Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
I'm very interested in religion as something to study, but I'm not a religious person in the slightest.
Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads.
If someone has repented once of a sin, and again does the same sin, this is a sign that he has not been cleansed of the causes of the sin, wherefrom, as from a root, the shoots spring forth again.
Christianity is the only true and perfect religion.
His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is. . . a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin
Liberals cling to the idea that critics of welfare are motivated by greed or callous disregard for the less fortunate. In fact, during the twenty-five years that followed Lyndon Johnson's declaration of war on poverty, U. S. tax payers spent $3 trillion providing every conceivable support for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm. Private foundations spent scores of billions more, and private and religious charities even more. Nevertheless, as Ronald Raegan later quipped, 'in the war on poverty, poverty won. '
Christians remind me of schoolboys who want to look up the answers to their math problems in the back of the book rather than work them through.
I must exchange whispers with God before shouts with the world.
The revelation to store food may be as essential to our temporal salvation today as boarding the ark was to the people in the days of Noah.
In a perfect world, Joshua‟s vertically gifted murderer would‟ve had himself a monologue before rampaging, during which he loudly and clearly would‟ve announced his full name, occupation, religious preference, preferably with his god‟s country and time period of origin, his goals, dreams, and aspirations, and the location of his lair. But nobody had ever accused post-Shift Atlanta of being perfect.
It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i. e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
All religious beliefs seem weird to people not brought up in them.
We like to talk about having the faith to be healed - what about the faith to be sick?.
True faith is trusting the sovereign God even when we don't understand.
Lust is as it were desire and desire, will which extends beyond the natural will, passionate, not governed by the law and moderation. There are thus many forms of lust, like the many forms of sin. . . Lust does not approach the soul in the form of a warlike enemy, but in the form of a friend or a pleasant servant. It suggests some sort of pleasure or illusory good. But this is only a trick by which the malicious angler strives to lead astray and catch the poor soul. Remember this when you are tempted by lust.
Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.
Every time that we sin, we are born of the devil. But every time that we do good, we are born of God.
The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.