Truth

It is when we reflect on the truth that our heart catches fire. Think of the Emmaus disciples on the afternoon of Easter Day. The risen Lord joined them on their walk and explained to them out of the Scriptures how the Messiah had to suffer before entering his glory. Later, after he had left them, they said to each other: ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’ (Lk. 24:32). This inner burning of the heart is a profound emotional experience, but it was Jesus’ biblical teaching which prompted it. Nothing sets the heart ablaze like fresh vistas of truth.

We have had enough, once and for all, of Hedonism – the gloomy philosophy which says that Pleasure is the only good. But we have hardly yet begun what may be called Hedonics, the science or philosophy of Pleasure. And I submit that the first step in Hedonics is to knock the Jailer down and keep the keys henceforward in our own possession. He has dominated our minds for thirty years or so… He is a sham realist. He accuses all myth and fantasy and romance of wishful thinking; the way to silence him is to be more realist than he—to lay our ears closer to the murmur of life as it actually flows through us at every moment and to discover there all that quivering and wonder and (in a sense) infinity which the literature that he calls realistic omits.

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose. It will defend itself.

The Old Testament is a fully furnished room that is poorly lit—you need the New Testament to understand it. Every theophany teaches about Jesus Christ.

There is a difference between praying to an unknown God whom we hope to discover in our praying, and praying to a known God, revealed through Israel and in Jesus Christ… In the first we indulge our appetite for religious fulfillment; in the second we practice obedient faith. The first is a lot more fun; the second is a lot more important.

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.

John Stott… The authority of the Bible and Jesus Christ stand and fall together

Lga-atlStrict creationism versus that which accommodates geological ages " these 2 systems are like oil and water; they will never mix because they are founded on two different premises. The one believes that Scripture should govern our interpretation of scientific data; the other believes that current scientific majority opinion should control our interpretation of Scripture. Neither evolution nor creation can be scientifically proved, since they are dealing with history instead of repeatable science. It is possible to build a case for either view, and the decision finally boils down to what one wants to believe. Furthermore, the case for believing in evolution is far from self-consistent...". Dr. Morris. Te revival of modern creationism. Book idea: the genesis flood. John Whitcomb and Henry Morris

God is like the sun.  You can not look at it, but without it, you cannot look at anything else.

Exile accepted as a destiny, in the way we accept an incurable illness, should help us see through our self-delusions.

...we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have a thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all.

Emotional even as I start reading this.  Not sure exactly why. Seems like my heart letting down it's guard in acknowledgment that I have pursued wrong things professionally for so long; maybe not so much pursuing wrong things as allowing .... I'm not actually sure right now.  I just know I'm not using the gifts Hod has given me for his kingdom.  Something is missing.  Something is wrong. Greek philosophy: pursuit of the Good, the True and the Beautiful Quote: Bono on his work for social justice: "Look, I'm just a singer. But in the end, I want to tear a little corner off the darkness." Deciphering DNA code is a process called sequencing. Quote: we are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we put in place of reality. - Daniel Boorstin    "home" 3/25/11 intro call Ever assignments in NYC? Disruptive to sit in? What do you do exactly? Worldview = the code? Define reality.     Send Keller sermon. Ought, is, can, will Fairy tales. Google.  Most influential institution.   What would it take for them to take our definition of reality seriously? Clockwork orange. Studs in the wall.  Hold the whole thing up but never advertise Can't solve Leslie newbiggen    Church of scotland missionary Fascinating story that explains reality Money.  Don't need our explanation so long as they can define their own reality Swift.  Can't reason a man out of something he never reasoned his way into Abolition of man. Show the fruit of the gospel, without calling it that.  Then you can explain where it came from when asked. Benchmark for success would be to sit on the board at Google 1.  Believe that gospel reality would make everything function better 2. Don't live this way. David brooks Diane vaugn.  Uncoupling Apply ourselves consciously to the work of renewal        Conscious destruction. Take and eat. Only renew by disruption

It is significant that biblical Christianity is the only Trinitarian religion--and therefore the only true religion--in the world. Most religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.) are pantheistic and humanistic, denying the existence of an omnipotent God who created the space/time cosmos. There are two other major religions, however, that are monotheistic, believing in the God of creation and in the creation record in Genesis--Judaism and Islam. However, these two fail to understand that the Creator must also be the Redeemer, and therefore they also become humanistic, believing that man must achieve salvation by his own efforts. Further, they also fail to acknowledge that God's objective work of redemption must be made subjective in each person by the indwelling personal presence of the omnipresent Creator/Redeemer.

The kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”

I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though they ...have killed off more people than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don't have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise the truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around.

I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion … if ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it. And no Person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable … yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god … Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not 'a religion,' nor 'a philosophy.' It is the summing up and actuality of them all.

Tell the truth and run.

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.”. CS Lewis, The weight of Glory.

One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness.

Are we by nature fated to suppress the deepest we know lest we offend?

The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.

To be a scholar is to search for truth. And to search for truth is to be open to the possibility that some discovered truth will lay claim to one's allegiance.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

Equality has no place in the world of the mind. Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many, more to the persistent and discipled seekers than to the careless. Virtue is not democratic; she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men. Truth is not democratic; she demands special talents and special industry in those to whom she gives her favors. Political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demands for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual or aesthetic democracy is death.

Do not try to imagine God, or you will have an imaginary God.

The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens – at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences … To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other … Those who do not know that this great myth became fact, when the Virgin conceived are, indeed to be pitied … We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic … shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.

Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if I stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as I am ready to support you.

A man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

If you don't believe in free speech for speech you loathe, you don't believe in free speech at all.

What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good and to create it.

Few value [friendship] because few experience it. Friendship is—in a sense not at all derogatory to it—the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turn you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart from the herd. Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and with Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s” part in “C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friends can fully bring out. Hence we pictures lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead. That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be “I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,” no Friendship can arise—though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers. ...The mark of perfect Friendship is not that help will be given when a pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all. — C.S. Lewis Another version…. Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s part in C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, “Here comes one who will augment our loves.” For in this love “to divide is not to take away.” Of course the scarcity of kindred souls – not to mention practical considerations about the size of rooms and the audibility of voices – set limits to the enlargement of the circle; but within those limits we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another (Isaiah VI, 3) The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.”

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true…The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind…But this story is supreme; and it is true…Legend and History have met and fused…The gospel has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.”

What I like about experiences is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.

On comfort God is the only comfort. He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way. . . Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.

On the one hand, *the message of the Bible* is exactly the same for all men in all places and at all times. Its relevance is not limited to any particular generation or any particular culture. On the contrary, it is *addressed to all mankind*. This is because *God's revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable*. As Jesus said, it 'cannot be broken' (Jn. 10:35). It has been delivered to us 'once for all' unalterably Jude 3). And being God's truth it possesses a marvellous universality. As *through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today*, it has a message for everybody everywhere. On the other hand, its unalterability is not a dead, wooden, colourless uniformity. For as the Holy Spirit used the personality and culture of the writers of his Word in order to convey through each something fresh and appropriate, so today *he illumines the minds of God's people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes*. It is he who opens the eyes of our hearts, and these eyes and hearts belong to young and old, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, African, Asian and American, male and female, poetic and prosaic. It is this "magnificent and intricate mosaic of mankind' (to borrow a phrase of Dr Donald McGavran's) which the Holy Spirit uses to disclose from Scripture *ever more of the many-coloured wisdom of God* (a literal translation of Eph. 3:10). Thus *the whole church* is needed to receive God's whole revelation in all its beauty and richness (cf. Eph. 3:18, 'with all the saints’).

Many suppose that intellectual freedom is identical with 'free thought', that is, the liberty to think and believe absolutely anything you want to think and believe. But this is not freedom. To believe nothing is to be in bondage to meaninglessness. To believe lies is to be in bondage to falsehood. True intellectual freedom is found in believing the truth and living by it. Archbishop Michael Ramsey in a series of sermons which he preached in Lent 1970 before the University of Cambridge (published now in the little book called "Freedom, Faith and the Future") spoke of intellectual freedom. The Christian creed involves 'a certain yoke of specific belief', but is also, he said, 'a means of intellectual liberty'. 'It frees you into the large room of the family of Christ's followers across the ages. There is a timelessness about such a faith. It is not first century or 16th century or 20th century. It can free you from one of the most horrible of tyrannies, the dominance of the contemporary.' I would add, it can free you from a great deal else besides, including the shifting sands of subjectivity.

It is fashionable nowadays to regard the biblical story of Adam and Eve as 'myth' (whose truth is theological but not historical), rather than 'significant event' (whose truth is both). Many people assume that evolution has disproved and discarded the Genesis story as having no basis in history. Since 'Adam' is the Hebrew word for 'man', they consider that the author of Genesis was deliberately giving a mythical account of human origins, evil and death. We should certainly be open to the probability that there are symbolical elements in the Bible's first three chapters. The narrative itself warrants no dogmatism about the six days of creation, since its form and style suggest that it is meant as literary art, not scientific description. As for the identity of the snake and the trees in the garden, since 'that old serpent' and 'the tree of life' reappear in the book of Revelation, where they are evidently symbolic, it seems likely that they are meant to be understood symbolically in Genesis as well. But the case with Adam and Eve is different. Scripture clearly intends us to accept their historicity as the original human pair. For the biblical genealogies trace the human race back to Adam; Jesus himself taught that 'at the beginning the Creator "made them male and female"' and then instituted marriage (Mt. 19:4ff., quoting Gn. 1:27). Paul told the Athenian philosophers that God had made every nation 'from one man' (Acts 17:26); and in particular Paul's carefully constructed analogy between Adam and Christ depends for its validity on the equal historicity of both. He affirmed that Adam's disobedience led to condemnation for all, as Christ's obedience led to justification for all (Rom. 5:18). Moreover, nothing in modern science contradicts this. Rather the reverse. All human beings share the same anatomy, physiology and chemistry, and the same genes. Although we belong to different so-called 'races' (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid and Australoid), each of which has adjusted to its own physical environment, we nevertheless constitute a single species, and people of different races can intermarry and interbreed. This homogeneity of the human species is best explained by positing our descent from a common ancestor. 'Genetic evidence indicates', writes Dr Christopher Stringer of London's Natural History Museum, 'that all living people are closely related and share a recent common ancestor.' He goes on to express the view that this common ancestor 'probably lived in Africa' (though this is not proved) and that from this ancestral group 'all the living peoples of the world originated'.(1)

The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain.

Galileo's head was on the block. His crime was looking up the truth.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

All the other myths of the world are a mixture of truth and error - truth because they are written by those made by and for God - error because written by those alienated by God. But the Bible is the one true myth. It is a true accounting of truth, while everything else we do is mimicking.

There are truths that are beyond us, transcendent truths, about beauty, truth, honor, etc. There are truths that man knows exist, but they cannot be seen - they are immaterial, but no less real, to us. It is only through the language of myth that we can speak of these truths.

Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a consolation for the sorrow of this world, but an answer to that question, ‘Is it true?’

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Had Ove been the sort of man who contemplated how and when one became the sort of man one was, he might have said this was the day he learned that right has to be right. But he wasn’t one to dwell on things like that. He contented himself with remembering that on this day he’d decided to be as little unlike his father as possible.

‘The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.’

‘I owe much to Éomer,’ said Théoden. ‘Faithful heart may have froward tongue.’ ‘Say also,’ said Gandalf, ‘that to crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face.’

Will you not come down? Isengard has proved less strong than your hope and fancy made it. So may other things in which you still have trust.

And yet, Éomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me; for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.

and a welfare problem and an AIDS problem and a rape problem. None of this will go away until more people in positions of responsibility are willing to come forward and explain, in frankly moral terms, that some of the things people do nowadays are wrong.”

My goal, then, is to renew the knowledge of a persistent reality that used to evoke in us fear, hatred, and grief. Many of us have lost this knowledge, and we ought to regret the loss. For slippage in our consciousness of sin, like most fashionable follies, may be pleasant, but it is also devastating. Self-deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual central nervous system.

For central in the classic Christian understanding of the world is a concept of the way things are supposed to be. They ought to be as designed and intended by God,

All sin has first and finally a Godward force. Let us say that a sin is any act —any thought, desire, emotion, word, or deed —or its particular absence, that displeases God and deserves blame.

Theology becomes therapy. . . . The biblical interest in righteousness is replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by feeling, ethics by feeling good about one’s self. The world shrinks to the range of personal circumstances; the community of faith shrinks to a circle of personal friends. The past recedes. The Church recedes. The world recedes. All that remains is the self. 125

But in a romantic, revolutionary frame of mind, we choose not to notice such fallout. When we thrill to demonic rebellion or cheer for fleeing bank robbers, we do not focus on any of the damage, disturbance, or offense. We notice only those features that sin has pirated from goodness —energy, imagination, persistence, and creativity. Everything sin touches begins to die, but we do not focus on that. We see only the vitality of the parasite, glowing with stolen life. CHAPTER 6 - Masquerade

This infernal embarrassment (Satan must appeal to our God-given appetite for goodness in order to win his way) suggests a significant feature of evil: to prevail, evil must leech not only power and intelligence from goodness but also its credibility.

Likely she would add some comments on moral relativism and subjectivism: if no moral borders are objectively fixed, either culturally or personally, then the biblical concepts of transgression and shortcoming fade away. If moral lines keep moving, how will people know when they have overstepped a line or fallen short of one?

We prettify ugly realities and sell ourselves the prettified versions. Thus a liar might transform “I tell a lot of lies to shore up my pride” to “Occasionally, I finesse the truth in order to spare other people’s feelings.” We become our own dupes, playing the role of both perpetrator and victim. We know the truth —and yet we do not know it, because we persuade ourselves of its opposite. 158 We actually forget that certain things are wrong and that we have done them. To the extent that we are self-deceived, we occupy a twilight zone in which we make up reality as we go along, a twilight zone in which the shortest distance between two points is a labyrinth.

This does not fit with the modern idea that we are all getting through to God in our own way. No, says Matthew. God has got through to us in this way. And Jesus is no great teacher, no guru, no peer of Mohammed or Gandhi. He is GOD with us. That is the essential claim on which Christianity is built. It is a claim which cannot be abandoned without abandoning the faith entirely.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one God.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.