Godly Behavior
Love when you expect no love in return.
Do good without expecting thanks.
Lend when you do not hope for a return.
This will make us act like sons and daughters of the Most High.
—Henrietta Mears in Dream Big: The Henrietta Mears Story
Bad government
Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely.… And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be.
—C. S. Lewis in Of Other Worlds
True contrasts
The opposite of Evangelical is not Catholic but agnostic. The opposite of Catholic is not Evangelical but sectarian.
—Bishop William Frey in Seed and Harvest
Lest we forget
From the Christian perspective, the state of public morals has fallen to such low repute that the existence of such a phenomenon as religious publishing is not only necessary, it’s absolutely imperative in order to retain at least a semblance of our quickly eroding Judeo-Christian heritage. If it were left to those who are in charge of the information media, the heritage would probably disappear within a generation.
—Jan P. Dennis, quoted in Publishers Weekly (Feb. 15, 1991)
No commonality does not equal pluralism
Liberals are always talking about pluralism, but that is not what they mean.… In public school, Jews don’t meet Christians. Christians don’t meet Hindus. Everybody meets nothing. That is, as I explain to Jews all the time, why their children so easily inter-marry. Jews don’t marry Christians. Non-Jewish Jews marry non-Christian Christians. Jews for nothing marry Christians for nothing. They get along great because they both affirm nothing. They have everything in common—nothing. That’s not pluralism.
—Jewish talk-show host Dennis Prager in The Door (Nov./Dec. 1990)
The difference Christ’s love makes
If I cannot in honest happiness take the second place (or the twentieth); if I cannot take the first without making a fuss about my unworthiness, then I know nothing of Calvary love.
—Amy Carmichael in If
Of choice and conscience
The late golf champion Babe Didrikson Zaharias once disqualified herself from a golf tournament for having hit the wrong ball out of the rough. “But nobody would have known,” a friend told her. “I would have known,” Babe Didrikson Zaharias replied.
—From The Executive Speechwriter Newsletter
Of pots and kettles
I welcome news of the sins of others because it makes my sins appear more normal. Misery loves company.
—William H. Willimon in the Christian Century (Oct. 31, 1990)
Lord, teach us
God’s promises are altogether too large to be mastered by desultory praying. When we examine ourselves, all too often we discover that our praying does not rise to the demands of the situation; is so limited that it is little more than a mere oasis amid the waste and desert of the world’s sin.
—E. M. Bounds in Prayer and the Word of God
