Lopez’s “Ah, the wisdom of youth — about parents“

What Jesus renounced is not first of all violence, but rather the compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others. The point is not that one can attain all of one’s legitimate ends without using violent means. It is rather that our readiness to renounce our legitimate ends when they cannot be attained by legitimate means itself constitutes our participation in the triumphant suffering of the Lamb.

-John Howard Yoder (Huebner 2006:31)