The Christian faith is NOT a leap into the dark...

The Bible never describes the Christian faith as a leap into the dark, but a step into the light.

@RZIMCanada

G.K. Chesteron on Thanksgiving

From http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/11/28/g-k-chesteron-on-thanksgiving/

G.K. Chesteron on Thanksgiving

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”—G. K. Chesterton

“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”—G. K. Chesterton

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”—G. K. Chesterton

C.S. Lewis on developing a style in writing

From http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2013/09/25/the-best-writing-advice-you-will-hear-today/

C.S. Lewis's last interview was on May 7, 1963—six months before he died. Sherwood Wirt (1911-2001) asked for his writing advice: "How would you suggest a young Christian writer go about developing a style?"

Lewis responded:

The way for a person to develop a style is

(a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and

(b) to be sure he is saying exactly that.

The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him.

I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most certainly go into it.

—C. S. Lewis, "Cross-Examination," in C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000), 555.

Your heart is not the compass Christ saileth by (Samuel Rutherford)

"Your heart is not the compass Christ saileth by. He will give you leave to sing as you please, but he will not dance to your tune. It is not referred to you and your thoughts, what Christ will do with the charters betwixt you and him. Your own misbelief hath torn them, but he hath the principle in heaven with himself. Your thoughts are no parts of the new covenant; dreams change not Christ."

---Samuel Rutherford, Letter to Earlston, Younger, June 16, 1637 (Puritan Paperback, p. 87)

Quote: Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Real Theology is not complicated; it helps us grasp how simple the faith really is

Now that's what I call real theology! Isn't this exactly why we need theological specialists: not to make the faith more complicated and obscure, but to help us grasp how simple it really is?

 

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2011/04/rowan-williams-letter-to-six-year-old.html

"First they came..."

Martin Niemoller (1892–1984)

First They Came

First they came for the Communists,
- but I was not a communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,
- but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews,
- but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/Martin_Niemoller_First_They_Came.shtml

Good Storytelling / Myth quote

The oral narration would start like this - I am going to tell you a story that never was, but always is… – and then end the story like so – I am not sure that that is the way the story happened, but I know that the story is true.

--- From Black Elk Speaks

Great Quote from "The Princess Bride"

Vizzini

: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.

Inigo Montoya

: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Great Quote from "Roots"

"There's gonna be another day... you hear me? There's gonna be another day!"

-- Fiddler to Kunta Kinte, after Kunta Kinte has been whipped to the point of breaking and forced to confess his slave name "Toby". From the 1977 TV miniseries based on the book by Alex Haley.

P. T. Forsyth: The Worst Sin is Prayerlessness

The worst sin is prayerlessness. Overt sin, or crime, or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the effect of this, or its punishment. We are left by God for lack of seeking Him. The history of the saints shows often that their lapses were the fruit and nemesis of slackness or neglect in prayer. Their life, at seasons, also tended to become inhuman by their spiritual solitude. They left men, and were left by men, because they did not in their contemplation find God; they found but the thought or the atmosphere of God. Only living prayer keeps loneliness humane. It is the great producer of sympathy. Trusting the God of Christ, and transacting with Him, we come into tune with men. Our egoism retires before the coming of God, and into the clearance there comes with our Father our brother. . . .

 

Not to want to pray, then, is the sin behind sin. And it ends in not being able to pray. That is its punishment — spiritual dumbness, or at least aphasia, and starvation. We do not take our spiritual food, and so we falter, dwindle, and die. "In the sweat of your brow ye shall eat your bread."("The Soul of Prayer," in A Sense of the Holy, p. 137)

 

HT: http://richardlfloyd.blogspot.com/2010/03/pt-forsyth-on-sin-of-prayerlessness.html

Thought-Provoking P.T. Forsyth quote on hell / eternal punishment

From http://cruciality.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/who-said-it-4/

Who said it?

26 April, 2010 Jason Goroncy Leave a comment Go to comments

It's been around six weeks since our last 'Who said it?' competition, so probably time for another round (not that we need an excuse or anything). Here's one from the archives:

'Can it be just that God should bring beings into the world unprotected by an infinite armour of foresight against the infinite chances and temptations to wrong, and yet hold them liable to infinite punishment when they had gone wrong? … Punish a man for his sin, that is just; punish him for ages (if in that other world you can reckon time), that may be just; but make no end of punishing him for that sin, reduce him from a man to a devil and keep him there, let him become for ever vile, mainly because he was ignorant to start with, that is not just … Preach the eternal, unappeasable wrath of God upon lost souls and you offer men a devil to worship'.

So, who said it?

30 April, 2010 at 9:51 pm | #5

Quote

The answer is PT Forsyth.

 

Carl Trueman on bad sermons or bad listening

How many of us, I wonder, when we hear what we think is a bad sermon first ask ourselves if the problem is with how we listened rather than with the man who spoke?

-- Carl Trueman, http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2010/03/slouching-to-bethlehem.php

Great quote: "Lord of the Rings" and "Atlas Shrugged"

I don't know the source of this quote, but it's great:

 

"The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged: one is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Great JMS quotes

From http://www.newsarama.com/film/JMS-Week-Movies-TV-100220.html

 

 

At conventions and elsewhere, I've always said that if there's anything at all to be learned from me -- and I'm not entirely sure there is, but let's make that assumption now just for the hell of it -- it's that if you hold onto your dreams, if you follow your passions, it doesn't matter where you come from, or what school you went to, or how old you are, you can do it.  It's possible.  That's the lesson.  Not that you will, but that it's possible.  Which is all most of us ever really need to know, to strive for what we want, what we believe in.
 
Example: a friend of mine from college spent 25 years of her life working in a cubicle for a faceless master on a distant mountaintop.  There was very little of her in the work, and she called one day to say what am I doing it for?  I've never done anything I wanted to do and it's too late now.  Nonsense, I told her.  What do you want to do, what are you passionate about?  She didn't know.  I asked what she likes doing.  I like my cat, all pets, she said, and I like taking photos, but I'm not a pro.
 
"So combine what you enjoy.  Start taking pictures of pets.  For free to start, then for money.  Point is, follow what gives you joy."
 
She did.  And now she works three days for the faceless master, and two days a week doing what she enjoys, and making a living at it.  Within the next year, if she keeps it up, she'll be working full time at what she loves.
 
Follow your passion.  The rest will attend to itself.
 
If I can do it, anybody can do it.
 
It's possible.
 
And it's your turn.
 
So go for it.  It's never too late to become what you always wanted to be in the first place.

Lou Holtz on Talent, Motivation, Attitude

"Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you're willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it."

 

- Lou Holtz

QUOTE: Don Carson on The Pastor as Scholar, the Scholar as Pastor

 

A Full, Quick, Exact Man

From Pure Church by Thabiti Anyabwile by Thabiti Anyabwile on 1/15/10

Don Carson quoting Francis Bacon in last April's address at "The Pastor as Scholar, the Scholar as Pastor."

"Reading maketh a full man; speaking maketh a quick man; writing maketh an exact man."

The Pastor As A Scholar – Don Carson from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Quote: "Church pews should come with crash helmets and seatbelts"

From http://twentytwowords.com/2010/01/10/as-annie-dillard-says-church-pews-should-come-with-crash-helmets-and-seatbelts/

Why does a Christian radio station bill itself as "safe for the whole family"? Whatever else Christianity is, it certainly isn't that. As Annie Dillard says, church pews should come with crash helmets and seatbelts.

Excellent advice for moving from NT Greek to Classical (Amazon List)

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Link: http://amzn.com/sy/HLURRO039Q1V
 

So you'd like to... read ancient Greek outside the New Testament A guide by S. Blackwelder "fountain pen daily user"    Share with Friends Products sampled from this guide: Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners Homeric Vocabularies: Greek and English Word List for the Study of Homer › See all 17 products mentioned in this guide below Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom by Victor Davis Hanson $12.21 Used & New from: $7.73  (45)    Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners by Clyde Pharr $28.21 Used & New from: $15.73  (27) 1 customer discussion    Homeric Vocabularies: Greek and English Word List for the Study of Homer by William Bishop Owen $17.16 Used & New from: $17.00  (8)    Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges by Georg Autenrieth $29.95 Used & New from: $6.90  (3)    Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect by Richard J. Cunliffe $27.68 Used & New from: $23.50  (14)    Selections from Homer's Iliad by Homer $24.25 Used & New from: $18.60  (6)    The Iliad: Volume I, Books 1-12 (Loeb Classical Library No. 170) by Homer $19.20 Used & New from: $13.55  (9)    The Iliad: Volume II, Books 13-24 (Loeb Classical Library No. 171) by Homer $19.20 Used & New from: $15.75    The Odyssey: Books 1-12 (The Loeb Classical Library, No 104) by A. T. Murray $19.20 Used & New from: $17.50  (3)    The Odyssey: Books 13-24 (Loeb Classical Library, No 105) by Homer $20.40 Used & New from: $16.94  (2)    Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Loeb Classical Library #57) by Hesiod Used & New from: $8.96  (2)     Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek by James Morwood $12.89 Used & New from: $7.94  (11)    Greek Grammar by Herbert Weir Smyth $44.38 Used & New from: $36.75  (9)    Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary by James Morwood $12.21 Used & New from: $6.74  (10)    An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon: Founded upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon by H. G. Liddell $35.65 Used & New from: $27.49  (25)    A Greek-English Lexicon, Ninth Edition with a Revised Supplement by Henry George Liddell $142.26 Used & New from: $100.00  (26)    Selections from Herodotus by Amy L. Barbour $28.34 Used & New from: $16.50  (2)    Starting Greek in the New Testament is useful, fairly quick and healthy for both paid and unpaid Christian church leaders. If you've never learned to do a "declension" before, choose your teacher carefully. The Greek of the Septuagint (LXX) is then readable with a lexicon like the excellent new one by J. Lust, E. Eynikel and K. Hauspie in two volumes (ISBN 3438051257 and 3438051267; one, not both, stocked at Amazon as of 02/27/2002). However, you may already have discovered that if you want to read ancient authors in Greek outside the Bible, whether Jewish, pagan, Christian or philosopical, basic NT/LXX Greek is far from enough. For motivation to read in Greek and teach others to do so, read Hanson and Heath, Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. Go back to where the ancients started in Greek literature: Homer! The Iliad and Odyssey will enjoyably help you better understand almost everything written later in Greek. You've already learned the basics. Homer's language is almost as easy as the New Testament's; the Athenian Golden Age literature is the hardest place to start. What's more, Homer was to Greek and Roman literature as Shakespeare and the King James Bible are to English literature. Once you're confident in NT Greek, start right into Pharr and Wright's Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners for a quick, thorough introduction to Homer's Greek. Caution: get used to Homer's "ho, he, to" not being the definite article! › See products from this section at the bottom of the page Enjoy reading the Iliad and Odyssey. Yes, I said to enjoy the Iliad and Odyssey before going on. They're interesting! Most if not all Greek-language authors have assumed that their audiences knew these stories well. Build your vocabulary using Owen and Goodspeed et al, Homeric Vocabularies: Greek and English Word List for the Study of Homer, to ease reading. The quickest dictionary to use is Autenreith et al, Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges. The most authoritative Homeric lexicon in English is Cunliffe, Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect, which is inexpensive and complete, but a bit hard on the eyes. The Iliad is rather long; for the best 4900 lines, lots of language help and summaries of the other lines in English, use Benner's Selections from Homer's Iliad. The Loeb editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek are The Iliad: Volume I, Books 1-12 (Loeb Classical Library No. 170), The Iliad: Volume II, Books 13-24 (Loeb Classical Library No. 171), The Odyssey: Books 1-12 (The Loeb Classical Library, No 104) and The Odyssey: Books 13-24 (Loeb Classical Library, No 105). › See products from this section at the bottom of the page Step forward through ancient Greek literature. Next, read selections from the Homeric Hymns and all of Hesiod, together in Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Loeb Classical Library #57). These are also in the Epic dialect. Read the Homeric Hymns selections first; you already have the vocabulary. Read Hesiod's "Works and Days" before his "Theogony." To help you read any author after Homer and outside the New Testament, get Morwood's quick-reference grammar, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek. (Smyth et al, Greek Grammar, is still the "gold standard" in English; even Morwood says so). Also, get a general dictionary or lexicon for classical Greek. The best pocket-sized one is Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary. For more authority and detail, you'll need to spend more money, either on the mid-sized, older Liddel-Scott An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon: Founded upon the Seventh Edition of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon or on the huge, newer Liddel-Scott-Jones A Greek-English Lexicon, Ninth Edition with a Revised Supplement. Now you can move forward in Greek. The following list is based on comments by Hanson and Heath, and on Smyth's history of dialects and authors. Herodotus' entertaining Ionic-dialect prose is now an easy step. Use Barbour's anthology, Selections from Herodotus, which has special language helps for students who started Greek in Homer. After Herodotus, read selections from the earlier Ionic poet Archilochus before going on to the Athenians. Archilochus was a vile curmudgeon, so guard your heart, but pay attention to his insights into Greek culture. Skip the lyric poets for now. You can come back to them later. Attic, the dialect of classical Athenian literature, was a separate branch of Ionic. Skip Aeschylus for now; your easiest slide into Attic is through the poet-playwright Euripides. Read his "Bacchae" and "Suppliants." After him, read his colleague Sophocles'"Ajax" (a.k.a. "Aias" or "Ajas") and "Antigone," in that order. Then, read lots of Plato. His writing style was between "earlier" (harder) and "later" (easier). After Plato, step back to some more challenging passages by Thucydides. With all that background, you can get the jokes by the later-style comic poet-playwright Aristophanes. Also, read the orator Demosthenes' "First Philippic." After him, read selections from Xenophon's "Anabasis." He's easy to read, but don't read him until now! Otherwise, you can't understand his attitude and nonstandard style as well as you need to. After Xenophon, read some Aristotle. Aristotle's student Alexander "the Great" led the multi-dialect army that conquered the empire that produced the Koine dialect by necessity. Koine soon replaced almost all other Greek dialects, in formal literature too. Here are some Koine authors. Read selections from several: Theophrastus, Polybius, Apollodorus (or was that Pseudo-A.?), Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Philo, Epictetus (Arrian's summaries of lectures & discussions) Josephus, Arrian, Lucian and Cassius Dio. Now that you've read some New Testament and this list, all non-modern Greek is yours!