New Testament on Principles & Values New Testament

The Lord calls us to action. It's what we DO that matters

Reverend Culpepper at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church offered me wise counsel: Be still and listen. Have faith. Let people know your heart. As the campaign progressed, I found myself thinking about Reverend Culpepper's words time and again.

I carried my King James Bible to services, the same one I'd carried since 4th grade. Sometimes the pastor called on me to speak. I'd never spoken to a whole congregation. But I talked about my favorite Bible verse, Matthew 25:40. Its message was very simple: The Lord calls us to action. It's what we DO that matters most.

[Matthew 25:40 "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."]

Romans 12 manifesto: old law is gone; have faith in God

[My pastor] broke it down for us with a neat little checklist, culled from Romans, chapter 12:
1. Dedicate yourself to clean and active Christian living
2. Have your values, goals, and interests adjusted to the will of God, rather than to what society promotes
3. Exhibit humility, produced by faith
4. Use your abilities in a gracious manner for the good of all
5. Develop a strong distaste within yourself for whatever you know to be wrong, and hold tenaciously to whatever you know to be right and good
6. Care deeply about the welfare of others
7. Serve God
8. Hang in there in unpleasant, difficult times
9. Be generous and friendly
10. Be good to persons who treat you badly
11. Identify with other people's circumstances
12. Be humble, and associate with humble people
13. Don't retaliate
14. Be agreeable, not argumentative.

Love the sinner, hate the sin

Hillary and Bill's difficult but enduring marriage is perhaps explained in the context of the marriage of her parents, dominated by the humiliating, withholding figure of her father, whom she managed to idealize, while rationalizing his cruelty and indifference to the pain he caused. Hillary somehow found a way to focus on what her father was able to give, not what was denied.

As she later did with her husband, Hillary took an almost biblical view in her forgiveness of her father's actions: "Love the sinner, hate the sin." The lesson came directly from Hugh Rodham: "He used to say all the time, `I will always love you but I won't always like what you do,'" said Hillary.

Rejoice in our suffering; endurance produces character

"It is in times like these that we are reminded of a paradox, that it is a privilege to struggle. American slaves sang, 'Nobody knows the trouble I've seen--Glory Hallelujah!' Growing up, I would often wonder at the seeming contradiction contained in this line. But I came to learn that there is no contradiction at all. I believe this same message is found in the Bible in Romans 5, where we are told to 'rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.' For me, there is the lesson that only through struggle do we realize the depths of our resilience and understand that the hardest of blows can be survived."