Classic and contemporary excerpts
HARD ASSIGNMENTS
We do not want suffering; we want success. We identify not with those who are low and hurt but with those who are high and healthy. We don’t like lepers or losers very well; we prefer climbers and comers. For Christians, the temptation to be conformed to this world is desperately sweet and strong.
Yet, says the apostle Paul, we are children of God if we suffer with Christ.… God does not give his hardest assignments to his weakest children.
—Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., in Assurances of the Heart
OUR NEW RELIGION
Western culture has made a fundamental change in its religious base. We have exchanged that One who said, “I am the Truth” (John 14:6) for the incredibly expensive doctrine of Freud and the words of all his varied disciples.
Our new religion says with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” and teaches that our status is one of “original victim” rather than “original sin.”
—Carol Tharp in a letter to the Chicago Tribune Magazine (Apr. 17, 1994)
A HUMANIST’S LAMENT
Not long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candour on television, Marghanita Laski, one of our best-known secular humanists and novelists, said: “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.”
—John Stott in The Contemporary Christian
KNOWN BY THE ALMIGHTY
Though you are one of the teeming millions in this world, and though the world would have you believe that you do not count and that you are but a speck in the mass, God says, “I know you.”
—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in The Best of Martyn Lloyd-Jones
INCOMPREHENSIBLE GIFT
Who can estimate the value of God’s gift, when He gave to the world His only begotten Son? It is something unspeakable and incomprehensible. It passes man’s understanding. Two things there are which man has no arithmetic to reckon, and no line to measure. One of these things is the extent of that man’s loss who loses his own soul. The other is the extent of God’s gift when he gave Christ to sinners.… Sin must indeed be exceeding sinful, when the Father must needs give His only Son to be the sinner’s Friend!
—J. C. Ryle in Foundations of Faith
LIFE WITHOUT GOD
Dostoyevsky reminded us in The Brothers Karamazov that “if God does not exist, everything is permissible.” We are now seeing “everything.” And much of it is not good to get used to.
—William J. Bennett, addressing the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Heritage Foundation
FANTASY ISLAND
Women’s struggle, too long delayed, for equality has resulted in them taking over the pastime, and some of the potential humiliations, of men. Apparently there has been a startling rise in the employment of male prostitutes.… I used to like having [women] on juries because I thought they were realistic and, unlike men, didn’t live in a world of fantasy. Now, however, they have their own porn magazines and are reaching for the top shelf in the newsagents like so many dreaming men.
—Lawyer and Rumpole creator John Mortimer in The Spectator (Mar. 26, 1994)
