Theology That Bites Back
“The secular state dispenses freedoms (it would be better to call them privileges) like they were party favors. They function as bribes. They serve as . . . bread . . . or circuses. As Chesterton points out somewhere, sexual license is the first and most obvious bribe to be offered to a slave. For many in our era, that was the bribe that ushered them into their bondage to the state.”
Mere Christendom, p. 9
“Why would You spend so much of Your wisdom
Constructing the road that winds up to You
If You did not desire that we would then take it?
If Christ is the road, then can we not come?
Why call us if You did not want us to come?
Why would You choose to make the way straight
If You did not wish us to take the straight way?”
21 Prayers, p. 104
“We lift Christ up to You so that in our turn
We too might be lifted, raised up to You.
We approach You through Christ and in no other way.”
21 Prayers, p. 101
“If there is no God above the state, then the state has become god—the point past which there is no appeal.”
Mere Christendom, p. 5
“The liberties of the individual are too precious to be left in the hands of a civic agnosticism. To not know why you are extending liberties to the citizenry is to not know why you would be doing anything bad if you took them all away.”
Mere Christendom, p. 5
“I ask that Your Spirit would move in clear ways
That were obviously never ginned up by us.”
21 Prayers, p. 101
“I ask that Christ would now live in our mouths,
Inhabiting our hearts, and dwell in our lives.
I ask You to break up our little dried walnut hearts
And sweep up the pieces to throw them away.”
21 Prayers, p. 98
“In order for genuine liberty to be extend to non-Christians, it is essential that non-Christians not be allowed to define genuine liberty. The blind should not lead the blind, as someone once taught us . . . If Jesus is Lord, the liberty of those who don’t believe in Him are far more secure than the liberties of everybody in the hands of a Caesar who answers to no one above him.”
“There are often occasions for many to trot out that apocryphal Luther quote about preferring to be governed by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian. Right, but what if you get a foolish Turk?”
“Secularism is the idea that it is possible for a society to function as a coherent unit without reference to God. It is the idea that a culture can operate on the basis of a metaphysical and religious agnosticism. It is the idea that we can understand what human rights are without knowing what a human being actually is.”
Mere Christendom, p. 3
