Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
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, and in the end, despair.
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.
One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.
Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?
All joy...emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings
The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary colour in the spectrum...
Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
'And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies' plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.'
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, and in the end, despair.
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.
One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed.
Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?
All joy...emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings
The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary colour in the spectrum...
Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
'And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies' plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.'
No comments:
Post a Comment