Classic and contemporary excerpts
Heavenly Cargo
Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic … Do not defend God’s Word, but testify to it.… Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of her capacity.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer: advice he gave his seminary students
Real Christianity
The main distinction between real Christianity and the system of the bulk of nominal Christians chiefly consists in the differing place given to the Gospel. To the latter, the trues of the Gospel are like distant stars that twinkle with a vain and idle luster. But for the real Christian these distinctive doctrines constitute the center in which he gravitates like the sun of his system and the source of his light, warmth and life.
—William Wilberforce in Real Christianity
Evil In Good Intentions
Again and again we’ve been forced to note that the evils that we face are not the work of bad men only, but of good as well. The gravest of our disasters have been brought upon us not by men desiring to make trouble for mankind, but by those who thought they did their best in the circumstances surrounding them. We do not know the man wise enough to have saved the world from its present sufferings—and we do not know the man wise enough to deliver us now.
—from the International Missionary Council in Madras, India, 1938
Loving God
Oh, sweet it is to know, most simply, that the soul loves Him; not as it should love Him, truly, and not “more than these,” with a glance of self-consciousness around; but that indeed it does love Him.
—Bishop Handley G. C. Moule in Jesus and the Resurrection
Getting The Right Perspective
When we are too young, we do not judge well; so, also, when we are too old. If we do not think enough, or if we think too much on any matter, we get obstinate and infatuated about it. If one considers one’s work immediately after having done it, one is entirely prepossessed in its favor; by delaying too long, one can no longer enter into the spirit of it. So with pictures seen from too far or too near; there is but one exact point which is the true place wherefrom to look at them: the rest are too near, too far, too high, or too low.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 381
A free will
People say: “Yes, certainly, God has given us a free will.” To this I reply: “To be sure, He has given us a free will; why then will you not let it remain free but make it your own will?” If you do with it what you will, it is not a free will. It is your own will. But God has given neither you nor any man your own will, for your own will comes from the devil and from Adam. They made the free will which they received from God into their own will. For a free will desires nothing of its own. It only cares for the will of God, and so it remains free, cleaving and clinging to nothing.
—Martin Luther, exposition of the Lord’s Prayer; taken from
Day by Day We Magnify Thee
The Abundant Secret Life
Religion does not lie open to all the eyes of men. Observed duties maintain our credit, but secret duties maintain our life. They are enclosed pleasures in religion which none but renewed spiritual souls do feelingly understand.
—John Flavel in Touchstone of Sincerity
Grits Without Salt
For years the Bible was a dead book to me … like grits without salt. But after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, it became alive. I saw that the Bible was God’s way of talking to me.
—Steve Bartkowski, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, quoted by Jamie Buckingham in Power for Living
The Hurt Of Healing
The old original wounds must first be probed in their depth before there can be healing. The Scripture compares sin with the wound of the soul, and says that an attempt to heal this wound without examining it first is vain and deceitful. It is God’s message to show men how awful their state is before he brings the comfort of deliverance and healing. The gospel must be revealed as bad news before it can be good news.
—Jonathan Edwards in Religious Affections
The Bible’S Real Players
Perhaps the way our teachers treat the Bible does not have the same effect on everyone, but I have learned through the years that by trying to make the biblical actors superhuman, we who teach often make them non-human and inhuman, and hence uninteresting, to those who are human. Such, of course, was not the intent of the Evangelists, but we often distort their intent to suit our purposes and our fears.
—Andrew M. Greeley’s introduction to The Robe, by Lloyd Douglas, paperback edition
