'...early in the fifth century, Saint Augustine noted that perceptive non-Christians really did know a great deal about 'the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth'. Given such able observers, he held that it was 'a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics''. -Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, p. 100.

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo....

Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself....

more...

"When my wife and I arrived at a car dealership to pick up our car after a service, we were told the keys had been locked in it. We went back to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver’s side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. ‘Hey,' I announced to the technician, 'its open!' His reply, 'I know. I already did that side.'"

“Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right...I don't know which will go first - rock ’n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.” - John Lennon

A recent Chinese/English greeting: "Merry Charismas to all." - and one recipient's response: "I guess Jesus did have that certain something ..."

“The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former ‘lifestyle’ would suggest that I got. While my so far uncancerous throat, let me rush to assure my Christian correspondent above, is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed...” - Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

“If the government does not propose to protect the lives, livelihoods, and freedoms of its people, then the people must think about protecting themselves...How are they to protect themselves? There seems, really, to be only one way, and that is to develop and put into practice the idea of a local economy.” – Wendell Berry

“Has not the New England farmer who reads good books as much a right to be considered an intellectual being as any coffee–house Bohemian?” - Russell Kirk

"He is a modest man, who has a good deal to be modest about." - Winston Churchill

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." - Ayn Rand

"You put the 'fun' in dysfunctional... that's what I like about you."

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams

"To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity." - Douglas Adams

"A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery." - John Keats

"A religion without mystery must be a religion without God." - Jeremy Taylor

"Religion that's small enough for our understanding would not be big enough for our needs." - Corrie ten Boom

"The moment the word 'why' crosses your lips, you are doing theology." - Carolyn Custis James

"Listening to God is far more important than giving Him our ideas." - Frank Laubach

"American religion is broad but not deep. It's not that Americans don't believe anything. They believe everything." - pollster George Gallup, Jr. (1930-2011)

"I hate titles. I put up with it to be polite but even when people call me their pastor I say, 'Thank you very much, thats kind, but we'll find out the first time I have to tell you no whether or not I'm really your pastor. That's the way that it works and I'm really good at saying 'no'...'" - John Wimber