Quotes About Faith

If the Christian faith is true, it is true even if no one believes it, and if it is not true, it is false even if everyone believes it. The truth of the faith does not stand and fall with our defense of it.

An "open mind" can be an "empty head," and "tolerance" can be indistinguishable from believing nothing. These are no help in finding honest answers to honest and important questions.

As the early church boasted rightly, the message of Jesus is both simple enough for a child to paddle in and deep enough for an elephant to swim in.

What we also need is a constructive overarching vision of Christian engagement in today's advanced modern world, one that is shaped by faith in God and a Christian perspective rather than by current wisdom, and one that can inspire Christians to move out with courage to confront the best and worst that we may encounter.

Creative persuasion is a matter of being biblical, not of being either modern or postmodern.

Part of the glory of the Christian faith is that at its heart is a God who is a person. "He who is," the father of Jesus Christ and our father, is infinite, but he is also personal. The Christian faith therefore places a premium on the absolute truthfulness and trustworthiness of God, so understanding doubt is extremely important to a Christian.

The Christianization of the modern world is leading to the modernization of the Christian faith and away from the way of Jesus. Similarly, as we shall see, the Christianization of America has led to the Americanization of the Christian faith and away from the way of Jesus.

Our task is to focus on our individual callings in engaging with the world, to trust that others are following theirs too, and to leave to God the masterminding of the grand outcome.

For at this juncture, the West has cut itself off from its own Jewish and Christian roots—the faith, the ideas, the ethics and the way of life that made it the West. It now stands deeply divided, uncertain of its post-Christian identity, and with its dominance waning in the global era.

The Christian faith is not true because it works. It works because it is true.

As followers of Jesus, we must not duck the enormity of a simple but shattering fact: with relatively few exceptions, such as some branches of Buddhism, almost all the most militantly secularist societies in history have been the product of Christian societies. The church is a leading spawning ground for atheists.

God is his own best apologist.

Under the impact of the modern world, there has been a definite melting down of the assurance of faith. Secularization makes the Christian faith seem less real, privatization makes it seem merely a private preference, and pluralization makes it seem just one among many.

The fact is that without God, we cannot know God. For a start, we are incapable of knowing God by ourselves, so he has to disclose himself—in revelation. But beyond that, God is a person and not an object, so if we are to know him, he must keep on showing himself to us—in relationship. Knowing God therefore begins and ends with God, and it is a gift whose name is grace.

When cultures reject God, they cut themselves off from the ultimate ground of reality

What a mystery, what an absurdity if not true, and if true what a wonder!

What is the difference between God disguising himself and deceiving us? That is where the principle of suspended judgment operates. Face to face with mystery, and especially the mystery of evil, the faith that understands why it has come to trust must trust where it has not come to understand. Faith does not know why in terms of the immediate, but it knows why it trusts God who knows why in terms of the ultimate.

Love is "the alpha and the omega of apologetics," in the sense that all we say must come from love, and it must lead to love and to the One who is love—in

In a world congenial to skepticism, skeptics love to play the skeptic's card nonchalantly as if it were the royal flush that trumped all other cards and could not be countered. For many, it has become the skeptics' way of hanging out a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Simply raise a skeptical objection and retire from all argument. But of course, the simplest response is to turn such skepticism back on itself.

The faithfulness principle (of the conservative) and the flexibility principle (of the liberal) are two sides of the same coin. They are both necessary if Christians are to follow their instructions and remain simultaneously "in" the world but not "of" it.

Christian advocacy always goes wrong when we become the focus of our efforts, rather than the Lord. For when we are the focus, we subtly come to believe that God is no more certain than our defense of him. Argue and defend God well, and the world of faith appears unshakable. Defend him badly, and doubts creep in or crash down on top of us.

There is no question that the Four Spiritual Laws have been remarkably fruitful as a way of evangelism, but they are not good for everyone.

The first level of understanding necessary to faith is becoming critically aware of our dilemma in life without God.

The Christian faith contributed to the rise of the modern world, but the Christian faith has been undermined by the modern world it helped to create. The Christian faith thus becomes its own gravedigger.