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I am always amused by Christians who try so very hard to defend their position with reason and logic. They are like standing on top of a ladder with their tools and gadgets, straining their necks looking skywards for the leaks, trying to fix the roof amidst the rain. What they do not realize, of course, is that the roof isn't leaking -- it isn't there.
Once in royal David's city
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a Mother laid her Baby
In a manger for His bed:
Mary was that Mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little Child.
"At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukka' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukka!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!
It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other. If one does not experience it, the fellowship he belongs to is not Christian. If any member refuses to bear that burden, he denies the law of Christ.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
It has come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious.
God loved us, and to prove it to us became human in order to become our brother in the flesh. He became poor, the poorest of the poor, in order to be able to include us all as his brothers (and sisters). He became a little child in order to be like children, even born, children from the slums.
God has loved us and has given us all that he is and has. The Father gave the Son, the Son gave his very self, the Holy Spirit became our habitual sanctifier.... How grateful I should be to this kind Savior!
The knowledge of this marvelous period has made faith far easier from an intellectual standpoint, and has enabled us to be more patient in waiting to see the truth, not as now ‘through a glass darkly,’ but face to face. It seems undeniable that somewhere within him, deny it or doubt it as he may, every man has faith in God–that in his best moments he realizes that he has it, and that in his best acts he shows it. ‘Christian’ is no longer a term of opprobrium; – to say any man is a ‘real Christian’ is undeniably the highest honor we can confer upon him. Every man has his doubts at times – in them there is often much of real faith. Personally, I believe every human being has faith in God, in spite of the reaction of his fallible brain material. Nay, I am more and more hopeful that it is true that all men have it."
http://www.christianbeliefs.org/biographies/grenfell.html
-Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell, Kerr, J. Lennox. Wilfred Grenfell, His Life and Work. c. 1959, Toronto: ON, The Grenfell Association of Great Britain and Ireland.
No revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ.
There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ, who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ, who is the fulfillness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world … look to Christ.
-Pope John Paul II, [To 19,000 students in New York City], October 3, 1979
Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other - beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.
Books about Christianity
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