Great Throughts Treasury

"Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God?s existence or character. It may well come in the form of an over-attachment to something that is in itself perfectly good? An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero, anything that can substitute for God."

"In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like."

"In many intellectual circles in this country you don?t have the philosophical or cultural climate in which the Framer?s understanding could even get a hearing, let alone could be carried on."

"In terms of distance, the prodigal's pigsty is the farthest point from home; in terms of time, the pigsty is the shortest distance to the father's house."

"If everything is endlessly up for question and open for change, then everything is permitted and nothing is forbidden? nothing is unthinkable."

"If liberty is to endure, the twin bulwarks of the Constitution and the golden triangle of freedom must both play their part. To replace virtue alone with no virtue at all is madness, and what the Wall Street crisis showed about unfettered capitalism could soon be America's crisis played out on an even more gigantic screen."

"If all that a believer does grows out of faith and is done for the glory of God, then all dualistic distinctions are demolished."

"In the sorry ranks of the revisionists, the loss of anything identifiably Christian is now almost complete."

"Isaiah Berlin said philosophers are just adults who've gone on asking the questions that children ask and haven't stopped."

"Knowledge is power but truth is freedom."

"Making the world safe for diversity, is one of the greatest tasks we face in the global era."

"Modern life assaults us with an infinite range of things we could do, we would love to do, or some people tell us we should do. But we are not God and we are neither infinite nor eternal. We are quite simply finite. We have only so many years, so much energy, so many gray cells, and so many bank notes in our wallets. 'Life is too short to...' eventually shortens to 'life is too short."

"Like a precious family heirloom, freedom is not just ours to enjoy, but to treasure, protect, and pass on to future generations."

"Negative freedom is freedom from - in essence, freedom from interference and constraint. Positive freedom is freedom for ?in essence, freedom for excellence according to whatever vision and ideals define that excellence. [Constitutional] framers' position is clear and balanced, but contemporary Americans have abandoned it. They have voted unambiguously for negative freedom rather than positive and have therefore exalted freedom as an essentially private matter, for where else can a person be truly free from all outside interference."

"Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today."

"Other people have a concept of God so fundamentally false that it would be better for them to doubt than to remain devout. The more devout they are, the uglier their faith will become since it is based on a lie. Doubt in such a case is not only highly understandable, it is even a mark of spiritual and intellectual sensitivity to error, for their picture is not of God but an idol."

"Peter Berger, one of my mentors in sociology, remarked that the United States is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes, ... By that he meant that the American people are as religious as the people of India-the most religious country in the world-but that American leadership is often as secular as Sweden, the most secular country in the world. And the tone deafness between these two groups causes a lot of national friction. The Trinity Forum was built upon Berger's remark-as well as upon the historical precedents set by William Wilberforce."

"Sometimes when I listen to people who say they have lost their faith, I am far less surprised than they expect. If their view of God is what they say, then it is only surprising that they did not reject it much earlier."

"One of the key places where sociology should be used is in analyzing 'the world' of our times, so that we can be more discerning. To resist the dangers of the world, you have to recognize the distortions and seductions of the world."

"Supporters of school prayer have found themselves on the horns of a dilemma of their own choosing. Insisting on official Christian prayer in such pluralistic settings, they either ignore the diversity and pray as if everyone shared their faith?thus scandalizing those who do not; or they respect the diversity and pray in an inoffensive way that tries to appeal to as many faiths as possible?thus secularizing their own faith while still offending those who reject public prayer of any kind."

"The [golden] triangle is this: freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith of some sort, and faith of any sort requires freedom. And like the recycling triangle, it goes round and round -- freedom requires virtue which requires faith which requires freedom which requires virtue, and so on. You can break down each of those three legs in great depth, as the framers did. For example, freedom requires virtue: virtue was one word that covers things like honesty, loyalty, patriotism, character, and in many ways their discussion was very profound, but we've ignored it. For example, the president said today, they often don't look for character they look for competence, and yet the framers said that character would be decisive. Or you take the second leg, that virtue of any sort requires faith, the framers are very, very clear that the strongest inspiration, content and sanction for virtue comes from faiths, and, therefore, religion is very important. So they certainly granted freedom of conscience to atheists because they granted it to everyone. But they were not sanguine, for example if you read John Adams, about a society of atheists because they wouldn't have sufficient virtue."

"Surrender to the spirit of the age,"

"The aim is to truly reach the gatekeepers, those who are astride the doorways of influence and power,"

"The ability to read is widespread, but the inability to read any but the shallowest texts is equally widespread. Recent estimates put the literacy of more than half the population of the United States at the level of twelve-year-olds. Such semi- or sub-literacy is not being eradicated by mass-schooling: it is being made politically and psychologically acceptable."

"The alternative application of the golden rule would be to say, ?One out, all out,? and to conclude?I think rightly, for religious even more than constitutional reasons?that public schools are not the place to have official teacher-led prayer, Christian or otherwise. A moment of silence, perhaps; and free to pray alone at any time; and freedom to pray in student-initiated groups after school hours, certainly; but not official prayer in public schools when contemporary levels of the social fact of pluralism mean that the principle of religious liberty for all is contravened."

"The American 'unum' has been lost since the Sixties. If this continues, there will soon be no unifying American identity and vision to balance the 'pluribus,' and the days of the Republic will be numbered."

"The challenge of modern church growth is the problem of modern discipleship writ large-how to engage in the world freely but faithfully. Clearly, a tough blend of attributes is required: integrity and effectiveness, enterprise with humility, spiritual devotion along with common sense. To that end, here are two concluding reminders and two cautions to ponder. The first reminder concerns the paradox surrounding change and relevance. On the one hand, no one and nothing stays the same unless it is willing to change. On the other hand, no one and nothing becomes truly timely unless it is in touch with the eternal. The second reminder concerns the paradox surrounding success. On the one hand, in matters of the spirit, nothing fails like success. On the other hand, in matters of the spirit, nothing succeeds like failure."

"The Catholic Distortion: Calling has often been distorted to become a form of dualism that elevates the spiritual at the expense of the secular."

"The dilemma for man is not who he is but what he has done. His predicament is not that he is small, but that he is sinful."

"The empire of consumerism has undermined the Protestant ethic, and virtues such as delayed gratification have been shouldered aside by the clamor for instant gratification."

"The greatest enemy of freedom is freedom. Now the reason for that paradox is that freedom requires an order, or a framework, and the only appropriate framework for freedom is self-restraint, and yet self-restraint is precisely what freedom undermines when it flourishes. You've really got to consider, what is ordered freedom -- in other words, a framework of freedom? Put differently, freedom is not just negative, freedom from, it is positive too, which means freedom to be or freedom for, but that means you need to know who you're supposed to be. So in a Christian understanding, Jesus says you will know the truth and the truth will set you free -- that is ordered freedom."

"The founders? first principles of religious liberty can of course be applied to school prayer in several ways. For example, the golden rule of equal liberty for all could be applied to school prayer as ?One in, all in? and respected by praying a different prayer every day of the school month?Christian one day, Jewish the next, Muslim after that, then Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, Scientologist, Wiccan, and so on, until all the faiths in the school are covered. Such a policy would surely lead to chaos and indifference rather than tolerance."

"The rewards of freedom are always sweet, but its demands are stern, for at its heart is the paradox that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom."

"The Protestant Distortion: ?is a secular form of dualism, elevating the secular at the expense of the spiritual?and reduces vocation to an alternative word for work."

"The problem is not that reason attacks faith but that emotions overwhelm reason as well as faith, and it is impossible for reason to dissuade them. ? [This kind of] doubt comes just at the point where the believer?s emotions (vivid imagination, changing moods, erratic feelings, intense reactions) rise up and overpower the understanding of faith. Outvoted, outgunned, faith is pressed back and hemmed in by the unruly mob of raging emotions that only awhile earlier were quiet, orderly citizens of the personality. Reason is cut down, obedience is thrown out, and for a while the rule of emotions is as sovereign as it is violent. The coup d?‚tat is complete."

"The notion of calling, or vocation, is vital to each of us because it touches on the modern search for a basis for individual identity and an understanding of humanness itself."

"The ultimate threat to the American public will be Americans. The problem is not wolves at the door but termites in the floor."

"The tea party movement, dangering on things like the massive deficit, is really referring to the crisis of the republic, as the framers set it up. Whereas, the Occupy Wall Street movement, with its stress on the savage inequities between the rich and the poor, or the one-percenters and the 99 percenters, is focusing on the crisis of democracy. American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking. You can see that the extremely wealthy are at a distance from most Americans like you've never seen in American history before. So I think both of the movements, with all their failures and flaws, are incredibly revealing."

"The truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service."

"There are three huge challenges to the Christian church in the US: First is the challenge of regaining the integrity and effectiveness of faith in the modern world, over against the widespread worldliness of liberal and evangelical varieties of faith succumbing to the spirit of the age at point after point. Second is the challenge of persuading and winning back the educated classes, who are leading the country in a secular and European direction, and are almost impervious to the simplicities of present evangelistic methods. Third is the challenge of restoring a civil public square, without which the American republic will decline; and more importantly, Christians will not be free to enter and engage public life. At stake in all three issues is the character of faith in the modern world and the survival of Western civilization itself."

"There are lots of people depending on the government who are good, honest citizens who have worked all their lives."

"There is joy... in fulfilling a calling that fits who we are and, like the pillar of cloud and fire, goes ahead of our lives to lead us... Our gifts and destiny do not lie expressly in our parents' wishes, our boss's plans, our peer group's pressures, our generation's prospects, or our society's demands. Rather, we each need to know our own unique design, which is God's design for us."

"There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis."

"They don't realize that, in their haste, they are borrowing not an isolated tool but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem (a Trojan horse in the toolbox, if you like). The toolbox may be Freudian, Hindu or Marxist. Occasionally, the toolbox is right-wing; more often today it is liberal or left-wing (the former mainly in North America, the latter mainly in Europe). Rarely - and this is all that matters to us - is it consistently or coherently Christian."

"There is a deep irony in play today. Many educated people who scorn religious fundamentalism are hard at work creating a constitutional fundamentalism, though with lawyers and judges instead of rabbis, priests and pastors. Constitutional and unconstitutional have replaced orthodox and heretical."

"Together with the Constitution, these habits of the heart are the real, complete and essential bulwark of American liberty. A republic grounded only in a consensus forged of calculation and competing self-interests can never last."

"Two things continue to surprise me...that the sole American answer to how freedom can be sustained is the Constitution and its separation of powers and that the rest of the founders' solution is now almost complete ignored."

"Today our children have too much to live with?and not enough to live for."

"This means that the accuracy of our pictures of God is not tested by our orthodoxy or our testimonies but by the truths we count on in real life. It is demonstrated when the heat is on, the chips are down, and reality seems to be breathing down our necks. What we presuppose at such moments is our real picture of God, and this may be very different from what we profess to believe about God."

"We are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like."