Mission: Impossible Briefing II

This is a compilation of some of my original quotations and aphorisms. I do understand that a great number of individuals are often too preoccupied to sit and read books or long essays, and because I enjoy quotations and archiving things, I am using this post to build a collection of aphorisms that I find useful in summarizing much of my writing. Usually, I cannot just voluntarily sit down in deep thought and begin writing nor would I want to. Nearly everything that comes together, comes together in pieces, out of life, so this post will probably be updated on occasion:

• "You say that you trust no one, but I don't believe you. You trust constantly - even when you don't realize it. At the intersection, you trust that the other drivers will stop when their traffic lights are red; you trust the architects and builders when you walk into a building, the engineers when hopping onto a roller coaster, the cook when you're eating the meal prepared for you. To some extent you trust countless strangers on a daily basis. Just as you would have an extremely tough time surviving in this world with a full trust in all people, you would have an extremely tough time surviving in this world without any trust for any people."
• "However true or not they may be to us, the trouble with all those tired, platitudinous, hackneyed mantras, which go along the lines of 'Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship,' is that many of us use them not as cries to embrace the grace of God but rather as licenses and/or excuses to celebrate sin. Make way for our beloved and ready, willing and able Christ to clean up your life already."
• "Static people love to compensate for their inability to change themselves by always trying to change the world."
• "The vision of the Progressive has often been but to walk forward while facing backward; the business of the Reactionary, but that of walking backward while facing forward; henceforth the fallout is oftentimes, and obviously enough, but the formulation and the construction of obstacles in life and hurdles on-site, as long as there are cliffs on edge."
• "Imagine a personality so taking that others would pay their last simply to be in its presence. Then of course a number of people go for the polar opposite, too (the one not 'as well'): the one so toxic, others would rather pay their last for it to go away."
• "There are some who never try, get left behind, forever dying, they just sit it by on the sidelines while they criticize, hide and scrutinize; but then there are others who are tough enough, who stand to risk their wrongs, flying high, as they rise up in this life and thus, fight right through the lies."
• "By some need to appear intellectual, non-thinkers will instantly and without question subscribe to the opinions of those they feel other people think are educated."
• "On a social level, secularism is safe. As literally the world's most fundamental conformist, the secularist wants to call himself a revolutionary all in the same. In most parts of the present world, rebellion against Christianity is not really much of a rebellion if one is to consider 'rebellion' something of a courageous sort or a bold act. Long ago Christ was crucified, and in some form or another, to this day, the scorn continues for 'little Christs'. The world hates Christians, and according to Christ, it is supposed to hate Christians. A true Christianity is a true rebellion; and for one to be 'freed from Christianity' is for one to religiously conform to the pressures of the rest of the world, for one to be freed from freedom."
• "Pride can make one a stronger person in the one sense, or so it is often believed, when based solely on the surface, but in the other, and much more frequently, a stronger devil. When pride is undeniably found out of an evil, it saves face by doubling down."
• "'God helps those who help themselves' is common sense, 'God helps those who cannot help themselves' is sound theology, and 'God helps all the living', a simple ideation."
• "History fancies itself linear - but yields to a cyclical temptation."
• "In some countries, the strictly Progressive man reveals himself to be just as much as if not more prejudiced than the typical Reactionary. There is at times a sort of arrogant condescension in one's gushing, bleeding-heartedness, in that, behind the mask of social activism, one is acting on behalf of one's perceived 'inferiors'. He may promote himself as the savior of the world; he may pat on the head all those he insidiously assumes to be the lesser, whether in status or class or ability, and treat them as helpless children: but the biggest danger of all is that by his own conscience he may feel for them, think for them, and thus, decide for them. It is with such, this artificial brand of empathy, and self-righteousness and narcissism, that we always naively yet so ignorantly pity 'the others', and ultimately, in our schemes to secure them, we merely hold them down."
• "But what good is the popular opinion, if the lot of us just process like minions?"
• "The poorly sophisticated, since many of us are, as presumed to be, lacking in good arguments, we are then prone to being well-versed in insults."
• "Mock and ridicule men who refuse to use reason and logic; use reason and logic against men who know only how to mock and ridicule."
• "Our entire lives we witness individuals, the ones who break some of the most culturally sensitive moral codes, ruined permanently by the media - i.e. shamed ruthlessly by the masses - i.e. dragged horribly by the village. While this is often intended to serve as a deterrent for the rest of us not to do anything too stupid, many of us choose to do stupid things anyway; and surely it is because the lot of us regard it simply as a challenge to bravery and a temptation to try to rise above or sneak past the law, to outsmart the justice system: I'm afraid the notion 'It'll never happen to me' is one of mankind's greatest hits."
• "Other than out of a pure curiosity and the aim for veracity, or perhaps for educational purposes, why should it matter to you the color of Jesus? Would you love Him and what He has done for you any more or any less? If so, that would be idolatry."
• "Any coward can be a peacekeeper! In fact, that comes to one naturally. But they are blessed, the peacemakers...and all those who know the difference."
• "Freedom of speech is detestable only to those who have no desire to think for themselves."
• "One can only return to the fact that even the most ordinary, good-hearted, intelligent people are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. And this comes from the realization that there are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly inane, we may actually on occasion feel insane for not believing them; and that is probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt we self-doubt, we convince ourselves into lame passivity and blind acceptance, we tell ourselves, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here.'"
• "Best to live and love by the maxim that 'silence in the face of evil is evil itself', but when it's evil fighting evil, let evil kill itself."
• "Fanaticism can often be a normalized phenomenon, and the unwritten recipe suggests that it starts and ends with absolute certainty. If you are always certain about everything, you might just live in an echo chamber, or there might be a lack of ideological diversity among your sources and friends. Only, there is no size limit to this echo chamber as long as there is consensus: and the bigger the chamber the more solidified the fanaticism, and the more solidified the fanaticism the more the outlier will be seen the liar and the fanatic."
• "Christ is our Friend; He is also the Righteous King. God is our Father; He is also the Sovereign Lord. Christianity can be said to be both a religion and a relationship. You may often hear the cliché that it is not a religion, but a relationship only - which, I believe, is a bit too vague a statement - 'religion' has long had different meanings and implications depending on who you ask or where you are coming from. Honestly, it is sometimes the case that Christians like to think they are too cool and free and up-close and personal with God to be like other religions. Perhaps that could be argued, that could be the case, as it is written thus: 'You are no longer a slave to sin, but God's child.' So we might very well assert that Christianity is not at all some stale philosophy centered around legalistic guilt and empty rule-keeping, as the modernists so commonly define religion; although by other definitions we might as well be boasting that it is 'The Religion' simply by claiming that it is too real and too special to be deemed 'just another religion'."
• "In their minds, it seems as though people don't often have the same answers, but in their hearts, they do very frequently have the same questions."
• "As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free.'"
• "Men often want to be known as gods, or, at the very least, to be their own gods; and indeed, they most definitely act as though they are gods...Which is to say: exigent, sure gods of (mass) confusion. In a political sense the liberal man is like one shouting over the voice of God thus making it difficult to hear God; the conservative man is like one standing in the way of God, making it difficult to see God."
• "Speculation, movements having abandoned rational thought, echo chambers, projection, hypocrisy by little to no self-awareness, bewildering minds brainwashed and manipulative hearts manipulated - one is sure to find these à la people cock-sure in their biased and fanatical, immovable despising of persons. We would all do well to humbly re-think from time to time: 'Whom do I really hate? For what purpose?'"
• "They say the crazies come out at night. I say the crazies come out during election year: Elections have the power to turn once seemingly normal people into certified loonies."
• "If you are not there for other people, do not expect them to be there for you. In many a case one might conclude that this is part of God's sovereign justice. His grace, however, is that He Himself will always be there for you, no matter what."
• "I am not convinced of the argument, 'I want to believe; it is only those awful Christians I hate. They get in the way of my belief.' If you hate Christians more than you love Christ, you do not love Christ. It comes to mind the question, 'If you do not love your brother or sister whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?'"
• "Store up knowledge. Then question your own knowledge in order to expand your mind, both to build and to create more space. Then store up more knowledge. And so on. That is wisdom."
• "People assume that repetition is always a static thing, but I beg to differ. Repetition is just as often the complete opposite of that: or a sign of rapid personal growth. In this repetition manifests one's ability to go on experiencing again the very same thing from a different perspective and in a brand-new light."
• "We live in an age so legalistic, we find it hard to imagine someone wanting to obey their Lord simply because they love their God."
• "The long-deluded will at last see the truth, and thus their expressions will have seen a ghost."
• "When disinformation is running rampant, there are two ignorances that may emerge: the one is actually positive, a sort of pure and intentional emptying of the mind; but the other is of course negative and clogged and polluted."
• "Christ commands his people to love their enemies, because if not, that would rule out pretty much the entire world."
• "Respect elders; protect children. This I do believe. As a young man it is sometimes, in a charitable sense, difficult to shake the sentiment that every elderly person is my grandparent, and every child is my child."
• "If I do not love my fellow man, I can be sure of it that I do not love Jesus Christ. And I would do well if guilty of loving Jesus Christ even more than I love my fellow man, because only by this may I fully come to love my fellow man."
• "Comedy to me has always seemed a social tightrope for the comedian. For all axioms intellectually sound the general public would prefer to be amused, but in those emotionally sound, it then chooses to get offended."
• "To be respected is not my concern. So long as I seek to live in obedience to my Lord, respect will come accordingly from the people He deems it necessary."
• "He has a way of drawing His loves back to Himself. A psyche separated from the peace (and the freedom) of Christ is liable to entangle itself in all sorts of folly and vanity, or confused witchcraft. On the one side it will preach, 'Empowerment!' But on the other it will scream, 'Oppression!' Yes, you now have the power to be oppressed: because as long as you look to be a victim, you will find yourself to be a victim."
• "April Fools' is the only day to take people seriously."
• "It is not enough to call yourself a 'free thinker' just because you can change your beliefs. A whole mess of people change their beliefs based on what is fashionable rather than what is factual, which, by always following the crowd, would be the complete opposite of the beauty of a free thinker."
• "A spirit ushered by false teachings is like a body nourished by sweets. The adult, as opposed to the child, will come to understand reasons one cannot live a healthy existence on nothing but candy; so likewise, the Christian must come to understand that one cannot know and love the will of God under false doctrine."
• "God is so omnipotent yet man so impotent, the Divine masterpiece was not even in creating the universe, but in making sin boring to sinners."
• "Our big mistake in modern intellectualism is first and foremost its lack of nuance. We have made science synonymous with atheism - a presupposed conception and yet, another means to non sequiturs - and therefore, to a number of enthusiasts determined to go the further, anti-theism. Hereby let us observe that science has long served best and should be, if none other, the one discipline, if at all possible, free of potential ideology, pro-religious or anti-religious, and/or biased presupposition in order to maintain the true authenticity and the full reliability of its nature."
• "There is not one harsher, more sure-fire way to fail than that of the man who tries to be like Jesus without submitting to Jesus."
• "Let them spend their time condemning every action of persons they do not like; by this let them revoke their own condemnation licenses: no one will take them seriously when it comes time to condemn something that really needs to be condemned, and thus hear, hear, despite the excess noise, the reasonable voices may prevail."
• "The worst evil is that most subtle evil. It is the evil that is merely 'base' which is more evil than evil itself. For it is the one closest to righteousness, the one indistinguishable and doused in virtue."
• "Self-awareness - the commendable ability to be oneself without being a nuisance to someone else."
• "Even the devils are theists. I am of all people one of the least qualified to judge, but I do believe that some atheists are closer to God than are some theists. With Him, it is better to be distant in the mind but near in the heart than it is to be distant in the heart but near in the mind."
• "Is it 'Stockholm syndrome' when your God has never once misguided your steps? I think not! Let the lost ones dart across the darkness, bashing into walls, pretending to love their ways as we delight in obedience to the footsteps of Christ which bring us to freedom. By Faith we wander - not because we are lost, but because we are free."
• "The legions who attempt to love without Christ, without a new heart, are indeed able to love amongst themselves; however this love is made possible by restraining any anger or hatred deep within the old heart, only to release it all on whichever village idiot(s) they collectively feel a crucifixion would be justified."
• "As for the secularist belief that says 'if we were to eliminate all religions, the world would know peace,' this is the Atheist Heaven; thus it is so important to him (although perhaps more laughable than some say the Christian Heaven). It is about as useless as saying 'if all people were true Christians, the world would know peace,' or 'if all people were devout Muslims, the world would know peace.' And even yet, the secular dream could remain active only for a time before generational rebellion and freedom of thought were to kick in anew."
• "To merely blank the page and vaguely assume that 'religion' is the cause of all the world's problems is, on the contrary, an allegation brought about by nothing more than cognitive lethargy; it is when unburied, unpacked, and exposed but a stale conclusion and a misdirection for the one overwhelmed by centuries of sound theology, scholarly thought, and spiritual development."
• "Our poor world aspires simply to point out where Christians have gone wrong, and that is pretty much where it goes wrong. It is as though many of us, when of the world, are actually all the more judgmental: for we are stuck on a bad Christian while the Christian is pinned to a good Christ."
• "I need not adapt in certain ways. I am in fact but a visitor to this world, an ephemeral gasp within its long, tired history, and, before anything else, a follower of Christ. By this alone I have the power not to shuffle away from the Faith, the power to break loose from these marching-shackles of ongoing cultural and political pretense."
• "The rather difficult antagonists towards the Church consist not nearly of the cruel and heartless, nihilistic intellectuals who hate God and humanity, but the well-meaning spirits who for the most part lack an understanding of the Spirit."
• "Peace ought not be regarded the height of civilization, else like barbarians we forever battle for peace."
• "Rebuke without love is abuse. But, a love that would never rebuke? I dare to admit that that, too, would be a kind of abuse."
• "Life is about discovering things worth dying for."
• "'It is not that men become too intelligent for God,' says the Apologist, 'but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence.'"
• "They call good evil and evil good. There are those who are so easily offended that they lose their ability to ever discern any truth, and this is often derived from a sort of frenzy by way of their own masked prejudice."
• "Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions."
• "Growing up I sometimes imagined that for Christ's return perhaps He would appear as 'Black Jesus' to white people and 'White Jesus' to black people just to screw with the racists."
• "Sure, some of us humans might be angry at a sovereign God about Hell, but know that that is about as meaningful as a few germs being angry at humans about bleach."
• "The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy."
• "That most pleasant weather to feel is the one never felt."
• "There is a certain delightful sort of hope which the introvert can receive only by having company over...the hope that they will leave soon."
• "The talk of sin is of course to many a big turn-off; to others, an even bigger myth - because in reality, sin is like the spiritual equivalent of a microscopic parasite, or a virus, or better yet even, an infectious disease. And just as one might never know of, until visiting a competent doctor, the tiny pathogens progressively eroding one's body, so we might never know that in sin we are eroding our being and losing direction until hearing the Word of God rightfully applied. Therefore I ask, which of the doctors would then be the more competent: the one who finds the problem and gives the solution, or the one who willfully ignores the problem (or rather finds the problem when it is much too late)? Seldom does anyone write off the knowledge of medicine for the physical body as primitive practice, so neither must the knowledge of the Word of God for one's spiritual well-being remain written off as primitive practice - quite the opposite really. As it is written thus: 'Lean not on your own understanding.'"
• "They have a special confidence in Christ, plus thoughtfulness plus faithfulness plus humility: for there are no things, in all creation, more beautiful, more rare than the so very disciplined and free, joyful and principled daughters of God."
• "You are the enemy and a vessel through which the cure flows - if Christ lives in you, then you are an embodiment of the very shot this hostile and crying world needs as it, in every waking moment, struggles belligerently to resist."
• "Always have there been great numbers of individuals who were very much eager to fight for good causes. Always there were these, but then there were even greater numbers of trendies who would then become wholly and completely misguided in the efforts."
• "...And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream."
• "God is not some lesser employee, as many try to make Him out to be: rather He the ultimate Treasure. He works in a man; He works on a man; He works through a man; He works around a man. Know that He does far more than simply work for a man. And yet, even as He Himself needs no one else, everyone else is ever in need of Him."
• "Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful."
• "Do not tell someone you are hungry if, whenever they feed you, you do not eat."
• "It is by continuing to put out good work that the artist best shows his gratitude."
• "It is sometimes but the mere hope for enjoyment that allows one to enjoy something, even when he is not really enjoying it at the moment."
• "When it comes to moral dilemmas and matters of discerning right justice, my natural sympathy so often happens to land on the opposite end of that of most of my peers. I sometimes wonder if this is nothing more than the misguidedness and the wickedness of my own heart. I wonder other times if God wires some of us in such a way so that fair discourse might then be provided, so that honest and unbiased, due process is ultimately more likely to be carried out. Perhaps it is all necessary for variance of perception, for mindful debate: that the heart is meant to create a bit of bias on certain issues; as between one another, they weigh and balance. For not all hearts are the same."
• "When you meet someone and you find that they are prejudiced against your kind, it might be your chance not to confirm but to be the one to finally change their mind."
• "Even the self-assured truth-finders and self-proclaimed freedom-fighters reject Truth. As admirable as such endeavors may be, they still only really want it so long as it to some extent confirms what they had already presumed to be true."
• "If we all knew who God really was and what he really wanted for each and every one of us, we would all know that only a fool could really deny him."
• "I do not recall our Lord ever saying one could not be 'cool'. It is only a problem if one esteems 'coolness' above that which is righteous and true, which is, when we give it its way, really what many of us do. 'Coolness' is too transient to be of any real and meaningful, lasting significance, and it is often in great conflict with one being one's most honest, most vulnerable self. That, and in reality, some of the coolest people are actually those who least concern themselves with being cool anyway, those who make 'trying to be cool' less evident."
• "The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent."
• "The Christian who loves his Master needs not fear any longer for himself. For it is then completely irrational, as it is written thus: 'Perfect love casts out fear.' However, it is very much rational for one to instead fear for the enemies of God."
• "Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living."
• "Christians sometimes make themselves into elephants afraid of mice. You have the Creator of the universe on your side; not to mention, you've been given eternal life. 'Whom or what shall you fear?' To be afraid of anything other than God himself is like an insult to God."
• "The introvert's anthem for not wanting to hang out is 'It's not you; it's me.'"
• "Dismally enough, some of us are insecure in such a way that we cannot bear the thought of the sovereignty of God, the thought of His Being as greater than ourselves; it moves us into feelings of insignificance. Nonetheless, allow me to personally and peacefully maintain that if I were to worship and obey anything, I would like it far greater than myself or any person or human system, preferably to a point where it, in all its majesty, makes me feel lost and even 'creatural' in my basic humanity. Only this God - He who is great beyond human measure, yet still considers His creation precious - I find to be more than worthy of praise; otherwise, I bow down and worship nothing. And if the thought of such a superior and almighty God were to indeed offend me, I would have to remember that it is because I am only as significant as the things which I am idolizing, things which are ultimately separating me, the creation, from my ultimate Creator."
• "It's not the end if you're too shy to say 'I love you.' It's only the beginning; because you're first meant to show it anyway."
• "On the one hand you had people constantly fighting Hell; on the other, you had people constantly fighting Hell on earth."
• "To understand even remotely the holy omnipotence of God is to understand at least from mostly to wholly the magnificence of Christ."
• "To fear man's judgment more than God's judgment is to fear man more than God."
• "Sanity for anyone is pretty much out of the question, as both the saint and the sinner appear only equally insane: the saint appears it for actually believing in a place of eternal torment; the sinner, for deciding to risk going to that place of eternal torment."
• "Everybody knows basically what is right and what is wrong. Everybody knows better than to hate others. In fact, most people teach against it, and yet we still see it on the daily. But why do you think that is? It is because the problem was never really humans not loving humans enough; the problem was humans not loving righteousness enough. We must empty our own love for the world so that it can be replaced by the love of Christ; only then will we begin to love people as Christ loves people, as He always intended."
• "Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self."
• "It's a huge disservice to classify all minds as either closed or open. I find the best minds are closed by openable windows."
• "Know the word of God not in order that by doing so you might be saved; know it rather so that unlike the many you are not easily deceived. You may find that, evidently, a great many of the so-called novel ideas of the present were made without a clue that 'God', if you will, already laid profound discourse on or against them ages ago: no man has gone against God in such a way that God, from the beginning, did not already expect him to. Then, insofar as this, you will remain clear in that it is not at all that the Christian should be against newness; quite the opposite really - for a major point of Christianity is about one constantly being made new in Christ - it is only that many people are not actually bringing true newness to the table, and this is precisely because they do not first apply (or let alone even know) the wisdom of old."
• "Time and time over it is the ones who try a little too hard to be innovative rebels - and for the sheer glory of being considered innovative rebels - who then turn out not quite as innovative or as rebellious as they would like to think they are."
• "The Christian God seemed the most offensive to people precisely because he was the most godlike. He was too perfect even to be coaxed by human efforts, and therefore sent his son to do the job."
• "God's judgment is not like man's judgment. It is not a suspension of His Love but an extension of His Love. His justice is always righteous, so His judgment is always Love."
• "That which you love most will then become both your strength and your weakness."
• "On the whole the modern world has been conditioned to have a chip on its shoulder against devoutly religious people. I disagree with this in some instances - particularly in, believe it or not, matters of integrity. Deep down I often rather believe the man who honestly thinks - or better yet even, prefers - that he has an omnipotent Judge breathing down his neck, holding his every word and his every move accountable, than the man who much like his modern peers, and ironically enough, claims or wishes to bask in complete independence. As it appears actually, the former is more free of guilt than the latter."
• "You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do...and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself."
• "But perhaps we are speaking, on the contrary, somewhat poorly of God when praising Him, or when wanting to praise Him, only during what we perceive to be our highest of moments. After all, that is in many cases the mentality behind one's unbelief altogether: the failed attempt to control God, to lower His standards to one's own level of understanding in doubt of His foresight and omniscience, His goodness and power. He wants to know if you are faithful enough to praise Him even when, to you, all seems lost."
• "Through Christ, the sting of death is but a gentle pinch to the soul; and the mourn is light. Perhaps, someday, in that glorious place, free of sin, we shall meet again."
• "I wouldn't think that God is quite as much concerned with whether or not one actually sins as He is with whether or not in one's heart one genuinely wants to turn from sin; and therefore, continues working passionately with Him in doing so. It is not some pleasure of God's, as some might imagine, to stand around critiquing, arms crossed, holding a whip. I suppose that when someone weeps over their sins, He extends His hands; He wants them to lift their head and embrace Him and the mercy He's willing to show. But when someone is proud of their sins, He delivers His justice swiftly and righteously. Sin does not intimidate God - although He takes it very seriously - it does no real harm to Him whatsoever, only to the sinner and to other people: and He loves people."
• "The actual confident man, the man truly sure of himself, is not he who esteems himself higher than others, but he who is sure enough that he can bear to esteem others higher than himself."
• "Generally it appears the case that, when faced with all life's problems, the baby, he wants to cry about everything, the child wants to question everything, the teenager wants to rebel against everything, the young adult wants to solve everything, the middle-aged adult wants to protect everything, and the elder wants to accept everything."
• "I do not believe it possible for one to genuinely love Truth more than people (or vice versa). One might fall into the snare of loving the search more than people, or the pride of having exposed something or someone, but not the truth itself. For if you love Truth you love people; because to love people at all and without illusion, you must also love the truth about them."
• "I do not much trust the man who cares solely to inspire - he does not really inspire me - only the man who cares mostly to tell the truth, whatever that may do. For when the man who cares to tell the truth happens to inspire, I, in addition, find it easier to believe that he in fact does his homework on how and when one should truly inspire."
• "Heroic ambition seemed to have been the cause of much of the world's pain then - quite like it is now. No villain ever saw himself a villain: he only saw himself a hero; and this goes just as no hero ever saw himself a hero: he simply did what he had to do. No true hero initially sets out with intentions of being deemed a hero."
• "Keep your finger on the pulse of society, take controversies with a grain of salt, lick your finger and then lift it to the wind; always know what is going on, my friend, so this world can never steer you wrong again."
• "I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly."
• "Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision."
• "Heresy would like to think of itself as 'invented Truth'. But of course, all Reason and Logic would agree that no man can ever create Truth; he can only discover it. If heresy were ever at all beneficial, God would use it really to bring one right back to Truth, as countless 'inventions' have brought men to discovery."
• "So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment."
• "There are those who feel that the world is ultimately moving closer to Truth and to prosperity as the times evolve; then there are those who feel that it is ultimately moving farther away from Truth and into self-destruction. From this, and if it were really that simplistic, one might get the impression that life gravitates slightly into two types of people whom which are diametrically opposed in spirit."
• "In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith."
• "People will seek the ends of the galaxy to avoid that which they need most."
• "The sacrifices we make to stay healthy, to look good, the tasty foods we skip, the guilt trips, the exercising - all these things require great discipline, care, and even a paradoxical, self-denying self-love of sorts in order to be properly executed. However it is regretful that so many of us today are not as passionate about our spiritual holiness as we are about our physical health. They are indeed both important - we should worship in every aspect of our lives - and one even, in a sense, entails the other. Although, this disproportion in said priorities is still very much expected: we humans have always taken a liking to trendiness and the temporal side of things, doing what is judged vainly in the eyes of man before that which is judged vitally and eternally in the eyes of God (i.e. "cleaning the outside of one's cup while leaving a filthy inside"). But in a way, it all goes to show that the man who fully hates discipline hates himself fully; for within the spirit is where The Holy One judges true wellness or malady."
• "We are not as some people like to assume nowadays 'just being real' by embracing passively the sinful, fallen versions of ourselves. Quite the opposite really: our true selves were, from the beginning, intended to resemble the example which was then set by Christ Jesus; hence God wants to restore us to how we would have been had original sin never once befell."
• "Worldly religion is that which replaces Faith with mere wishful thinking. One must not make the common mistake of putting his faith in all the things he thinks God ought to bless him with; he should instead keep his faith planted in God Himself. Present to Him his needs and wants like a child to his Father, but have faith only in His wisdom and goodness like a servant to his King. God must always be one's Everything before He is one's token to everything."
• "One's suffering, one's melancholy is, in itself, really only looked upon as failure or as punishment, as detestable or sinful or socially unacceptable in the eyes of man; but this is not so in the eyes of God: for He is close to the broken-hearted."
• "Men promise freedom while establishing laws; God promises laws while establishing freedom."
• "Of course, if one does not fully trust the promise of God's Kingdom, he will have a hard time taking risks and making sacrifices in this life. A gospel centered around the temporal self - fleeting happiness, earthly success, vain prosperity, things such as these - is the primary ambition of the half-hearted Christian; the one who somewhat believes he is subject to an eternal death; the one who just might believe in men before God, who morbidly fears seeming less than anyone else. The man of this school feels deeply that he has but one life to live, that this must be his only chance, and therefore must have it all in his favor - from glory to comfort to riches - and have it right this instant. He is but hinting that he is overcome because he insists always that he must overcome, that his judgment comes now and by the persons around him. The point is, however, in this sense, that by grace the Christian is indeed free, but only for as long as he wants to be free - the practicality of true freedom: that of God which offers not so much freedom to be like the world as it does freedom from the pressures of having to be like the world. For Divine Law is based solely on love and freedom; whereas secular law, pressure and imitation."
• "One is not necessarily made self-centered because he is foolish, but one is very often made foolish because he is self-centered."
• "Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society."
• "If you want to know how negative you are, pay attention to how much you hate negativity in other people. Fragile, artificial positivity needs always to be surrounded by more positivity in order to stay positive, but the ability to be positive, happy, and even, at times, appreciative around 'negative people' is the mark of real positivity."
• "Pride is pride not because it hates being wrong, but because it loves being wrong: To hate being wrong is to change your opinion when you are proven wrong; whereas pride, even when proven wrong, decides to go on being wrong."
• "There is this common notion that young conservatives are the few, that most people had liberal worldviews when they were young. If this is true, then it is with great irony that a number of old liberals must never had progressed into conservatives as they grew older."
• "Never marry when under the guise you need to 'see if it'll work', but rather marry because in your mind you want to make it work."
• "Where God is like the sun, the Devil is like a raindrop. There is no 'God vs. Satan' because they aren't even that close in power and authority. The former is very patient; the latter is at mercy."
• "The pride of man hopes but to blame God for the evils of the world, and to praise himself for the good."
• "It is in the nature of man to want what he does not have. This modern concern for happiness seems a real testimony of its absence."
• "A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false."
• "Perhaps it is true that, by some definitions, Satan is more religious than God. Many of the particularly proud sinners are deceived into thinking that Satan is anti-religious, that he likes seeing people do immoral things simply because he likes immoral things. Doubtful; Satan likes for people to do immoral things so that he can blame them for doing immoral things. The Father of Lies laughs not with his teammates, but at them."
• "As cliché as it might sound, I'd rather lose than win by cheating. The latter is a much deeper, more personal loss in that one is admittedly whispering to himself his lack of competence. His cheating then begets more cheating, as he is ever-privately, ever-subconsciously insulting himself; thus, gradually deteriorating any remaining confidence."
• "A great many skeptics are unfortunately put to waste, in that they vainly focus their energy on ridiculing a certain tiny denomination of Biblical fundamentalism, a denomination seated just one chair away from unbelief. They, the skeptics, cannot believe because they are the most literal of fundamentalists: of those who must interpret Scripture as simply an obsolete, absolutely dead compilation of intellectual incompetence. Nevertheless, by all means, because, after all, that is supposed to happen - Scripture states of itself that all thought and interpretation is folly without the Holy Spirit - however the ironic thing is the case in which one believes that the Bible is, in its true essence, completely outdated. And like flashes in a pan, he hints at his naivety, that he knows little about the world around him, little about those who live in it. Either that, or he knows little about what Scripture really says in relation to the world around him, little about what it really says in relation to those who live in it. It is as though he is the one dead to the world and it to him. He has not the Spirit to give life to his own spirit; he can only possibly understand Scripture as long-deceased rather than the modern world's very living narrative."
• "I'm not a political Christian; for the most part I allow people even their vain, earthly rights. And I certainly don't see anti-Christians as bad or evil (as if they actually have the power to pose any kind of threat against God Almighty), but rather complete idiots I was commanded to love."
• "The hype cheapens the hyped, as right things are then made wrong by exaggeration."
• "Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice."
• "False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit."
• "Now what religion has never had sects? Rest assured, Extremism is always the derrière."
• "But the Egotist is stuck somewhere between his hidden triad of pride, fear, and insecurity; he is forever fighting to prove himself, instigating battles the Humbleman has unwittingly conquered, already sealed some time ago. Yes, the day he finally accepts face-to-face such an irony as humility - the irony that humility is indeed the mother of giants, that great men, having life so large, as needed, can afford to appear small - the world will then know peace."
• "You might be an introvert if you were ready to go home before you left the house."
• "To respect a mystery is to make way for the answer."
• "Creator of all Things, to sing: At the Potter's House, you see, we are His Pottery...Because God writes (in) Love, and speaks (in) 'Poetree': The Nature of Things, the King of Kings, oh Kingdom of the Holy, we sing!"
• "The denial of truth does not harm the Truth; it only harms that which denies the Truth."
• "Some of the most polished ideas are discovered through healthy, honest debate, so if you don't argue with yourself every once in a while, other people will gladly point out if, in any sense, you missed a spot."
• "Assuming what people want is about as controlled as using fireworks to start a fire."
• "Their doubt is your fuel for dreams. You just have to drive."
• "In the heart of appeasement there's the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression."
• "Nothing amuses people more than a cocky guy who starts losing."
• "There are 2 kinds of fighters: those who fight because they hate, and those who fight because they love."
• "We often use the Bible as a source for personal validation and defense, a sidekick and a shield, but these will prove ineffective without first the other part. We must also allow ourselves to be wounded by it. We tend to forget its authority - that it is a double-edged sword. Our decrepit, depraved hearts must be completely ripped out in order to welcome that of God."
• "The fans are always more radical than that which they are fans."
• "Plot twist: everything goes exactly as planned."
• "If beauty is relative, then any and everything when compared to the beauty of God is absolutely hideous."
• "We must not allow our pride to be the motivation behind our apologetics; rather, philoverity, the love of truth must be the full and complete motivation. For pride corrupts truth."
• "If your doctrine changed for the better yet your character changed for the worse, you changed for the worse."
• "On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win."
• "To the short-sighted, through the fog, God must be a monster."
• "Some of the simplest of truths are also some of the most difficult of truths, but such is Christianity: 'If it's not about Christ, it's not about life.'"
• "No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles."
• "To be naive is to be unaware of how stupid and cruel other people are; but, by some definitions, ignorance is nearly the opposite of naivety in being a kind of cynicism, in being unaware of their intelligence and humanity. It seems to be a normal although unfortunate case that the great many of us consciously abhor ignorance in others yet subconsciously practice it ourselves: as naivety is apparent and well-known to inflict its damage upon oneself; whereas the alternative and the easier, ignorance, its damage upon others."
• "By(e) pen, I've tried my hand at poetry; only to see how boring it is to me. That is, unless I get a chance to destroy each and every piece while doing it as I please."
• "The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth."
• "After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy."
• "The extent of creativity to which I admire in an individual is his ability to be richly creative while still, in a way, telling the truth. It is the fool who creates only his own lies, and the bore who simply repeats what he is told."
• "With enough mental gymnastics, just about any fact can become misshapen in favor to one's confirmation bias."
• "You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have."
• "Like all great things which then become fashions, science, as now the universal stamp of approval, probably receives more abuse than any other field of study. Glaze the word itself over whatever vague ideology one may presume ratified, no matter the degree of pseudo-science or lack of scholarly credibility packaged within, and the many will consume it like gravy on a feast. My thought for the time is that as the promise of true science increases, so shall rise its many more superficial counterparts as provided by the agenda-bound trendies and hyper-ambitious laypersons to boot."
• "All knowledge meets an end at the question '...Why?'"
• "To the loyal and to the blood-lovers, in the good families and in the fiery dynasties, life is family and family is life. It is the same people who give advice and their vices to live well who turn out to be the ones who give resource and reason to live long."
• "Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live."
• "If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable."
• "Pure wisdom is the 'fruit of life'; banal platitudes are the 'bane of existence'."
• "If you don't like the solution, change the problem."
• "Jealousy from a love affair is something (to which) even God can admit."
• "Law without reason is criminal."
• "God hates sin not because he wants us to be good little boys and girls, but because he knows sin destroys that which he loves most: sinners."
• "Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion."
• "I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences."
• "If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh."
• "Few endeavors, if any at all, I find to be inherently mature or inherently immature. Maturity is neither defined by one's particular preferences nor by one's particular activities; rather, it is defined by the strength of one's character."
• "Initially, the God of the Old Testament might seem overwhelming and domineering to you, or tyrannical, or perhaps even evil, which is good. It is the first telling that God is indeed God, by sheer definition, and not some ear-tickling fairy by which one in his depravity is guaranteed to find another form of stale romanticism or love at first sight. For such a first impression as the latter would be problematic to the essence of Christianity. Therefore the Christians are right in saying that the nature of imperfect men cannot ultimately co-exist with the nature of a perfect God; and that the hope of each man is now desperately found in God's sending of Christ."
• "For the case that one thinks he has plateaued in life, God has already set yet another peak for him to reach: and a much more challenging peak than his own, one that which is to serve others."
• "My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, 'holiness' is, metaphorically, frozen stiff in his veins: and at that a corrupted formula - i.e. legalism. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the sharpest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness."
• "Question like a child, reason like an adult, and write like a sage."
• "In each generation, there is this certain wisdom of the ages that gets reburied in the fleeting drivelings of modernity; then, like a diamond in the rough, it is yet again unearthed by a very small minority who not only restores it but also polishes it and presents it as something new, something highly valuable and refreshing as understood by the current."
• "How easy it is for so many of us today to be undoubtedly full of information yet fully deprived of accurate information."
• "I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist."
• "God will save whomever He chooses to save. The Christian should proselytize not because he thinks he can change everybody; he should proselytize because the Gospel being shared is the ultimate act of love: because he thinks he can love everybody."
• "All things remarkable are surprisingly simple; albeit difficult to find."
• "Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance."
• "Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity."
• "Together, we form a necessary paradox; not a senseless contradiction."
• "Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete."
• "Any halfway clever devil would decorate the highway to Hell as beautiful as possible."
• "Because you're always learning, the chief lesson remains: you still know nothing."
• "It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished."
• "The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math."
• "Those small moments of pleasure men get from sin, from defying God, are perhaps grace - His final gift still to those who hard-heartedly choose to deny Him. Godless men may blatantly enjoy offending God not because they are free-spirited, but on the whole because He moves them to enjoy it. Sin is, in a sense, still touching God: for a strike involves a touch. Perhaps this is His divine kindness. Faithful men find everlasting fulfillment in His good company; but godless men who strike at the Author of Joy, who are completely ignorant of the greater, for them - and by God's love for His enemies - there is yet this small recoil known as 'pleasure' before the fall."
• "Even the richest of brands are robbed by poor character."
• "What's simple is that everything good comes from God, and everything bad comes from man. Where it gets complicated is that everything seemingly good but ultimately bad comes from man, and everything seemingly bad but ultimately good comes from God."
• "Fashion is simply a guideline for style-less people to appear stylish."
• "Trends are about as fickle as the direction of the wind; as are the legacies of those who flow with them."
• "The truth exposes some people so deeply, their last defense is to front a carefree insanity."
• "Always seek justice, but love only mercy. To love justice and hate mercy is but a doorway to more injustice."
• "To me, many of what seemed to be Bible contradictions only pointed to the grace of Christ. It is not so much a rule book on how to be holy as it is a prophecy of the One who can make you holy. In this, I see God as the least bigoted of all in existence: While men always, in their hearts, delight in vengeance for being wronged, God is the only Being who wants to free you from the penalty of His own laws."
• "The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation."
• "Of all individuals, the hated, the shunned, and the peculiar are arguably most themselves. They wear no masks whatsoever in order to be accepted and liked; they do seem most guarded, but only by their own hands: as compared to the populace, they are naked."
• "One may suffer the long-term in order to grow in appreciation for the small things. For in short-term suffering, one only notices the large."
• "The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing."
• "I suspect that 'Kindness and Cruelty' and 'Mercy and Justice' all have secret affairs, as though they rendezvous only within certain sophisticated souls: those who hate being offensive, but love telling the truth."
• "The first reaction is surely the most natural one, but not always the most correct one; thereupon, the invention of apologies."
• "One either cares what others think about him, or cares what others think he thinks about them. If you want to find someone who doesn't care in the slightest what anyone thinks, try a lunatic asylum."
• "Science is knowledge meeting humility meeting curiosity: ever-evolving, always learning. Atheism is often but knowledge meeting arrogance: a masquerade under the wing of the beauty of science. Religion is infamously a weight under the one wing; then under the other is atheism, the championed masquerade."
• "Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted."
• "The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart."
• "Character that is fruit-producing can be summed up in the mastery of these 5 qualities: morals, but a sense of humor; love, but respect for criticism; intelligence without pretense; humility without self-loathing; and a mind open, but with solid convictions."
• "Although I would probably think quite differently, as far as I can tell, if I were an atheist, my message to a number of the Christians of today I imagine would be somewhat along the following lines: 'Please, remember my autonomy. Do not confront me like yet another life coach, although with a shady, self-serving religious twang, and although ironically, telling me how to use god for my own agenda in order to 'live it up' for the umpteenth time. I did already attend a secular university for 5 years; I heard all the best, generic, lame success seminars out there; I know success; I know prosperity; my narcissism is well-fed. What is so special about your offer? Your religion is fake; your god is useless. Show me how to Jesus. That is the gem, but you seem nothing like it. Sincerely.'"
• "Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question."
• "I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out."
• "A prophet is always underestimated, and part of what makes one a prophet is that he doesn't really mind it."
• "Every category has its snobs: music, books, movies. There are so many things a man is only pressured into liking or disliking."
• "God loves each person, I believe; although, just like we do in our private homes, He reserves His kingdom only for those whom He enjoys."
• "Some days you feel like you're the worst of sinners; others like you're the most righteous person on earth. I am convinced that the former is when you're closest to God."
• "The purest regret, no matter what, is thinking you didn't love enough."
• "Nothing frustrates people more than a cocky guy who's still winning."
• "Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie."
• "If only we were all better educated. If then, higher education would at last be a journey for skill and knowledge rather than for power and status."
• "The internet is where some people go to show their true intelligence; others, their hidden stupidity."
• "If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic."
• "Today's zealots are mostly those pretending to be anti-religious."
• "Christ didn't join in. He saw which direction the rocks were being thrown, and became a shield."
• "Good friends will allow you to be as innocent and free as a child when in private, and as wise and mature as an adult when in public."
• "I once began to ask around what constitutes a good poem. It felt petty, in a sense. A boy would need no help in deciding which girls he thinks are pretty."
• "Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight."
• "Silence might be a shout for the truth. It might be the speech that someday, in its truest, most uncontaminated, unadulterated state, all will be revealed."
• "Still, one can be honest yet quite mistaken."
• "Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise."
• "Man's delight in the Lord is the absolute peak of human triumph. He praises God when full of joy, and when not, he praises God to become full of joy. For to know and to live as though God is worthy of all praise, in all one's circumstances, whether seemingly good or seemingly bad, is the primary definition of joy and the richest triumph for man under God."
• "Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all."
• "A man who loves others based solely on how they make him feel, or what they do for him, is really not loving others at all - but loving only himself."
• "Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity."
• "I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way."
• "A good work ethic is not so much a concern for hard work but rather one for responsibility. There have been a great many men and women who have in fact used work or hustle or selfish ambition as an escape from real responsibility, an escape from purpose. In matters such as these, the hard worker is just as dysfunctional as the sloth."
• "The disruption of science is one which abandons the method and seeks to conquer grounds outside its territory. It is not at all religion but this pseudo-science that is the enemy of science."
• "Only the man who thinks himself a fool is as wise as he thinks."
• "There are no keys to success - only tools."
• "Unsettling are the days in which everyone is an expert."
• "Reality. It is sometimes brought through foreign eyes; because if you do not know any better, you cannot see the worse (and vice versa)."
• "God is not a God of confusion, although at times one's judgment, for a period, may become clouded in the mi(d)st of one's growth process. I stopped fooling myself into thinking that Christ is always for the cool kids and never for those upright and uptight religious people everybody hates."
• "There is nothing new under the sun but that of the Son. Man's rebellion against God has always been because he would rather fall in pride than rise in humility."
• "I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side."
• "There are 2 kinds of artists, essentially: those who want to make something popular, and those who want to make something dignified. But then there is still that rare hybrid case, and perhaps by that unintentional stroke of genius, in which one's work uncontrollably becomes both popular and dignified yet beyond its time."
• "As for the majority, it is not so much race as it is political affiliation that really divides it today. What was once an issue of physical difference is now one of intellectual difference. Men have yet to master disagreeing without flashing all their frustrations that come with it; the conservative will throw half-truths while the liberal will throw insults. Combine these and what do you get? A dishonest mockery of a country."
• "With no positivity, there is no hope; with no negativity, there is no improvement."
• "To claim that one can never live a positive life with a negative mind is a very negative claim to make!"
• "You wander. You work nearly every job known to man, it seems, only to arrive at the wonderings of philosophy."
• "There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing."
• "To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow."
• "A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones."
• "The petty man wants to use God for himself; the ambitious man wants God to use him for God."
• "Knowing the truth is so minuscule compared to having the nerve to say it...and even more to live it."
• "You can receive all the compliments in the world, but that won't do a thing unless you believe it yourself."
• "As for those who spite you, and seemingly just because, it's only evident that they're learning from you. Maybe you taste bad - kind of like medicine, kind of like truth - and to them, you're thought unsafe. There is flattery in being chewed out and spit up. Humans have always had a hard time digesting foreign things."
• "To esteem what makes you holy over what makes you happy - that is the greatest dare."
• "A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret."
• "Growing up, I always had a soldier mentality. As a kid I wanted to be a soldier, a fighter pilot, a covert agent, professions that require a great deal of bravery and risk and putting oneself in grave danger in order to complete the mission. Even though I did not become all those things, and unless my predisposition, in its youngest years, already had me leaning towards them, the interest that was there still shaped my philosophies. To this day I honor risk and sacrifice for the good of others - my views on life and love are heavily influenced by this."
• "I respect traditional people - they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth."
• "The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors."
• "An anomaly has his own ambitions. You can try reasoning with him, but that's like using money to bribe a beast."
• "So, how close are love and genius, really? We know that they are both mentioned far more than lived."
• "Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness."
• "You can never make someone like something they don't like, but you can always help them to better understand it."
• "The survival of poor opinions can make a thinker feel as though he is failing humanity."
• "It is a harsh reality that some of the most important and respectable jobs which deserve high salaries might be better off with low salaries. A politician, or a minister, or a teacher is sure to be working sincerely and selflessly for the good of the people when through and through there is little monetary reward guaranteed. This is how the charlatans are weeded out of the field."
• "Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do."
• "Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little."
• "Controversy is a last resort for the talentless."
• "The wrath of God is never an evil wrath. God gets angry because he loves people like a mother would love her child if someone were to harm it. There is something wrong if the mother never gets angry; it is safe to say that that is the unloving mother."
• "The Bible does not say money is the root of all evil; it says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. A poor man who, in his heart, worships the idea of being rich is more vulnerable to its evils than a rich man who has a heart to use it all for the Lord."
• "Nightmares are seldom a foreshadowing of real events, but always a showing of real fears."
• "While there may be various tips, pointers, ingredients, and strategies to success, there is no one formula that always guarantees it other than to keep learning from failure itself."
• "Be willing to give, but only when you aren't expecting anything in return."
• "I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise."
• "Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better."
• "When there's music in your soul, there's soul in your music."
• "There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists."
• "Unprovoked hostility is often but displaced self-defense: 'I must stop him before he stops me.' In many of such environments, nobody is really hateful so much as they are just fearful."
• "People, generally, are equally insecure. They just show it (or hide it) differently."
• "Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny."
• "To be intuitive is to possess a godly characteristic: to be bad at second-guessing the good."
• "The best people are always the worst. They drive everyone mad by being so good at second-guessing everything bad."
• "No man voluntarily expresses his opinion without some intent to make a difference, and even if he does, he shouldn't."
• "Trying to be offensive for the sole purpose of being offensive should always deem one the least offensive of offenders."
• "Look for the person everyone hates, and love them."
• "This is almost always the case: A piece of art receives its f(r)ame when found offensive."
• "Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness."
• "If you're not a smart worker, it's about how hard you work double the amount from the heart; if you're not a hard worker, it's about how smart you work but times two from the brain."
• "What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God."
• "Naturally, I always place my word over anyone else's simply because I know why I said what I said."
• "It often seems as though the silent, humble servant is secretly wiser and more discerning than the haughty master; yet through dutiful (and sometimes insecure) surrender he continues to serve and carry out petty orders in loyal acquiescence."
• "Reason begets honesty, and honesty, if given its head, begets confidence; so consequently, there is a sort of grand authority in the stances of those who know why they are standing."
• "Let our information and social technologies raise awareness and not propaganda, build connections and not passive-aggression."
• "Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied."
• "If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it."
• "Hopefully, when your actions and deeds - and therefore other people - boast for you, you're made tired of hearing it, too, from your own mouth because if not, all could lose sight of those actions and deeds behind the gong of your boasting."
• "It is so easy at times for a lonely individual to begin fantasizing about what the people outside are saying about him and, in result, irrationally and fearfully, and sometimes angrily, fancy himself a villain."
• "The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain."
• "The wrong approaches to faith and to skepticism are equally detrimental to the path. For the former declares its answers too soon and is later found false; the latter rejects sound answers altogether and hashes itself useless."
• "Goodness is sparked by a caution for the sake of what is good, not a fear of what is bad."
• "To swear day and night by media slander will make one a bigger victim than the slandered. It doesn't take much to begin to fear a mere illusion of human badness."
• "In a society where dirt sells, for every good story told as it is, you will hear the whole of that day's 10 bad stories sensationalized; although in reality, it could be that 100 good deeds happened that day which went unsung."
• "Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic."
• "The complete recipe for imagination is absolute boredom."
• "It might come a time to not follow your passion, so to speak, although it must be prioritized. It may be the case that your passion will serve as the medic, your peace of mind, alongside a higher calling, with your higher calling being the point man."
• "What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real scholars and theologians its difficult questions. There is little doubt that the atheist has the bigger imagination: the first reason is due to his persistent caricatures of what constitutes a Christian; the second because of his belief that most of his questions are actually rhetorical. From this I can infer that, instead of laughing at one another (the Christian at modern atheist immaturity and the modern atheist at Christian stupidity), we would have a better chance at productivity laughing with one another as we all dumb down what we don't understand."
• "Love without humility results in the inclination to act as everyone's parent, humility without love results in the need to be everyone's child, and love with humility results in the desire to be a friend."
• "A thief is one who insists on sharing his victimhood."
• "The evangelist is the world's hopeless romantic, and just like a hopeless romantic, he must hope for the miracle of God more than the romance itself."
• "Friends ask you questions; enemies question you."
• "Peculiar I say, how so often the smallest, most seemingly insignificant details later unveil their faces as vital means for progression."
• "One of the bigger mistakes of our time, I suppose, was preaching the demonization of all judgment without teaching how to judge righteously. We now live in an age where, apart from the inability to bear even good judgment when it so passes by, still everyone, inevitably, has a viral opinion (judgment) about everything and everyone, but little skill in good judgment as its verification or harness."
• "The hope is indeed that some will experience and believe: The purpose of a number of spiritual gurus is to demonstrate to God-fearing men faux spirituality."
• "Even when the truth is in fact simple, simplicity is still relative."
• "Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody."
• "I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further."
• "Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures."
• "If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking."
• "God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong."
• "Fame is an island, and right before the castaway, the getaway of being known without being known."
• "Where everyone wants to be a leader, it makes one a follower to want to be a leader, and a leader to know what to follow."
• "A wise man's goal shouldn't be to say something profound, but to say something useful."
• "God wants us to humbly and sincerely ask him things. How often do you enjoy people talking about you without taking the time to get to know you?"
• "What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch."
• "Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach."
• "Lingering, bottled-up anger never reveals the 'true colors' of an individual. It, on the contrary, becomes all mixed up, rotten, confused, forms a highly combustible, chemical compound then explodes as something foreign, something very different than one's natural self."
• "The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it."
• "Some people are ignorant of the world but educated in Scripture, and are therefore prone to missing the relevance of Scripture - these sometimes, later, amidst life's challenges and doubts, turn from the faith; other people are ignorant of Scripture but educated in the world, and are therefore prone to missing the truth of Scripture - they are often those who ridicule the faith. The apologist stands somewhere in the center. He articulates where some are prone to understanding the truth in beauty, others the beauty in truth - that of a spiritual Creator in relation to his scientific creation."
• "If life is music, I sometimes feel as though I was born on the off-beat of the song, and I love it. As Christian numbers reportedly decrease in America, my love for Christ feels as though it increases. Perhaps that is a little strange, yes, but in all honesty, I now want to be thought unfaithful about as much as a smug aristocrat wants to be thought a hobo."
• "My confidence is in the idea that I may be wrong on this or that. No man in this life should ever have to bear the burden of perfection."
• "I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious."
• "Maturity is when you're able to say, 'It's not just them. It's me.'"