Quotes about Context

Left to their own devices, most organizations tend toward a sort of sociological conservatism that will increasingly forgo engagement with their context in favor of preserving what they see as their repository of inherited ideas. In other words, they turn away from missional engagement and toward an increasingly traditionalist, sentimental interpretation of reality. Instead of looking forward to a possible future of which they are called to be a part, they look back to an idealized past.

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.

Nowhere in Scripture do we find doctrine studied for its own sake or in isolation from life.

Too often, however, we tend to read these accounts merely as biblical history without relating them to our lives and our situations. But

Fire in the fireplace is a wonderful thing. Fire on the carpet has the potential to burn down your house. Sex is like fire. In the right context, it is an awesome thing. But once it is outside the context it was designed for, sex can burn your life and relationships to the ground.

Now, whenever you read any historical document, you always evaluate it in light of the historical context.

When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more, nor less.

When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.

The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.

To conclude: good journalism is one of the models of good conversation and communication in the wider social context.

If people take seriously doctrines such as the divinity of Christ, it is not primarily because they can treat them as if they were tidy conclusions to an argument, deductions from readily available evidence, but because — however obscurely they are grasped, however challenging the detail — they see that the language of doctrine holds together a set of intractably complex questions in a way that offers a coherent context for human living.

You will never understand Jesus by looking at the God of the Old Testament. You must first look at Jesus and then you will understand the God of the Old Testament.