Quotes from John Dickson

In those early years as a believer I had no idea Christians could be coy about their faith. No one had told me I was meant to feel awkward about spreading the good news. That was something I learnt only after mixing with Christians for a while. But I learnt it soon enough.

The real power of effective leadership is maximizing other people's potential which inevitably demands also ensuring that they get the credit. When our ego won't let us build another person up, when everything has to build us up, then the effectiveness of the organization reverts to depending instead on how good we are in the technical aspects of what we do. And we have stopped leading and inspiring others to great heights.

Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.

Atheism certainly promotes a low view of humanity- how much lower can you get than thinking yourself an accidental by-product of a series of even larger accidents!

There is an aesthetic dimension to virtue. In real life, as opposed to in celluloid, we are attracted to the good and repelled by the bad. Even the woman who says she prefers the archetypal 'bad boy' probably doesn't actually like it when he is bad toward her.

Humility applied to convictions does not mean believing things any less; it means treating those who hold contrary beliefs with respect and friendship.

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" (Luke 6:27).

Without a life example that speaks louder than words, even the most persuasive leader will fail.

while I may not be able to trace the Artist's hand at all times, I can always trust his motives. The God who is in control of all things, who acts behind the scenes in all things, is also the God who willingly suffers. He is the one I can shout at, cry with and find comfort in.

The antidote to hateful, nationalistic, violent Christianity, Einstein proposed, is Christianity in practice.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about the truth. This has been exactly reversed … We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.5

The notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd. . . . This was the moral climate in which Christianity taught that mercy is one of the primary virtues—that a merciful God requires humans to be merciful. . . . This was revolutionary stuff. Indeed, it was the cultural basis for the revitalization of the Roman world. (Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 209–15.)

what we don't know and can't do far exceeds what we do know and can do. A little humility, then, is hardly rocket science. It is common sense.

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.6

Violence has been a universal part of the human story. The demand to love one's enemies has not. Division has been a norm. Inherent human dignity has not. Armies, greed, and the politics of power have been constants in history. Hospitals, schools, and charity, for all have not. Bullies are common. Saints are not.

Christ wrote a beautiful tune, which the church has often performed well, and often badly. But the melody was never completely drowned out. Sometimes it became a symphony.

In a morally and religiously diverse culture such as ours, humility is a much-needed key to harmony.

The explosion of charity in the fourth century is one clear way in which Christ's teaching has impacted the history of western society.

We have forgotten how to flex two mental muscles at the same time: the muscle of moral conviction and the muscle of compassion to all regardless of their morality.

tomes on the meaning of life. Poets and playwrights were