"God treat[s] His Creation with integrity: each thing in its own order, each thing the way He made it…if God treats the tree like a tree, the machine like a machine and the man like a man, shouldn't I, as a fellow-creature, treat the machine like a machine, the man like a man, the plant like a plant - each thing in integrity in its own order? And for the highest reason: because I love God - I love the One who has made it! Loving the Lover who has made it, I should have respect for the thing He has made." - Francis Schaeffer in Pollution and the Death of Man

"It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear the story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all. - Dorothy Sayers, quoted in God in Pain, by Barbara Brown Taylor, Christianity Today, March 2, 1998

"Our evangelical culture tends to take the awesome reality of a transcendent god who is worthy to be feared and downsize Him so He could fit into our 'buddy system.' The way we talk about Him, the way we pray, and, more strikingly, the way we live shows that we have somehow lost our sense of being appropriately awestruck in the presence of a holy and all-powerful God. It's been a long time since we've heard a good sermon the the fear of God. If God were to show up visibly, many of us think we'd run up to Him and high-five Him for the good things He had done." - Joseph M. Stowell in Moody (Nov./Dec. 1997) Christianity Today, February 1998

"The danger is a popular democracy is that we may try to democratize God. If we don't like God's program, we can simply vote Him out and run for office ourselves." - Cornelius Platinga, Jr. (quoted in Christianity Today, September 1997

"I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God." - Henri Nouwen in A Cry for Mercy

"God doesn't have to be good to anybody. He doesn't owe us the breath we breathe. I figure if God has given us salvation, that's way more than we deserve, and I won't judge Him for not giving me something else."

"For me the greatest joy that I have is knowing that I do have a Father who loves me, and that He doesn't love me in a passive way. That He loves me so much that He sent Christ to take away the guilt of my sin, and that it is a real thing, that it really did happen. If I will experience joy in this life, it will be when I let other people know that there is a God who loves them, and He has taken away the sin that separates them. There is no greater joy than just that proclamation."

"Psychobabble is that language spoken by sailors who become so interested in navigating their way around the boat that they've forgotten to read the stars and the sea. They may be able to get from the galley to the head, but they will be lost in their journey from point to port. Jesus being God is the perfect picture of who God is. Jesus being man is the picture of perfect humanity. To find Him, to meditate on Him is to find God and our own true selves. It is to see the brilliant design of the boat and its course and the beauty of the sea." - Rich Mullins CCM 11/97

"As the farthest reach of our love for each other is loving our enemies, as the farthest reach of God's love for us is loving us at our most unlovable and unlovely, so the farthest reach of our love for God is loving him when in almost every way that matters we can neither see him nor hear him... when the worst of the wilderness for us is the fear that he has forsaken us if indeed he exists at all." - Frederick Buechner in A Room Called Remember

"We - or at least I - shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have 'tasted and seen.' Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are 'patches of Godlight' in the woods of our experience." - C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm

"Far back in my boyhood I remember an old saint telling me that after some services he liked to make his way home alone, by quiet byways, so that the hush of the Almighty might remain on his awed and prostrate soul. That is the element we are losing, and its loss is one of the measures of our poverty, and the primary secret of our inefficient life and service. And what is the explanation of the loss? Preeminently our impoverished conception of God. Men who are possessed by a powerful God can never themselves be impotent. But have we not robbed the Almighty of much of His awful glory, and to that extent are we ourselves despoiled? We have contemplated the beauties of the rainbow, but we have overlooked the dim severities of the throne. We have toyed with the light, but we have forgotten the lightening. We have rejoiced in the fatherhood of our God, but too frequently the fatherhood we have proclaimed has been throneless and effeminate."

"We have picked and chosen according to the weakness of our own tastes, and not according to the full-orbed revelation of the truth, and we have selected the picturesque and rejected the appalling." - John Henry Jowett in Listening to the Giants

"Divine speech is articulation of God's presence…the magnificat is a biblical theology in miniature, because it begins and it ends in an exaltation not of Mary but of the Word." - Samuel Terrien in The Magnificat: Musicians as Biblical Interpreters

"Capitalism gets to stride around our society as objective truth. Everybody from Girl Scouts to collectors for the IRS agrees that money works. Why doesn't God's love enjoy so high a reputation? It makes more sense than money. God's love can be freely exchanged, there are no security problems at ATMs; and God's love brings more possibilities to every day than any other assets we have." - W. J. Sappenfield in the Christian Century, (April 23-30, 1997) Christianity Today, October 6, 1997

"The saints' love to God is the fruit of God's love to them; it is the gift of that love. God gives them a spirit of love for Him because He loved them from eternity. His love is the foundation of their regeneration and the whole of their redemption." - Jonathan Edwards in Religious Affections

"God's love is too good to be true, too great to be missed." - Max Lucado

God

"The word 'evangelical' has died the death of a thousand qualifications. It has become so inclusive as to be in danger of being totally empty." - R.C. Sproul quoted in National & International Religion Report, Apr. 29, 1996, page 8

"Non-Christians will insist that we should keep our religion out of the way of their politics. But the reason for that is not that Jesus has nothing to do with the public realm; it is that they want nothing to do with Jesus as Lord." - John Howard Yoder in The Death Penalty Debate

"Evangelism is not simply a matter of bringing individuals to personal faith, though of course that remains central to the whole enterprise. It is a matter of confronting the world with the good, but deeply disturbing, news of a different way of living…the way of love." - N.T. Wright in For All God's Worth

"I am the light of the world, the founder of the Christian religion said. What a stupendous phrase! And how particularly marvelous today, when one is conscious of so much darkness in the world! Let your light shine before men, he exhorted us. You know, sometimes…someone asks me what I most want, what I should most like to do ini the little that remains of my life, and I always nowadays truthfully answer - and it is truthful - 'I should like my light to shine, even if only very fitfully, like a match struck in a dark, cavernous night and then flickering out.'" - Malcolm Muggeridge in 'Jesus Rediscovered', Christianity Today: February 9, 1998

"People in the United States are greatly given to self-praise, yet the reality is that we have the most miserable cities in the modernized country and not return ashamed of our U.S. cities. If the city is a measure of our citizenship and democracy, then we are the dregs of all comparable nations. We as citizens have made pestholes of our cities." - John McKnight of the Urban Affairs Center at Northwestern University (quoted in Salt of the Earth, Mar/Apr 1997, page 32)

"Spiritual growth is named more often than evangelism, supporting community causes, strengthening the local church, and influencing legislation, as the top priority for Christians." - Emerging Trends, Summer 1992

"Forty-five percent of adults in America believe they have a responsibility to share their religious beliefs with those of other faiths. About three in ten adults have actually done so in the last year." - Barna Research Group findings as reported in Simi Valley Star, 6/29/96

"Many Christians dislike being around people who smoke or drink or curse. They are wary of inviting unchurched people into their homes: 'They might light up a cigarette, you know.' They would rather play sports in church leagues and be around Christians all the time. Such an approach to life eliminates most opportunities for evangelism.'" - Ed Dobson in Starting a Seeker-Sensitive Service (Zondervan, 1993)

"Evangelism in America, or in the Western world today, has reached the level of diminishing returns. People do not see anything to be converted to. They look around at these Christians telling them to agree to these little statements and say the enclosed prayer. They say, 'But you aren't any different from anybody else. So what am I supposed to be converted to?' We have to see changed lives." - Richard J. Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline (in Christianity Today, Oct. 12, 1992)

"Out of the 350,000 local congregations that blanket America, some 60,000 report not even a single convert in a year's time." - Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct-Dec 1992

"What is the best way to respond to people who are indifferent to Christ'? Here are some alternatives to consider:

Acceptance. When you meet someone who is indifferent to spiritual things, it is important to accept them as they are. Don't categorize or label them: instead give them permission to be what they have chosen to be. This doesn't mean you have to agree with them or approve of their actions. It means treating them as God would. Cherish them and enjoy relating to them as people of equal value in God's sight.

Identification. Be open about your own faith. Don't hesitate to mention God in your conversations or to ask permission to pray for someone who expresses a need.

Listening. Though we sometimes think of our society as 'valueless,' realize that everyone operates out of a set of values. Discover what other people think and believe by listening to them and asking them what they have believed in the past and what they believe now.

Prayer. Praying for specific individuals will make us more sensitive to them and their needs. Intercession reminds us that evangelism is not a purely human endeavor.

Witnessing. Your most powerful testimony is your own life. All too often people see little evidence that following Jesus makes any real difference in how a person lives. Generosity, trustworthiness, and sensitivity to others make the gospel credible. Create interest in spiritual things by your words, realizing that witnessing is more than just presenting the plan of salvation. 'Until Christ's historic death is understood in terms that create contemporary and personal meaning, indifference will remain.'

Patience. Realize that any movement toward god is something to rejoice about."

"Evangelism needs to be audience-sensitive rather than message-driven. We must resist the tendency to 'play God' and concentrate on lifting up Christ as Lord with our lips and our lives." - Source unknown

"It is the temptation of this pragmatic age to presume that technique is the secret of evangelism." - A. Skevington Wood (#9, Feb. 4, 1957)

Evangelism

"Ever hear that 50% of U.S. marriages are headed for divorce? It all started one year when somebody at the Census Bureau noticed that there had been 2.4 million marriages and 1.2 million divorces. Comparing those two figures without taking into account the 54 million marriages already in existence gave birth to a quotable, but highly inaccurate, statistic. The fact is only about 2% of existing marriages will fail, and in any given year only one out of eight married couples divorce. As pollster Louis Harris says, 'The idea that half of American marriages are doomed is one of the most specious pieces of statistical nonsense ever perpetuated in modern times.'" - Leadership, Sum 1996 (page 69)

"In three decades of pasturing and counseling couples, there's only one thing we've found truly makes for a lasting marriage. Both people must want to be married to each other more than they want to divorce." - A college professor quoted in Today's Christian Woman, Sept/Oct 1995

"Rabbi Earl Grollman, a professional divorce lecturer and author who believes divorce can be more traumatic than death, says, 'The big difference is, death has closure, it's over. With divorce, it's never over.'" - Charles Swindoll, Strike the Original Match

"Surrendering is not an option if you plan to win a war…or succeed in a marriage. I firmly agree with a San Francisco attorney whom I heard say, 'There are two processes that must never be started prematurely: embalming and divorce.'" - Charles Swindoll, Strike the Original Match

Divorce

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle

"After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school board is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post.'" - Philip Streifer, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, Rhode Island

"Excellence can be attained if you...
-care more than other think is wise
-risk more than others think is safe
-dream more than others think is practical
-expect more than others think is possible"
- Source unknown

"To be the best, you have to beat the best." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher or better than themselves." - Tyrone Edwards

"Competing in sports has taught me that if I'm not willing to give 120 percent, somebody else will." - Ron Blomberg, Former New York Yankee

"Those who strive to be above average soon are." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Excellence is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, determined effort, and skilled execution." - Unknown source

"We are always surprised at the progress that comes from doing simple things well." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"People who accomplish big things did small things well." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Whatever you hand finds to do, do it with your might." - Ecclesiastes 9:10

"Excellence is immortal." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Pursue perfection but accept excellence." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it." - George Halas

"Excellence is never granted to a man but as the reward of labor." - Sir Joshua Reynolds

"Scorn mediocrity. Embrace excellence." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Excellence

"Take away the cross from the Bible, and it's a dark book." - J. C.Ryle

"The cross of Christ destroyed the equation 'religion equals happiness.'" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"[Somehow] we never see God in failure, but only in success - a strange attitude for people who have the cross as the center of their faith." - Cheryl Forbes in The Religion of Power

"The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective." - A. W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God

"If that was God on that cross, then the hill called Skull is a granite studded with stakes to which you can anchor." - Max Lucadoa

Cross

"It used to be said that the Victorians of the nineteenth century talked incessantly about death but were silent about sex, whereas today we talk incessantly about sex and are silent about death…In today's culture we chatter incessantly about both sex and death. Now there is nothing we cannot talk about in polite company. It is a great liberation. And a great loss, if in fact both sex and death partake a mystery. Mystery is attended by a fitting reticence." - Richard John Neuhaus, First Things

"Death: God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.

"Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway." - Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane

"If you attempt to talk with a dying man about sports or business, he is no longer interested. He now sees other things as more important. People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of another world." - William Law in Christian Perfection, a contemporary paraphrase by Marvin D. Hinten

"The most interesting time of human life, I think, is when your heart stops, and for between 2 and 15 minutes, your brain is still running, I think the most interesting part of my life is going to happen in those 2 to 15 minutes. Because time doesn't exist then. When the body's gone and you've got 120 billion neurons whirring, it's like LSD. More can happen in one minute than in a thousand lifetimes". - LSD guru Timothy Leary

"I mean, there's no control in life, is there? There's only one who's in control, and He'll take me when He wants me. I don't want to know about it. It's none of my business. But when it happens, I just ask that it won't be painful and that He forgives my sins." - Actor/comedian Chris Farley, who died of a drug overdose at the age of 33, Rolling Stone, Feb. 5

"So many Americans watched as Cardinal Bernardin faced his mortality... I think we were all edified by his acceptance of death as a friend and not an enemy. Any religion that doesn't deal with death realistically is not worth its salt." - Archbishop Rembert Weakland in New York Times Magazine (March 9, 1997)

"Approaching the end of life through the lens of assisted suicide is like looking through the wrong end of binoculars; the view is narrowed and distorted. Dying can be a rich and meaningful time. We must raise standards of clinical practice, reform medical education, and adopt health policy that expands access to comprehensive palliative care without pauperizing families in the process." - Dr. Ira Brock, hospice physician (quoted in Washington Post, Jan. 2, 1997)

Death

"A nation's morality used to be measured by its civic virtue - how society treated its citizens, whether justice and fairness prevailed, whether people were free to pursue happiness in their own way, and whether it was safe to be different from the majority. [Based on that definition of morality], the '50s were a time of moral depravity. The notion that we are a less moral nation today than we were in the '50s is a monument to historical revisionism." - ACLU leader Ira Glasser (quoted in Youthworker Update, Jan 1996)

"While religious pluralism may be a novel experience for us, it is putting us in touch with the world that surrounded the biblical authors...The pluralism and the paganism of our time were the common experience of the prophets and apostles. In Mesopotamia, there were thousands of gods and goddesses, many of which were known to the Israelites--indeed, sometimes known too well... Nothing, therefore, could be more remarkable than to hear the contention, even from those within the Church, that the existence of religious pluralism today makes belief in the uniqueness of Christianity quite impossible. Had this been the necessary consequence of encountering a multitude of other religions, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul would have given up biblical faith long before it became fashionable...to do so." - David Wells in No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?

"To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word." - Garrison Keillor in We Are Still Married

"This manipulation of reality may provide us with exciting games, entertainment, but it will substitute not a virtual reality, but a pseudo-reality, so subtly deceptive, as to raise the levels of public suspicion and disbelief beyond what any society can tolerate." - Alvin Toffler, futurist author discussing virtual-reality video games. Bloomburg Business News, Aug. 7, 1994

"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)

"Recently, there's been a trend in America that I find very disturbing... rewarding immoral and illegal behavior... for example, we now give free needles to junkies, which seems to me to be only a step away from giving condoms to rapists. "- Bill Maher quoted in Books & Culture, Nov./Dec. 1996

"Schools do more damage than good when they address only the secular elements of religious holidays. This trivializes religion, withholding important learning, while blinking the message that religion is dangerous and divisive. Public schools don't exist to promote religion, but they don't exist to marginalize it either, or to promote secularism as a dominant religion... Religion is an important social force. Marginalizing it or banning neutral instruction about it from the schools is not a neutral act." - John Leo in U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 30, 1996

"It is no accident that the values and virtues that were once commonplace in America began to disappear with the explosion of government over the past 40 years. As government has become more dominant, providing programs to meet every need, the social safety net has become a hammock. As individuals have turned to government for help, they have turned away from sources of real solutions: family, work, and faith." - Phil Gramm and Gary Bauer (In Wall Street Journal, Aug. 30, 1995)

"We're happy to give our audience what they enjoy. Self-righteous nobility is extraordinarily unappealing. I will have none of it." - UPN President and CEO Dean Valentine explaining why his network has un-apologetically chosen to air some of the trashiest programs on television today (EW Daily, 12/14/00)

"As soon as television was possible, everyone was watching it, and people would have be influenced by it, either positively or negatively." - Actor Alan Alda on the power of TV

"The studio kept saying it was going to get guys after football, drinking beer. But I kept telling them that I have a female following too. That it wasn't just prisoners and firemen. It was 12-year-old girls." - Actress Pamela Lee, referring to her syndicated television show, V.I.P., and its reliance on sex appeal to lure viewers

"If you're putting stuff in your brain every day about killing this person, or for that matter, just disrespecting somebody...somehow that's going to influence you." - reformed frat rapper Mike D of the popular 90s music group Beastie Boys

"In my case, it was hard living, drinking hard and eating poorly. You play, you pay." - Actor Matthew Perry

"Half the business called Hollywood is sleaze. A lot of what we do has very little to do with art. It has to do with sleaze and gratuitous sex and unnecessary violence." - Actor Martin Sheen

"You can bury my TV. There's nothing watch - just bad things and naked people." - an elderly Moscow woman after an antenna fire disrupted television broadcasting in the Russian capital

"Some say the music is loud, stupid, excessive, vulgar, and appeals to the basic animal instinct. That's why we play it." - MTV promotional advertisement (quoted in Parental Guidance, Apr. 15, 1995)

"The Marine Corps is finding out that families, churches, and schools are falling down on the job of teaching your people morals. So they're adding an entire week to boot camp, time that will be devoted to teaching values and ethics." - Insight, Aug. 5, 1996

"We should not expect those outside the household of God to adopt every position firmly rooted in Scripture and the Judeo-Christian tradition. 'By our activism, often poorly conceived, we have created an image of rigid, prejudiced people. More and more Americans will feel entirely justified and respectable saying no to the church. They may not be rejecting Jesus, just the people who profess to follow Him. Abortion and homosexuality are unquestionably wrong. But these are not the core issues of the faith. Let's make the main thing the main thing: raising up Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners.'" - David Rambo, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (quoted in Leadership, Spr 1993)

"The video tape of history seems stuck on fast rewind - as our post-Christian era comes to resemble the pre-Christian era: Material affluence amid moral decadence...in a time of despondency and despair over the hubristic follies of our own republic, Christ's road remains open. We had the truth, we can find it again." - Patrick Buchanan in the Washington Times (April 11, 1993)

"The nineties may soon be the new sixties. However, whereas those who were part of the sixties generation had the older traditional values as an anchor (even while they rejected them), those of the nineties have no such value system to which they can retreat. The only thing left is hedonism. But it's not a hedonism anchored in 'secular humanism' or secularism. It is a hedonism anchored in a new form of paganism." - John Whitehead, Rutherford, January 1993

Culture Wars

"We live in a time of unprecedented discoveries, many of which tend to make life longer and living more comfortable and enjoyable. But with change and progress the inexorable law of change and decay also operates. Strange that so few in this world prepare for the inevitable." - L. Nelson Bell

Depravity

"Mental and emotional depression are the new maladies of modern man. They are diseases as surely as cancer or diabetes. To dismiss them with a thoughtless statement like 'there's sin in your life,' or 'it's a demon,' is a display of ignorance that reveals a lack of compassion and trivializes the suffering of others." - Ron Dunn

"As an evangelical theologian, I think the teaching about disease and healing in the Modern Faith movement is both heretical and often cruel. This approach largely follows the idea that sickness - depression and other emotional problems - is always caused by unbelief and sin. The claim is that God has done all he is going to do to provide perfect healing in Christ's spiritual atonement in hell, not his physical death on the cross. If a believer fails to appropriate this perfect healing it is because of unbelief or sin. The Apostle Paul's illness and need of a personal physician is enough to cast serious doubt upon Faith teachers' claims that a believer can and should always manifest perfect health." - Dr. Ken Hemphill

Depression

"We have proved beyond any doubt that He means what He says - His grace is sufficient, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We pray that if any, anywhere, are fearing that the cost of discipleship is too great, that they may be given to glimpse that treasure in heaven promised to all who forsake. - Elisabeth Elliot, on behalf of the five widows of slain missionaries to Ecuador one year after their deaths"

"Jesus promised his disciples three things: that they would be entirely fearless, absurdly happy, and that they would get into trouble." - W. Russell Maltby

"Mieczyslaw Malinski writes: 'It's easiest to see the cross on Jesus' shoulders. It's a bit harder with our neighbor's cross. Most difficult of all is seeing our own cross.' And sometimes even more difficult is to see it on the shoulders of a congregation, especially our own congregation. Yet crossbearing is for the body of Christ, as well as the individual." - Katie Funk Wiebe in the Christian Leader (Feb. 1995)

"It is not up to you to complete the work, nor are you at liberty to give it up." - from the Pirke Avoth (2:18)

"The dogs of doubt never sleep long. Our peace is forever stalked by two predators. The first is our culture of convenience. We are the well-fed, the secure. We are lovers of the large plate and the broad sofa. Material abundance keeps us from seeking any other kind…Our love of convenience trains us to believe that we can have as much as we want, of whatever we want, whenever we want it…No matter what life gives us, we always want more…We are walking wanton. The second predator that stalks our peace is narcissism. Narcissists worship themselves. This self-love produces only those inner values that we ourselves can create…When our self-contrived image begins to crumble, we always crave a more solid foundation; for 'the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: 'The Lord knows those who are His'" (2 Tim. 2:19). - Calvin Miller in The Unchained Soul

Discipleship

"Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. That is not just fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything-in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is is that we don't see it." - Thomas Merton in a 1965 audiotape.

"To look up out at this kind creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. It just strengthens my faith." - Astronaut John Glenn

"Data collected by the Hubble telescope indicates that there is another galaxy racing toward our own Milky Way at 300,000 miles per hour. The devastating collision could occur a mere five billion years from now." - Newsweek Dec. 29, 1997, pg. 132.

"Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch it to be sure." - Jarger

"Darwinism demolished the literal interpretation of the biblical creation story. The theory of evolution is a well-established theory, not speculative and on the fringe of science. The consensus of science today is that the theory of evolution is a powerful theory indeed, extremely well-supported by evidence." - Kitty Ferguson (in The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion, and the Search for God, Eerdmans, 1996, pg. 2)

"What if the rain be falling, and the wind blowing? What if we stand alone, or, more painful still, have some dear one beside us, sharing our outness? What even if the window be not shining, because of the curtains of good inscrutable drawn across it? Let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, "God is; Jesus is not dead. Nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness." - George MacDonald in Creation in Christ

"According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stagemanagers, who had since made a great mess of it." - G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

"I think it says something that the only form of life that we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image." - Stephen W. Hawking telling a computer convention that computer viruses represent the only life form wholly created by humans.

"If God had done all he could have done he would still be doing it. But he set it aside, sanctified it and rested." - Anonymous

"The sun and its nine known planets constitute one small dot in 1 trillion such universes that make up what we call the Milky Way galaxy. That is not all. The Milky Way, measuring 100,000 light-years from edge to edge, is one of an estimated 1 billion such galaxies known to be in space. The 200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope, penetrating 2 billion light years into space, cannot find the outer limit of the galaxies. If the psalmist could look with the human eye into the heavens and understand their witness to the glory of God. All creation is an outstretched finger pointing toward God." - Robert Cowles in The Alliance Witness

"Criticism is easy; achievement is more difficult" - Winton Churchill in Churchill on Courage

"If one man calls you a donkey, pay him no mind. If two men call you a donkey, look for hoofprints. If three call you a donkey, get a saddle." - Unknown

"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." - John Wooden

"The secret of success is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the five guys who haven't made up their minds." - Casey Stengel, legendary baseball manager (1891-1975)

"It's not what they say about you; it's what they whisper." - Errol Flynn

"We will do nothing at all if we wait to be sure that no one will be able to find fault with what we do." - Cardinal Newman (quoted in Pulpit Digest, Mar/Apr 1997, pg. 50)

"A certain amount of discontent is inevitable. Not every infection calls for a massive dose of penicillin. At least two types of situations call for criticism to be confronted and refuted. One is if the criticism affects the health of the body. The other time I probably need to respond directly to criticism is - unfortunately - when I don't want to. Recent studies on self-esteem suggest that most issues involving our sense of worth revolve around approach/avoidance tendencies. That is, when we sense ourselves avoiding something out of fear, we interpret ourselves as wimping out, and our self-esteem drops proportionately." - John Ortbert

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. "- Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Ministries Today, Nov/Dec 1995)

"Attackers within the church always lack historical perspective, thus repeating history's mistakes: The death of spiritual awakenings always takes place when leaders shoot at each other." - Anonymous

"If you want to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing!" - Anonymous

"It is only at trees bearing good fruit that stones are thrown." - Anonymous

"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." - Anonymous

"He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help." - Abraham Lincoln

Creation

"We have a Christianity without the 'cup' and the cross, a line-of-least-resistance faith." - Charles Stanley

"Berkeley church seeks minister for local nondenominational congregation. Position open to Christians and non-Christians." - from a classified ad in Christian Century, Nov. 6, 1996.

"Christianity in modern America is, in large part, innocuous. It tends to be easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, an other-worldly out-look, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love of God." - Thomas Reeves (quoted in Servant, Winter 1997, page 2)

"When the church accommodates worldly culture, it deserves both the internal decay and external contempt it suffers." - Andrew Sandlin (in "Chalcedon Report", Sept. 1997, page)

"Compromise does not seem to be as objectionable to Southern Baptists when it is practiced by one's friends. And, we Southern Baptists can often be so excited and gratified by our personal participation in events, that we are no longer as willing to confront the compromised process with the passion with which we confronted it when we were not participants."- James L. Holly, M.D.

"Be on your guard against the tendency of this generation to paste a piece of blank paper over all the threatenings of the Bible." - A. Maclaren

"If you don't entertain - you can't communicate." - Rick Hughes

"In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson

"The 'fifth gospel, the book of Ego,' …'We attempt to make Jesus' gospel a little more palatable. We live like we have a conviction that He really didn't mean us to take Him so seriously, like we're trying to improve on what He taught. That's the number one temptation for the rest of our life, doing only what we like.'" - Anonymous

"Powerlessness = worldly compromise." - Anonymous

"Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a 'necessary evil,' it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil." - Anonymous

"Everything is WRONG that is ALMOST RIGHT." - Anonymous

"For the past 30 years the Church has consistently taken her behavioral cues from the world, often putting Christian labels on popular trends. Many in both the Church and the secular society in America ended the 60s with this conclusion: society's evil seems surmountable and my ideals could not be made tangible by my efforts. We were externally strong and internally weak." - Anonymous

Compromise