If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
—René Descartes in Principles of Philosophy
A meaningless gospel
The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat.… It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.
—Walter Brueggemann in Finally Comes the Prophet
Anxiety and faith are incompatible
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.
—George Müller in Signs of the Times
World of new thrills
People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on “being in love” for ever. As a result when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last.…
Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.
—C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
Good soldier
He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish and prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.
—John Milton in Areopagitica
Real reward
I once heard a story about a father who inquired of his son when he planned to purchase a much-needed automobile. “When God sends my one hundred fold,” the son replied. Then he explained, “Recently I gave a gift of $50. When God sends my reward I’ll have $5000 and can buy my car.” When he realized his son was serious, the father responded, “God is already sending you your reward. It comes every two weeks, and it is called salary.”
It is time we Christians stop and assess what we really believe about prosperity. A life lived for the glory of God is its own reward.
—Virginia Law Shell in Good News (Jan./Feb. 1991)
Kingdom flight
I am learning that God intends salvation to be more than a ticket to heaven, and that his chief purpose in providing the church is not to transport us there with as little inconvenience as possible.
—Don Ratzlaff in Christian Leader (April 23, 1991)
An attractive spirit
You’ve got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word.
[C. S.] Lewis may have become the chief Christian tutor to the twentieth century because he refuses the perennial temptation to turn the wine back into water.
—Ralph C. Wood in a review of Lewis biographies in Books & Religion (Spring 1991)
Identity crisis
The problem with Christians in America is not that Christians aren’t where they should be; the problem is that they’re not what they should be right where they are.
—Os Guinness in Radix (vol. 20, No. 1)
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While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.
As my doubts about his teachings grew, so did a secret fascination with Jesus.
We must always be people of the Word, but we’ll have to reimagine deep engagement with Scripture.
