What’s devastating about it is that when we lack an ear for wrong notes in our lives, we cannot play right ones or even recognize them in the performances of others. Eventually we make ourselves religiously so unmusical that we miss both the exposition and the recapitulation of the main themes God plays in human life. The music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint. Introduction Page 1 · Location 168 In pondering the twenty-third psalm, Joseph Sittler once observed that though we walk through the valley of death just once, we spend our whole lives in the valley of the shadow of death. Middle-aged people notice that shadow more often than they used to. Page 2 · Location 178 The whole range of human miseries, from restlessness and estrangement through shame and guilt to the agonies of daytime television —all of them tell us that things in human life are not as they ought to be. Page 2 · Location 184 The reason is that sin distorts our character, a central feature of our very humanity. Sin corrupts powerful human capacities —thought, emotion, speech, and act —so that they become centers of attack on others or of defection or neglect.