{"id":499,"date":"2007-02-02T09:21:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T09:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html"},"modified":"2007-02-02T09:21:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T09:21:00","slug":"voice-of-day-paul-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html","title":{"rendered":"Voice of the Day: Paul Brand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A troubling phenomenon recurs among young Christians reared in solid homes and sound churches. After living their early years as outstanding examples of Christian faith, many become spiritual dropouts. Did they fail because they concentrated on the exterior, visible Christian life? Did they learn to mimic certain behaviors, nuances of words, and emotional responses? Crayfish-like, did they develop a hard exterior that resembled everyone else\u2019s and conclude such was the kingdom of God, while inside they were weak and vulnerable?<br \/>&#8230; An outside shell can seem attractive, trustworthy, and protective. It certainly has advantages over a dead, useless skeleton or over no skeleton at all. But God desires for us a more advanced skeleton that serves as it stays hidden.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Paul Brand<em><br \/>Source: &#8220;Fearfully and Wonderfully Made&#8221; by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/index.cfm?action=sojomail.subscribe&amp;source=web_beliefnet_blog\">+ Sign up to receive our quote of the day via e-mail<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A troubling phenomenon recurs among young Christians reared in solid homes and sound churches. After living their early years as outstanding examples of Christian faith, many become spiritual dropouts. Did they fail because they concentrated on the exterior, visible Christian life? Did they learn to mimic certain behaviors, nuances of words, and emotional responses? Crayfish-like,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":379,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Voice of the Day: Paul Brand - God&#039;s Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Voice of the Day: Paul Brand - God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A troubling phenomenon recurs among young Christians reared in solid homes and sound churches. After living their early years as outstanding examples of Christian faith, many become spiritual dropouts. Did they fail because they concentrated on the exterior, visible Christian life? Did they learn to mimic certain behaviors, nuances of words, and emotional responses? Crayfish-like,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-02T09:21:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"gp_intern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Voice of the Day: Paul Brand - God&#039;s Politics","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Voice of the Day: Paul Brand - God&#039;s Politics","og_description":"A troubling phenomenon recurs among young Christians reared in solid homes and sound churches. After living their early years as outstanding examples of Christian faith, many become spiritual dropouts. Did they fail because they concentrated on the exterior, visible Christian life? Did they learn to mimic certain behaviors, nuances of words, and emotional responses? Crayfish-like,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html","og_site_name":"God&#039;s Politics","article_published_time":"2007-02-02T09:21:00+00:00","author":"gp_intern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html","name":"Voice of the Day: Paul Brand - God&#039;s Politics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-02-02T09:21:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-02T09:21:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/cdd0d36f3f2e1667662d6db39e7e2fba"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/02\/voice-of-day-paul-brand.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Voice of the Day: Paul Brand"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/","name":"God&#039;s Politics","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/cdd0d36f3f2e1667662d6db39e7e2fba","name":"gp_intern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"gp_intern"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/author\/gp_intern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}