JP Moreland
[
Faith & Reason
]
Unfortunately, I have seen too many Christian thinkers who have a certain texture or posture in life that gives the impression that they are far more concerned with assuring their academic colleagues that they are not ignorant fundamentalists than they are with pleasing God and serving His people. Such thinkers often give up too much intellectual real estate far too readily to secular or other perspectives inimical to the Christian faith. This is why many average Christian folk are suspicious of the mind today. All too often, they have seen intellectual growth in Christian academics lead to a cynical posture unfaithful to the spirit of the Christian way. Fidelity to God and His cause is the core commitment of a growing Christian mind.
Source > Love God With All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997), p. 111. (531 reads)
David James Duncan
Personally I'm not sure just who or what Christ is. I still pray to him in a pinch, but I talk to myself in a pinch too?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand I'm getting less and less sure there's a difference. I used to wish somebody would just tell me what to think about Him. Then along came Elder Babcock, telling and telling, acting like Christ was running for President of the World, and he was His campaign manager, and whoever didn't get out and vote for the lord at the polls we call churches by casting the votes we call tithes and offerings into the ballot boxes we call offering plates was a wretched turd of a sinner voting for Satan by default. Mama tried to clear up all the confusion by saying that Christ is exactly what the Bible says He is. But what does the Bible say He is? On one page He's a Word, on the next a bridegroom, then He's a boy, then a scapegoat, then a thief in the night; read on and he's the messiah, then oops, he's a rabbi, and then a fraction?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùa third of a Trinity?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthen a fisherman, then a broken loaf of bread. I guess even God, when He's human, has trouble deciding just what He is.
Source > The Brothers K (Bantam Books: July 1996), p. 61. (396 reads)
David James Duncan
Christ founded a new church! You'd know that if you ever opened a Bible! And that new church -- "And that new church," Papa cut in, his face suddenly savage, "is two thousand years old now, and every bit as senile and mean-spirited as the one that killed Him!" "How dare you!" Mamma hissed. "How dare you say such a thing in front of these children!" "How dare you throw a fit in the of God over one damned beer!" "I've seen the hell one beer can lead to!" Mama cried. "And I've seen the hell your friendly preacher calls salvation!" Papa roared. "'Come unto me all ye Tea Totalin' prudes, and if your husband watches baseball or sips a beer with a neighbor on my Sabbath pay day then damn him to hell and whip his kids off to Spokane!"
Source > The Brothers K (Bantam Books: July 1996), p. 18. (372 reads)
David James Duncan
And today is Sabbath. And I'm not sick. And the sun is already so hot outside that everything's all bleached and wobbly-looking, as if the whole world was just an overexposed home movie God was showing Jesus up on their living room wall. And whenever it's really hot Elder Babcock's sermon -- even if it starts out being abut some nice quiet thing like the poor or meek or weak -- will sooner or later twist like a snake with its head run over to the unquiet subject of heaven and hell, and who all is going to which, and how long you'll have to stay, and what all will happen to you when you get there, and he goes on so loud and long and the air gets so used up and awful that bit by bit you lose track of any difference between his heaven and his hell and would gladly pick either over church. Then the sermon ends, and the long prayer after it, and it comes time to belt out the big hosanna that means it's almost time to go home. Except that last hymn always has about fourteen verses. And when you stand up to sing it you discover your blood has got stuck down in your feet. And all through the sermon every grownup in the place has had their mouth clamped shut trying not to yawn, so when the glad voices suddenly upraised this tidal wave of pent-up halitosis comes swashing out of them and up your nose and all through the parts of your head where the blood that's in you feet should have been, till your brain feels like it's going to barf.
Source > The Brothers K (Bantam Books: July 1996), p. 15. (382 reads)
Brennan Manning
The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions. It calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as a class, forgiving each other after we have hurt each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence. Of such is the kingdom of heaven, and of such homely mysteries is genuine religion made. The conversion from mistrust to trust is a confident quest seeking the spiritual meaning of human existence. Grace abounds and walks around the edges of our everyday experience.
Source > The Ragamuffin Gospel, (Questar Publishers, 1993) 77. (408 reads)
By CS Lewis (Harper SanFrancisco: Mar, 2001)
Selected from sermons delivered by C. S. Lewis during World War II, these nine addresses show the beloved author and theologian bringing hope and courage in a time of great doubt. "The Weight of Glory," considered by many to be Lewis' finest sermon of all, is an incomparable explication of virtue, goodness, desire, and glory. Also included are "Transposition," "On Forgiveness," "Why I Am Not a Pacifist," and "Learning in War-Time," in which Lewis presents his compassionate vision of Christianity in language that is both lucid and compelling.
Francis A. Schaeffer
[
Jesus
]
[P]eople in our culture in general are already in the process of being accustomed to accept nondefined, contentless religious words and symbols, without any rational or historical control. Such words and symbols can be filled with the content of the moment. The words Jesus and Christ are the most ready for the manipulator. The phrase Jesus Christ has become a contentless banner which can be carried in any direction for sociological purposes. In other words, because the phrase Jesus Christ has been separated from true history and the content of Scripture, it can be used to trigger religiously motivated sociological actions directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.
Source > The God Who Is There, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), p110. (443 reads)
Vincent van Gogh
Now to revert to the fact that I told Father it was wrong that two years ago we quarreled so violently that I was locked out of the house afterward. And what does father say to this? "Yes, but I cannot take back anything of what I did then; what I have I have always done for your good, and I have always followed my sincere conviction." To this I replied that it may happen that a person's conviction is at complete variance with conscience; I mean what one thinks on should do may be diametrically opposed to what one ought to do. I told Father that in the Bible itself maxims can be found by which we may test our "convictions," to see whether they are reasonable and just. There is no need for Father to say that he committed an error in my case, but Father should have learned what I learned in these two years?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthat it was an error in itself, and that it should be rectified immediately, without raising the question of whose fault it was. Look, brother, in my opinion, Father is forever lapsing into narrow-mindedness, instead of being bigger, more liberal, broader and more humane. It was clergyman's vanity that carried things to extremes at the time; and it is still that same clergyman's vanity which will cause more disasters now and in the future.
Source > The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh L345a, Written December 7-8, 1883 (New York Graphic Society, 1958), 2:230.. (307 reads)
Vincent van Gogh
One must be careful not to fall back on opaque black?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù on deliberate wrong?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand even more one has to avoid the white of a whitewashed wall, which means hypocrisy and everlasting Pharisaism. I must tell you that with evangelists it is the same as with artists. There is an old academic school, often detestable, tyrannical, the accumulation of horrors, men who wear a cuirass, a steel armor of prejudices and conventions; Their God is like the God of Shakespeare's drunken Falstaff, le dedans dune eglise [the inside of a church]
Source > The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (New York Graphic Society, 1958). (300 reads)
Vincent van Gogh
[
Theism
]
For me, that God of the clergymen is dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me so — so be it — but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live and others did not live; and then if we live, there is something mysterious in that. Now call it God or human nature or whatever you like, but there is something which I cannot define systematically, though it is very real, and see that as God, or as good as God.
Source > The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh L164, written December 21, 1881 (New York Graphic Society, 1958), I:288. (350 reads)
Albert Camus (Father Paneloux)
Thus from the dawn of recorded history the scourge of God has humbled the proud of heart and laid low those who hardened themselves against Him. Ponder this well, my friends, and fall on your knees. If today the plague is in your midst, that is because the hour has struck for taking thought. The just man need have no fear, but the evildoer has good cause to tremble. For plague is the flail of God and the world His threshing-floor, and implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff. There will be more chaff than wheat, few chosen of the many called. Yet this calamity was not willed by God. Too long this world of ours has connived at evil, too long has it counted on the divine mercy, on God's forgiveness. Repentance was enough, men thought; nothing was forbidden. You fondly imagine it was enough to visit God on Sundays, and thus you make free of your weekdays, You believed some brief formalities, some bendings of the knee, would recompense Him well enough for your criminal indifference. But God is not mocked. These brief encounters could not sate the fierce hunger of His love... To some the sermon simply brough home the fact that they had been sentenced, for an unkown crime, to an indeterminate period of punishment.
Source > The Plague, (New York: Vintage International, 1948, 1975) 95-7. (492 reads)
Albert Camus (Tarrou)
[A]ll stream out into the open, drug themselves with talking, start arguing or love-making, and the last glow of sunset the town, freighted with lovers two by two and loud with voices, drifts like a helmless ship into the throbbing darkness. In vain a zealous evangelist with a felt hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying without cease: "God is great and good. Come unto Him." On the contrary, they all make haste toward some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God. In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground, But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thought to pleasure. And all the hideous fears that stamp their faces in the daytime are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an unkempt freedom fevering their blood.
Source > The Plague, (New York: Vintage International, 1948, 1975) 121. (411 reads)
CS Lewis
You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further: and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity.
Source > Mere Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996 [first published 1943]), p.81 (333 reads)
