Quote: Christian Pride and Complacency
If Christians who shelter beneath [their own] self-assurance do not learn better ways by listening to the Scriptures, God may address them in the terrible language of tragedy. We serve a God who delights to disclose himself to the contrite, to the lowly of heart, to the meek. When God finds us so puffed up that we do not feel our need for him, it is an act of kindness on his part to take us down a peg or two; it would be an act of judgement to leave us in our vaulting self-esteem.
~ DA Carson, Evangelical Theologian and New Testament Professor… Continue reading ...
Quote: When sex gets the best of you
“What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. Thus the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex. For sex cannot be admitted to a mere equality among elementary emotions or experiences like eating and sleeping. The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant. There is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special purification and dedication. The modern talk about sex being free like any other sense… Continue reading ...
Quote: the necessity of biblical preaching and reading in church worship
Far from being an alien intrusion into worship, the reading and preaching of the Word are actually indispensable to it. The two cannot be divorced. Indeed, it is their unnatural divorce which accounts for the low levels of so much contemporary worship. Our worship is poor because our knowledge of God is poor. And our knowledge of God is poor because our preaching is poor. But when the word of God is expounded in its fulness and the congregation begins to glimpse the glory of the living God, they bow down in solemn awe and joyful wonder before his throne. And it is preaching which accomplishes this. The proclamation of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit… Continue reading ...
Quote: the sorry goal of relativism
Having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labelled today as fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching’ looks like the only attitude [acceptable] to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
~ Pope Benedict XVI… Continue reading ...
Quote: people who don’t understand a social institution should be last to advocate its change
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I… Continue reading ...
Quote: we are too easily pleased
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
CS Lewis, from The Weight of Glory
Quote: God’s omniscience and man’s freewill
What we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today’. All the days are ‘Now’ for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday, he simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not ‘foresee’ you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing.
CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Quote: God doesn’t promise Christians an end to their troubles
When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well … he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along – illness, money troubles, new kinds of temptations – he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing [God] means… Continue reading ...
Quote: The Importance of Family
James Q. Wilson, a political scientist, in the March 1996 issue of Reader’s Digest, wrote:
The family is not one of several alternative lifestyles. It is not an arena in which rights are negotiated; it is not an old-fashioned barrier to a promiscuous sex life; it is not a set of cost-benefit calculations. It is a commitment for which there is no feasible substitute… There is no way to prepare for this commitment other than to make it… Married life is shaped by the fact that the couple has made a solemn vow before family and friends that this is for keeps…
HT to Salting Society, where I first spotted and subsequently and unashamedly flogged this quote from. I liked it so much, I had to… Continue reading ...
Quote: The greatest evil
The greatest evil has not come from people zealous for God. It has resulted when people are convinced there is no God to answer to.
- Greg Koukl, from his book Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
Quote: Prayer is not a pokie machine
The reason that prayer doesn’t always get answered, or that we have a hard time even finding a mechanistic way of treating prayer, is because prayer is not a machine.
CS Lewis, CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Absolute Legend = LightFM + Luke Holt
Breakfast radio host, Luke Holt, from Melbourne’s Christian radio station 89.9 LightFM, has been set a supreme goal: to achieve the title of Absolute Legend by ranking as Google’s number one search result for the very same search term – by week ending Friday 3 April 2009.
Speaking on this morning’s Morning Wake Up breakfast
show, Luke was full of promise and dismay: over the
weekend, since being handed the challenge, Luke had managed to
secure a top 3 ranking for the term ‘absolute legend’. Not bad
- I’d class that as legendary. Yet when he was gleefully going
to display this positive result to his co-host, Lucy Holmes, who issued Luke the challenge, he was… Continue reading ...
Quote: Hope, faith and love
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from ours. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love … which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr, philosopher and theologian… Continue reading ...
Quote: Peter Kreeft on tolerance and acceptance
Here’s a great quotation from Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, on the topic of Moral Theology and Homosexuality^, taken from an address delivered to St Mike’s College in November 2002:
There is a distinction between tolerance and acceptance. Tolerance has a prejudicial term to it: we don’t tolerate good things, we tolerate bad things for the sake of good things. Catholics believe that homosexuals are good things and that homosexual acts are bad things. So they accept homosexual persons and they don’t accept homosexual acts. They tolerate homosexual acts but they don’t tolerate homosexual persons – they love them. (Emphasis mine.)
You can listen to other addresses that Peter Kreeft has delivered by downloading them from his website: www.peterkreeft.com.
^ This address can be downloaded from
Quote: Successors of spiritual failure
The Bible, the most honest book in the world, paints a terrible picture of the moral and spiritual failures of God’s chosen people, the Jews, throughout their history; and Christians are their successors.
Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and King’s College; quote from Making Sense Out of Suffering
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