The essential amorality of all atheist doctrines is often hidden from us by an irrelevant personal argument. We see that many articulate secularists are well-meaning and law-abiding men; we see them go into righteous indignation over injustice and often devote their lives to good works. So we conclude that “he can’t be wrong whose life is in the right”–that their philosophies are just as good guides to action as Christianity. What we don’t see is that they are not acting on their philosophies. They are acting, out of habit or sentiment, on an inherited Christian ethic which they still take for granted though they have rejected the creed from which it sprang. Their children will inherit some what less of it.

…Joy Davidman (1915-1960), Smoke on the Mountain [1955]

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will… It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind — that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.

…C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), “The Efficacy of Prayer”

God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities… Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified him, but have glorified themselves.

…Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Feast of Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord

BERTRAND RUSSELL: In conclusion, there is a marvelous anecdote from the occasion of Russell’s ninetieth birthday that best serves to summarize his attitude toward God and religion. A London lady sat next to him at this party, and over the soup she suggested to him that he was not only the world’s most famous atheist but, by this time, very probably the world’s oldest atheist. “What will you do, Bertie, if it turns out you’re wrong?” she asked. “I mean, what if — uh — when the time comes, you should meet Him? What will you say?” Russell was delighted with the question. His bright, birdlike eyes grew even brighter as he contemplated this possible future dialogue, and then he pointed a finger upward and cried, “Why, I should say, ‘God, you gave us insufficient evidence.'” Al Seckel, in Preface to Bertrand Russell on God and Religion

“Your time equals your life. You can run out of money and still have some time left. You can run out of friends with life to spare. But once you run out of time, it’s over.”
Andy Stanley, The Best Question Ever, Sisters, Oregon, Multnomah Publishers, 2004, p. 65.
cog’nitive dis’sonance

We were called to be witnesses, not lawyers or judges

You can tell how big a person is by what it takes to discourage him.

It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promises… Your principal maladies are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality, which binds you to the earth; and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these maladies. If they have given you God for your object, it has only been to pander to your pride; they have made you think that you were like Him and resembled Him by your nature. And those who have grasped the vanity of such a pretension have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your nature was like that of the beasts of the field, and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of animals.

…Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Commemoration of Brigid, Abbess of Kildare, c.525

There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian. We shrink from the consequences of truth. We look round and cling dependently. We ask what men will think; what others will say; whether they will not stare in astonishment. Perhaps they will; but he who is calculating that, will accomplish nothing in this
life. The Father — the Father which is with us and in us — what does He think? God’s work cannot be done without a spirit of independence. A man has got some way in the Christian life when he has learned to say, humbly yet majestically, “I dare to be alone.”

… F. W. Robertson

The Bible tells us very clearly that to “know” God is not an affair of the mind only, but an act in which our whole being — heart, mind, and will — is vitally engaged; so that sheer intellectual speculation would enable us to form certain ideas about God but never to know Him. To be grasped, God’s will must be met with a readiness to obey.

…Suzanne de Diétrich (1891-1981), Discovering the Bible
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey —
whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.

…Romans 6:16,17 (NIV),Commemoration of Mellitus, First Bishop of London, 624