Convicting Statements for Pondering and for Action

I am currently highly under the influence of the book I most recently read, David Dark's The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.  This book has re-inspired me  to question, to think, to read, to experience, to grow, and to write.  The following are some quotations from the book that drive my current questioning and searching and that convict me to go beyond my brain and out into the world to make it more what it should be.

My religion is my practice.  It's what I do. (pg. 35)  Will we allow a religious critique of our practice of religion?  Are we up for a redeeming word?  Show me a transcript of the words you've spoken, typed, or texted in the course of a day, an account of your doings, and a record of your transactions, and I'll show you your religion.  (pg. 38)

What is my religion?  If it is shown in what I do on a daily basis, by every word, by every deed, by every decision I make, and by every way I choose to spend a dollar, does my religion point to Christ?  Is my religion of my daily life one that I can say would match the words of Jesus, the commands of God, or the leading of the Spirit?  Or is my religion a patchy, inconsistent, and inadequate attempt?  Do I even give a genuine attempt each day to live the love I claim to have made a difference in my life?  What if every person claiming to live as a "Christian" examined each day what the religion of a Christian should be and what the religion of our lives really is?

We only receive art when we let it call our own lives into question.  If the words of Jesus of Nazareth, for instance, strike us as comfortable and perfectly in tune with our own confident common sense, our likes and dislikes, our budgets, and our actions toward strangers and foreigners, then receiving the words of Jesus is probably not what we're doing. We may quote a verse, put it in a PowerPoint presentation, or even intone it loudly with an emotional, choked-up quiver, but if it doesn't scandalize or bother us, challenging our already-made-up minds, we aren't really receiving it.  Not religiously anyway.  (pg. 42)

Goal: Reread all of the Gospels.  Do the words of Jesus scandalize, bother, and challenge?  What are the challenges He gives you?

For some, their religion is nothing more than a special interest group, a bastion of offendedness and anger, the powerhouse of the saved rather than a place from which life can be viewed and lived more redemptively.  (pg. 44)
Lord, this is the yearning of my heart...  "a life that can be viewed and lived more redemptively."  Teach me to see your redemption, to live it out, and to express it to others.
If all our friends and news sources require of us is a "Ditto" and "I think what you think," we might be in danger of becoming impenetrable of wisdom, immunized against the sensation of sympathy, resistant to the pleasure of being amused by our ignorance, and closed to the joy of being wrong.  (pg. 58)
In what aspects of my life do I have a tendency to seek sources and people who allow me the blind, dull pleasure of the "Ditto" response?  What sources and people DO challenge my thinking, and how can I seek more opportunities for my ignorance and incorrectness to be exposed so that I might have deeper understanding and sympathy that lead to action?