007 Objective I

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:

• "One can live mostly with ease in a society littered with evil, but where evil is called good and good called evil, that's when things get lethal."
• "It used to be said that a picture is worth a thousand words; however today, in journalism and across social media, a picture is worth a thousand out-of-context speculations."
• "A photograph is reality taken out of context."
• "Refined and distinguished, the human soul is quite like what has often been said of the snowflake: Just as no two snowflakes are the same, no two life stories are the same; but just as all snowflakes are formed with six dendrites, all souls are formed in the image of God."
• "Over time, the loudest people become the easiest to ignore."
• "You can love someone without liking them; but liking someone is what makes it a pleasure to love them."
• "One tragedy about the shy-guy is that he doesn't usually realize until later in life that he might've been her crush, and that the guys she always seemed comfortable talking to were the ones who were friend-zoned."
• "You might be called crazy and a madman over what you believe is right, but that's what people do. In turn, give them that permission in order for you to take back your power: let the useful idiots and know-nothings mock a courage they'll never possess."
• "In a battle of egos, narcissists clash with other narcissists."
• "Home is the safest place to look homeless."
• "Superficiality is a mentality. Those who love for superficial reasons will also hate for superficial reasons; those who vote for one candidate for superficial reasons will also dislike the other for superficial reasons; those who live for superficial reasons are more susceptible to burying themselves deeply in an existential debt, and then it comes: regret when on the bed of death."
• "A man can easily be stupid without being evil, but never, in even the most profound genius, is a man evil without in some way being stupid."
• "Like all fads which come and go, all are familiar with those types of people who want to seem tough, who for some form of acceptance want to impress others with their rigidity; but there is another kind of person that does the very same thing when espousing on 'love': while some pretend to be tougher than they really are, others pretend to be lovers when they really aren't."
• "Ironically, some of the most foolish, prejudiced comments made were the ones by wits and grumps trying to impress others with their brains."
• "There are certain levels of faith - relevant and necessary ones - which are too advanced for most adults, but not too advanced for children."
• "Wrath would be of no use to a rather cold and distant god, but a loving God, on the other hand, a loving Father, might find it appropriate when protecting his children from evil."
• "For those of you well-acquainted with making mistakes, it's more likely that your spouse will stay your best friend as long as the phrase 'I'm Sorry' stays your second."
• "Unfortunately, we've rewarded a sort of cowardice by calling it 'kindness', and this has made us utterly spineless when truth finally hits."
• "May all your tears from grief water the flowers of hope, as though the more the tears, the more the flowers'll grow."
• "It is not that love is blind, but rather it cannot be fooled by ugliness."
• "Some were made ugly for seeing the ugliness of people, whereas the pure saw beauty and were made beautiful."
• "Much credit goes to the creative mind, which finds beauty in unlikely places."
• "In this blind rage, they throw their fists at Christianity and hit Common Sense, then Common Sense enters the fight."
• "Love is boss when everything you hear about a person is filtered through their enemies, yet you still choose to love them."
• "I agree that every saint has a past, but not that every sinner has a future. In this life we see a great many sinners dying precisely and directly because of sin."
• "Everyone has a right to be wrong; it is only when you were persecuting, demonizing, and hating on those who were right all along that it takes something special to forgive. This is all the more reason for humility, for being patient with those who disagree with you: because it is you who might be wrong, and later, them proven right."
• "Denominations aside, Christians are largely partitioned by those who bother to be accepted by the world and those who do not, by those who are embarrassed by those who are not."
• "Realistically, we aren't always able to leave things better than the way we found them, but it's fair to ask that we try not to leave them worse."
• "A purely and passionately political person, as I understand, is a person who can find anybody pleasant so long as Politics is never present."
• "I see all the more reason for debate by the man who does actually 'believe his own lies' - for that debate is at least One versus One. But if even he doesn't believe them then it's really just a waste of time, or rather Won versus None."
• "In this world, by law of gravity, it seems rather the nature of things, and a reality, that 'slippery slope' is hardly a fallacy."
• "Call it pious, but whether unified or divided, the civilized will try to live worlds apart from violence."
• "It is easy for one to be a hypocrite unashamedly because so often knowledge leads to justification: we know ourselves and our own reasons behind our actions; whereas a lack of knowledge, or uncertainty towards the other, is largely replaced by suspicion of something darker when others do the same."
• "When it comes to politics, there are far fewer truly smart people than there are people who merely know how to play the game of seeming smart."
• "A refusal to grow up is like crouching while pulling others down."
• "The weight of youth is light, yes, but life generally grows heavier into adulthood. This, embedded as deep as the most human social construct, reaches even territories of natural law: we call it 'responsibility' - or the harmony kept afloat by able grown-ups carrying their own weight."
• "We have been warned frequently about the dangers of science without ethics, but history without ethics poses a similar threat. Too often are events suffered in the past remembered only to justify evils done in the present."
• "As for politicians who demand you follow the science, if in the opposite direction you also follow the money, you might find about nine times out of ten that the two paths are conjoined at the end."
• "Just because a supposed finding's hurled beneath the banner of 'science' does not mean it's of peak reliance, and in theory any layperson will tell you that obvious fact. It is in practice that the word itself, 'science', rings like a dinner bell for those hungry to expel religious dogmas."
• "Some sects of Progressive Christianity have devolved into a religion in which Jesus condemns his own followers, Christians, but praises everyone else in the world. It could be inferred in this religion that he is revoking his Kingship (thus turning his back on those who regard him as King); it could be inferred in this religion that instead, mankind is King."
• "One cannot despise Christians and love Christ at the same time. Too many are fooled into the self-righteous notion that those who stand boldly in the faith are nothing more than religious zealots and Pharisees, and that they themselves are closer to Jesus by communing with the mockers."
• "The sin-ridden heart does not fear God but fears man, and when saying it loves men, it loves sin."
• "We cherry-pick our favorite traits and words of Christ and run with them - amplifying some parts while silencing others - to suit our personal visions and preferences. In doing this, rather than the true and the whole, we create caricatures and distortions of His character - false Christs made in our own images - and are left with no mystery as to why He would say we must deny ourselves daily in order to follow Him."
• "Know your enemy the devil without giving him the satisfaction of too much attention."
• "Calling people stupid with no real solution of your own is a fool's reach for superiority."
• "There was once a very, very proud man who sought, with all of his might, to beat God the Almighty in something...anything. He tried everything imaginable, but always, he failed miserably. His efforts continued to no avail, until one day he heard a voice, and it said, 'God is an awful sinner...' Desperate to win at something, he chose to listen to the voice. He chose sin. He out-sinned God with flying colors, and laughed until his heart stopped beating. Ultimately, his victory against God claimed his life; because sin leads only to Death."
• "The herd is the larger mass, the mindless portion that wanders off the cliff; the mob is the subset and the moshpit that pushes the ones that resist."
• "There are 2 types of revolutionaries: those bred through a rich education, and those bred through a poor education. But there is truly only one revolution, and that is of a populace fed up."
• "Hold just enough ego to be a man of your word, and to stand against evil mobs who force the absurd."
• "In terms of pure and humble objective morality, a right just feels right to have; however a privilege is, in a way, sort of in the way, and almost feels wrong to have (by principle that if you abuse it, you lose it)."
• "What looks to be the cleanest political party, for a period, will often prove to be the filthiest in the end. Just like any form of corruption, this one plays dirty. It drags its enemies through the mud and scrubs itself clean before morning. It throws rocks and hides its hands. It gains power by all methods but the Truth: on the one hand, by pandering, flattery, and appeasement (quite like Satan, 'the father of lies'); and on the other, by deception and ruthlessness, constantly slinging accusations and smearing its opponents - posing as an angel of light (quite like Satan, 'the accuser') - and doing it hypocritically. It projects, gaslights, intimidates, manipulates, and confuses its subjects into adopting the narrative that it is the intellectually and morally superior party. Believing itself the greater good, and the ends justifying the means, it is able to persist in these things and sleep well doing them. Therefore in the rags of politics, because of this party, it is often the case that individuals painted as villains by the media are heroes in reality."
• "Dispel the lips of Gossip with a sip of the Gospel."
• "With starry eyes we forget what is literally the oldest trick in The Book: that the very first 'liberal' was one of deception - a snake in the Garden - and he corrupted paradise."
• "Consider it commonplace, the self-proclaimed empaths who cannot empathize with those individuals most antithetical to their politics."
• "It's as though human emotions have speed limits, and their tipping points vary depending on the person and which cog(nitive) gear is set: So typically, men go off the rails briefly when they're furious, whereas women, when they're frightened; but children while excited."
• "The trick to having an incorrect take almost 100% of the time is in being tethered to some socio-political narrative, and within that sphere, being tethered completely out of touch with your conscience."
• "A theism that denies theology is deism."
• "Theology is basically the study of the nature of God. A Christian faith that all-out rejects theology is showing not much else other than pride by false humility - as though one's personal relationship with God is closer than that of any other persons, writings, or anything outside of their own experience, and as they interpret that experience. This is often a side-stepping of true obedience to God: How are you wholly and obediently, honestly seeking His will if you are not willing to dig deeper? And how do you genuinely love someone you do not care to know more about? Our Father is everlasting, His history is worthy, His past is vast and His character is real. A sincere theology is not a trap to be avoided, but rather a gift to be opened."
• "God allows the persecution of Christians from time to time in order to grow His garden: to weed out the counterfeits who blend in and cower while, even if only visible from the heavens, the real ones stand strong and bloom."
• "Take care of your mind and your body. Even if you do not care about yourself, do it at least for the ones you care about: If it is indeed true that in a marital union you become as one flesh, then disrespecting yourself is disrespecting your spouse."
• "If the philosopher is but a lover of wisdom, then philosophy is like a love letter for future generations."
• "There is, however, a place in the world for conditional love. It is often that people take an unconditional love for granted: they cease putting any effort into the relationship, treat their partner like dirt, and are left to the surprise that, after so much abuse, so many chances, all the times forgiven, the other person had finally endured enough and ran for their life."
• "Humans find it rather natural to believe in some sort of Higher Power; but it takes something supernatural to actually find that Higher Power...And finally, to believe it."
• "You might say that you are a thinker, and by some degree of introspection, a 'deep' one even. But there is another saying; and it says that you are not a very 'big' thinker until you are bothered less of what people think about you, and more of what they think about the universe."
• "Evil is entertained by a people entertained to death."
• "Grief is a form of growth that in gradual excess becomes graphic and grotesque."
• "Just as some of the toughest fights physically are between those mostly alike, the roughest of fights verbally are between fighters emotionally alike."
• "The real fool is not necessarily the one who does foolish things, but rather the one who knows those things are foolish and still takes a fancy to them."
• "A professional scores with the decorum that he's scored before."
• "In some cases, trying is better than doing because it indicates that you are attempting things hard enough to fail."
• "The mind once-fragmented, when it contemplated one closer resembling 'God', it thought essentially in terms of power; but only through the power of the true God could it be regenerated and made more accurate, and therefore prioritizing holiness. For without delusion or illusion, true holiness is of rarer, greater value than power."
• "Just as a good man makes a good woman happy, a good woman makes a good man great."
• "Right conscience must always be your best friend of influence: tied closer than even the yes-men who can send ruin."
• "See, the people for whom you least want to pray are the people for whom you most need to pray; but the others on which they all love to prey, make them brothers: then place your love in their way, laying what comes from up above on display."
• "The hard-noses, in their softness, were able to be convinced that kindness is actually wrong, but that is wrong. It is just that kindness is sometimes not enough."
• "There is a deeper reason as to why some nice guys are frequently deemed the weaker, and that is because niceness is weaker than love."
• "He was a chronomancer in managing his time, a true magician with it. He had duties, everyone has duties, but he knew that not everyone has to be late because of them."
• "If, as a companion, you just try not to be harmful, if you are not helpful either, you might still be harmful."
• "As a young Christian, what I asked was that Christians did and said things in such a way that made people not want to do and say the opposite."
• "Envy is much like a heart that sheds innocent blood, but brands itself the dam to a magnificent flood: menacing you'll become to what could lift you above - not from your hands it starts, but your inner parts it loves."
• "Without the momentum of a stern discipline, motivation is mostly a momentary, flighty emotion. For it works best under the supervision of discipline, but can serve as not only an ally but also an enemy: because in anything that requires your self-discipline - whether going to church, going to classes, going to workouts, going through trainings, completing jobs, reading books, living well, eating healthily, studying, practicing something - the more times you skip, the more relaxed and motivated you'll become about skipping; and the next thing you know you've quit your fight altogether (or, put in short, the more you skip, the more you'll skip until you've quit). Maybe then you'll see that motivation bears its fruits when watered by discipline, but it spoils when not."
• "What was in store for him was, at the core, far more than Legion: As he ran toward Jesus, his former lord tore to pieces; because in order to reach Him, he was forced forth by meekness. It's like he was poorer than poor (before meeting the Teacher - who managed to fit a camel through the eye of a needle). For this rich man'll shed his riches in time for the Kingdom, and dismantle all that'll cease him, keep him from Christ's freedom (or, in a manner of speaking, to be crowned in right season) - now his counsel is, for good reason, like treason to demons - in this example: How the One who wore thorns mines His people."
• "The very last thing on earth to be is depressed simply because your life does not seem like the rest."
• "The work of a genius must be opposite himself in that it must retain some capacity of being understood."
• "Those who do not seek Wisdom do not see Wisdom, even when she passes them by; they see only that which appeals to their lusts: and this substitute becomes their variation of Wisdom."
• "Masculinity and femininity attract one another, and their attributes are complementary; however this entails more than simply a male being attracted to a female: What actually complements the immature man who runs around, or cheats, or neglects his duties, is the masculine woman because he needs her to lead and to take charge, to take care of him. Immaturity is a state of need, and one of those needs is the need to be kept in check."
• "A know-it-all poses to know everything, so he will therefore tell you anything; although his brain forgets that one crucial thing, which is that other people, too, have brains."
• "What many may call 'the silent treatment' is sometimes merely a matter of some individual being angry while trying not to be angry - that internal war and self-reflection on whether or not the bomb should be dropped, and if so, in what way shall it be dropped."
• "It is rather pitiful how obvious it is, and usually how simple it can be, for one to be blunt and critical, all the while fooling oneself into thinking that it makes him look sharp and analytical."
• "Contentment seems almost a happiness happier than happy because it's happy without reason. I for one am a shamefully happy person - a person so happy that he doesn't long for company when he doesn't have it."
• "A mind inclined to misery is a mind that must keep busy."
• "A man of the world understands the world, but a man of God understands life. For in their purest of forms, the one comes through perhaps that application of human knowledge, but the other comes through that of a proper and divine wisdom."
• "The educated man has his own ignorance in this tendency to view all life in light of his own expertise. Just as a blue lens makes the yellow sun look blue, or a pink lens makes the green grass appear pink, or a yellow lens makes the blue sea seem yellow, one's field of profession gives influence to his perception of reality; and while that is harmless in some cases, in such that the sea is already blue before peering through a blue lens, wisdom is knowing when to humbly remove the specs in order to see the spectacle as it really is."
• "A man is meant to sacrifice many things for a woman, save his VIP: his Verity, Integrity, and Probity."
• "Suspicion, like superstition, is something fear-fueled - for the former is a sort of death, firing at the natural, while the latter is a life frozen by the supernatural."
• "Discernment has a doppelgänger, and her name is Suspicion."
• "Your brain is your own personal property, a little bit like a private part, so whatever it decides to think of me is therefore barely my business."
• "Tough men are tough not because they want to be tough, but because they have to be tough. Outgrow the adolescent fawning over being a tough guy, and you will become a tough man."
• "A procrastination of procrastination is procrastination mastered."
• "With pronounced crowds around him - towns rowdy with loud shouting - without pouting childishly, while making his case soundly, he announced it quite proudly (mouth smiling undoubtedly (without clouds of doubt frowning)): 'See, this wild thing about me: I don't live life without me. So, how now shall you crown me? No need to bow down for me, or drown me in salary, or go tout my mastery (like an ounce is astounding); or oppositely, clown me, and just sound like a mouse squeak. Though none are better than me, no one's ever less than me; and it rings out hourly, like a vow surrounding me, a thousand pound pact to me, an infinite galaxy (that fits in this house of me (as if it's my fallacy (like 'limitless boundaries' (within this reality)))) - it's what gets the best of me - my ground and my gravity, as once said by Bukowski, 'I've never met another man I'd rather be.''"
• "The crowd, or the mob, has always quite enough fighters with a fire to fight alongside the 'underdog', but it fights, or it tries, while lacking the discernment or facts to determine the actual underdog."
• "Although at times I might fail, still, I shall try to wish well and not Hell on even my worst enemy: this is so because no person deserves Hell for sinning against a sinner, but all persons deserve Hell for sinning against a perfectly holy God."
• "Dare to be the most charitable friend that one can know - therefore, care for the orphan and the poor and the widow - share everything through prayers from your heart to spare a soul, so that you barely do it for the credit or for show (hardly for rarity, too, although you reap what you sow). Through sincerity do what you trust; it scares many foes. Also, show no partiality: 'too unfair' must go. Plus know it's a slow, terrible thing to love just to boast; there's no scarcity of things true being cut in the throat: and blown up, such harsh realities roast us coast to coast (as though love's some dark noir since neither good nor bad may gloat (doesn't matter if you sacrifice your sun or a goat)). But regardless, much to the contrary, all seeds need growth; thus, deplorable, horrible or not, we'll bleed love's flow. More pouring out meaningful ways to keep the boat afloat; less rowing for it seems eternal days around a moat: because good deeds, clichés, these are what make the world still glow, placing smiles on its face while it toasts to our Lord of hosts. It's like grace is needed most when even one's been brought low, so dare to be the most charitable one you will know."
• "The sincere and serious thinker who thinks first and then sets out on his journey of learning, who then explores deeply and historically the sea of thought and the land of reason, is nevertheless bound to discover that many of his best discoveries have long been discovered."
• "Loneliness, in all its pressures, possesses 2 oppressive dangers: the potential to make a man either depressed with himself or obsessed with himself; in his own mind, he will become like either a beast or a god."
• "Through one's tears for the past, one's future becomes blurred."
• "In some respects, generations revolting against their parents result in resemblance to their grandparents."
• "That looming feeling of being unloved is but a lie from the demons, from the legions in the deepest pit of Hell, specifically designed to hurt, harm and therefore harden a man's heart. But still, suppositionally, if the entire earth really did despise him for whatever reason (or lack thereof), or rather ignored him or showed a complete and utter indifference toward him, the love which comes from Above reins more than enough to lift him up from even the deepest and darkest of mires. 'For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.' And thus, one must never, ever forget God's grace, and always, always remember God's love."
• "One of the shining exceptions in personalities is that writers do not need to be charismatic in their own persons; they are free to be dull by each of the human senses as a void for other, more powerful realities. Some have the ability to dwell almost completely in their imaginations, living vicariously through the stunning characters and fascinating worlds they create by using only words on paper. In this way, people are much like books: we can try judging them by their covers, but alas, there is always that possibility of ourselves being deluded in doing so."
• "The old heart must give up on itself so that it can depend upon God, but the new heart, when it gives up on itself, it is also giving up on God."
• "The audience was highly pretentious and somewhat vain at gazing deeply into what was fundamentally shallow; so in this vein with thoughts flowing, and past that vane with minds blowing, it completely missed the point."
• "Like royalty disguised in rags, those who live to serve undertake a higher calling which most folks overlook."
• "The enemy that is Envy is trigger-happy; he's pretty much a gunslinger who wields a silenced Demotivator - sent with sabotage, suicide, and suppression, he assassinates in secret, and so hopes to exterminate, to kill what was meant to motivate him - in simpler terms and less expression: he shoots the messenger."
• "He wanted to prove to her, every step of the way, that she had been true through grace (through his every mistake), that she had great taste for once choosing him in the first place."
• "When you are constantly reacting to having been wronged (or perhaps to what you may regard as a wrong); when you are always giving in by practically living to defend, retaliating one time after another, again and again, you then spend double that time trying to prove the whole story: because to third parties, you will frequently appear to be on the attack, and therefore potentially receiving attacks once more - henceforth an unending pattern of misunderstood retaliations."
• "'A certified, bona fide nutcase': Although he was indeed someone, he believed that he was more of a nut than a man. He just needed somebody to break him, to make him lovelier, but that somebody had to be even nuttier."
• "For some, their 'self-love' was really just a hell that felt numb; they'd made themselves so protected, so delicate, that like jail-cells their boundaries had become."
• "Societies sometimes smear Wisdom and her natural, symmetrical beauty. She is at times caked beneath the extreme makeup of dirty politics and yellow journalism. At times she may appear to be the red, far-right extremist to a majority that has drifted too far left - and at other times, the blue, far-left extremist to a majority that has drifted too far right. 'She' is Wisdom, a beacon in the center of hope and a lighthouse to be utilized. She is truth that must be washed by the sea of Love."
• "Before awakening, the order of the day brings quite the bite (or sting) - a find in light of dreams. Like nightmares' love supreme, phenomenology sings of the unconscious this highly common theme: '...Seeking sovereignty...Using fragments of things...The mind, it tries but pines...For a rise by false wings...And hides one's shortcomings...Behind the heights of these...Lofty philosophies...' And that's the fall of kings."
• "For his enemies' sake, the good boy, the really dangerous man, fights to never fight again; whereas the bad boy, the proud man, fights that he might never fight again."
• "So it seems the case that plenty of everyday people are in deed 'hate-filled' (but it's unreleased) - the beast within is caged - until they unleash it, this secret, in 'agreement', on some common foe, and though like a freer bill, the pay is still rage."
• "Every now and then, even the best driver around can still crash - granted, if the surrounding people are sound asleep at the dash."
• "Implore to self and pray for country, in your patriotic hearts, to be raising the flag of countless gratitudes while torching that one of idolatry."
• "Christ is the Master - and the Answer - at navigating through peak Foolishness and the height of Evil (with a twist): He's been handling man's crimes since before mankind - from the fallen angels way before there was time. Raised high on any mountain we climb reads a Sign; and His point's to say, 'Just trust Me. Now, come alive.'"
• "Seamed a certain way, they seemed just the same: she was an extrovert, with a style stuck in the period she'd experienced the most fun; he was an introvert, with an intellect entwined at the harbor he'd ensured the most safe."
• "Following his rant littered with narcissism, she calmly responded, '...You have quite the little ego, don't you?' And with little thought, he then quickly retorted, 'What do you mean 'little'!?'"
• "She's tragically scarred with an avant-garde, spastic heart - yet radically guarded (anti-romantic garden) - tactless, though perhaps smarter; and so her soul carries an ego too heavy to be swept off her feet: Modernity's narcissist."
• "We want the mind of God; we seek the heart of Christ - and even pray it, then receive them to a degree. But people are unable to bear these fully: for He is both stronger and more sensitive than we."
• "Accustomed to himself, he then felt not so interesting. He knew himself too well; he thence hid out for some mystery."
• "Your emotional intelligence welcomes a maturity which can, if need be, mentally separate your neighbors not from yourself, but from their faulty opinions."
• "The earth freezes for the man who normally lets it slide: he frees curses, only once in a blue moon lets them slip."
• "The one thing I'll be: Me - whatever that might mean; and even if nothing, in that I'll still be king."
• "Amid the holy and celestial, humility's what's 'cool' under pressure. Humility stops being humble when it realizes itself humble, and cool stops being cool when others realize it trying to be cool."
• "He was simple and yet he was complex in his perception of the other sex. Remembering himself, and how he dealt with females, he often said: 'The easy gals are not for you - they're for themselves; the impossible girls are not for you either - they're for somebody else.'"
• "It came 'before the next' as what some may call the foundation - beyond traditions or old texts, and rationalizations: Education comes second, the progression of a nation; but 'Common Sense' is the treasure that sustains generations."
• "But I do not know much - except perhaps the One - as it is written thus: 'Nothing except Jesus.' Yet even added up...just copy-cat expressions, wanna-be humble platitudes, try-hard lip service, feel-strong sayings, feel-good quotations plus virtue-signalling slogans and such...these things are not enough: because He must know me."
• "You might see that I am a writer for a reason. In speech and from my mouth we taste the words unseasoned. It's teasing the truth which to my mind reeks of treason."
• "Men are beastly and natural, and when touched by God, the One who is supernatural, they become as 'mythical creatures' - only more true and just, and therefore all the meeker."
• "As far as she'd discovered, she could have any man in the world, and for that, she would settle for no man on earth."
• "Better a curse from God than a blessing from Satan."
• "A young man will sometimes have all the conviction in the world, only for it all to witness his love interest sway him."
• "Self-awareness is a good which still can, in some cases, steal one's innocence - for it is often much worse to know better without the discipline to do better."
• "God enters through the cracks of broken hearts, as do the demons when given their way."
• "I have a poet's heart: whether manifested through rage or manifested through grace, certain loves never really go away."
• "Love the ones you love like there's no tomorrow. Literally."
• "Through even perhaps no one's making but their own, there are people out there who don't at all feel themselves designed for other people because they're seldom understood; howbeit not in some rebellious, angsty way - just really, gravely mistaken."
• "How puzzlingly fitting one can be, a couple of opposites. She was loud and fiery; he was quiet and cold. She always defended him verbally; he always defended her physically."
• "Whether natural or cultural he was not sure; but he finally faced it, gave up, caved in and played their game, which later became serious business, and it stated this: 'Aim at wealth and you will get women thrown in; aim at women and you will get neither.'"
• "Don't be fooled by those with some smarts in mockery. Some are forced into wit because they're always wrong."
• "Not too fashionable, still, she was admirable, intellectual; and yet to many, factual, though fairly objectionable, when met through claiming: 'I don't respect you unless you respect truth.'"
• "A once-high society lowers itself when having little to no respect for even a decent honesty, and it's at its lowest when, at last, truth is frowned upon."
• "One might call it the 'mighty surrender': it's sometimes necessary in order to appreciate true greatness in another - this is because there might be a clash of egos, or envy even, or jealousy - and it is through a similar struggle that men and women deceive themselves into rejecting God Almighty."
• "One of the most common sense things about real world progress is that progressivism must never steer into its own dogmatism. One can be sure, at least every so often, that there eventually comes a point either to stop, to turn around, or to make a turn; lest a wall is pummeled, a cliff is tumbled, or a mere cycle is tunneled forever."
• "In all of our souls, pray the awful parts call out for solace - the false and the faults, the fears and the flaws, the 'F's and the fouls, the fakes and the frauds - now facing facades, these aches will fall off; they'll break while they crawl: ailments from failures, preyed once and for all."
• "Kids forgive one another much easier than adults forgive one another because to kids, having fun is more important than having an ego."
• "Reality now and again becomes like a vengeful troll, and most notably so when it comes to passion: When reality and passion divorce, it makes passion look crazy."
• "The hardest and hardiest, heartiest defense comes squarely from where it can empathize with the artiest and sharpest, smartest offense."
• "Idolatry is not only excessive reverence, but also excessive abhorrence - that other side of the coin which runs the risk of establishing a false gospel under the implication that, for example, if you hate this certain individual, you're a good person no matter what; or if you love this certain individual, you're a bad person no matter what."
• "By far, the hardest part regarding a work of art, apart from the start, is knowing precisely when to stop...It's growing up, finding that most glowing and top spot, ascending to where its highest peak is reached...before descending for the deepest, darkest drop."
• "I have more flaws, more faults and more sins than common sense can comprehend; and the condescension in this sentence 'consequents' in more to end."
• "While it might make a noble standing stable, a label stands a lie away from libel."
• "The true challenge of charity is not in the gifting of your trash but of your treasure, not your worst but your best."
• "God will bore through mountains of intellect for a grain of faith - for it is not the intellectual who finds Him, but He who finds the intellectual."
• "...Just as some men are counted as book smart but not street smart, a man of sound theology is not necessarily a man of sound politics. If he is naive and ill-informed in the current culture, or in the spirit of the times, it is possible that he will enact his right faith for the wrong forces."
• "I have heard some amid the world's 'progressive' movements declare that Jesus is not a Christian. To serve a christ who is not a Christian seems more of a personal admission: it is to say that he is a hypocrite and does not follow his own teachings. While the debate as to what it truly entails continues for many, being a Christian is merely roughly translated as being a follower of Christ."
• "Even by itself, the raw strength of deception is yet its own deception. Whereas the truth might become obscured by such, deception is limited to gaining any real power strictly through the masses, those high volumes of large numbers and subtle repetition."
• "Smear extremist labels around like ketchup and your country will soon witness bloodshed."
• "Younger persons tend to care more about what other people think, but at the same time, less of consequences. Older persons often appear the opposite: They tend to care less about what other people think all the while much more considering consequences. Duly note that this is a general point, and with plenty of room for exceptions, but the deeper reason is that, for better or for worse, persons who are more heart-centered think in the present; those who are more mind-centered, they feel for the future."
• "In my understanding, there are a number of souls, particularly those of the crowd, who are forever subconsciously looking for a mere human system or human being to be a godlike figure for the masses: one to wear the crown, to take the throne...which is why it seems for the lives of them they can barely cope when they feel the wrong one is holding that throne."
• "Upon returning, the bloody, wounded warrior needs only to laugh at the spotless, armchair critic."
• "There's no scarcity of lukewarm believers who, by cultural standards, deem themselves far too cool, and therefore wean themselves a bit too cowardly, to live as fiery Christians."
• "The lust and the hunger? The thirst for power? And thus it is brewed, clearly, the heart's deadliest poison to integrity."
• "Every now and then there are those extremist and fanatical, legalistic times, those highly charged political climates in which the mob aims to execute its own fantasy of 'fighting the power'; and therefore it, by and large, whether in target or in tactic, fails to imagine being dead wrong in every sense."
• "I would hope not to be like the artist who has to depend on the naivety of his audience for applause."
• "A conspiracy theorist is a critical thinker playing out-of-bounds; although, and this is clear and obvious enough, free-thinking still does not automatically ensure accurate thinking."
• "The mob, in the spirit of the age, obsessed with being on the right side of history, often ends up on the wrong side of history."
• "The mob is the most deadly of all critics in that it thinks critically only towards critical thinkers."
• "I sometimes think as if I am corporate media; I put myself in their shoes: If I could profit off a situation, how would I spin it for the maximum amount of traffic yet still be taken seriously? This, I believe when listening, reading, or watching, helps to discern truth from fact and decipher fact from fiction. It helps to weed out the sensationalism, and you gain a more accurate depiction of the world's actual condition."
• "She's the sister of bigotry and the daughter of tyranny; she imposes her own emotions onto others, then falsely calls it 'empathy'."
• "When we deny reason we are prone to holding the rest of the world hostage through the worship of our feelings, thus making feelings no longer sacred and personal and delicate things we can express. Oppositely, this way of life confuses the world and further pushes it to being heartless and unfeeling."
• "You don't have to die to self and acknowledge Jesus as Lord of your life when you regard Him simply a desperate beggar. Now of course we are to worship Him through love for the poor and the oppressed in order to be brought low rather than filled with political pride; but, in our human defenses of casting judgment while keeping our own consciences clear, many of us, in a rather half-hearted fashion, favor this Jesus merely to manipulate and use as a weapon against our opponents. This is His sole identity to a number of those who wish not to worship Him at the end of the day."
• "In an excuse to drink lies reason not to drink."
• "People want to pick one or the other: but Christianity is both spiritual and religious. You need the Holy Spirit to apply sound doctrine."
• "To persons consumed by hate, in their opinion and in their heart, the most hateful thing you can possibly do is love the target at which they aim."
• "Christ was of course not the slightest bit envious. His perspective was to take care of the poor not out of hatred for the rich, but out of love for the poor; and though we try to imitate His teachings, due to our corrupt and sinful nature, oftentimes, this obvious fact is still so easily neglected."
• "By His grace let it be that 'sound doctrine' is, in itself, not a burden but a privilege to the Christian life. Let it be a form of worship. It is my belief that God has His ways of entering hearts and revealing Himself to people of the world who, perhaps by no fault of their own, have little to no access to doctrine regarding His character and nature and what He is and has been about; but as a people who claim to be His children, ones saved by grace through faith, would it not be hypocritical to downplay a deeper, more intimate understanding of the Lord of our lives in heart, soul, and mind? Where we display shallow relationships, where we salute an arrogant and willful ignorance of the God we serve and the Christ we represent, it is understandable that truth seekers will turn elsewhere for truth. It is with humility, honesty, and respect that every non-nominal Christian is a theologian and an apologist to some degree, to their ability God has gifted."
• "Anything Christ-like about me is born of Christ within me."
• "Make way for the sweetest humiliation when you underestimate their intelligence while overestimating your knowledge."
• "When reduced to nothing more than principle of the mind, humility will never be low enough for humility. On principle, the man who lives in the small mountain cottage is more large and luxurious than the man who lives in the tiny shack; the man who lives in the tiny shack, than the man who sleeps on the bank; the man who sleeps on the bank, than the man who wanders the desert; the man who wanders the desert at least has legs to wander while many other men do not. To reduce by the standards of men is to morally compete against men, and to reduce by one's own standards is ego-driven. A man can decrease his life to death and never reach true lowliness because humility on principle of the mind is not humility at all but rather its opposite: the pride of competition - only in reverse. Therefore it seems that, perhaps, true humility is nothing one can achieve; it hides in purity of the heart given only by the one perfect Christ."
• "God is not boxed with, nor is He boxed in: And ironic it is, how even what a culture may consider to be 'young and fly', to Him, might've already become 'safe and predictable'."
• "If the Church is indeed the Bride of Christ, then a Christian who loves hating other Christians is like a wife who hates loving her family."
• "The typical modernist is of course only content with lukewarm Christians. These are many of the Christians who likewise regularly deride and demean the Bride of Christ in order to maintain a certain self-image, to keep a safe distance. I am afraid that this is one of today's equivalents of denying Jesus under pressure."
• "God, as represented in Scripture, by nature, is the true non-conformist. He does not need to conform to any truth; He does not need to conform to some moral law. It proclaims that He is the Truth; He defines Morality: the Great I Am, the Beginning and the End who radiates all that is Holy. Therefore, and unless we too were wholly holy and omniscient, we would do well to understand at the very least that even if this God were to wipe away all in existence, then despite my opinion or your opinion, His decision would be objectively good and moral simply because He is the one doing it."
• "The core tenet of worldly religion and the pure heart of the Lord Jesus are different in that one is centered around being a good person while the other flows for obedience. While these two roads are bound to intersect at some points, they were never promised to always run parallel (namely when considered through the traditions of men, or those who despise Jesus, or those who do not know and love Jesus)."
• "There's a certain deeper sort of beauty in the bleak. I see it that bleak is beautiful in part because it is too deathly and grim to fathom itself so."
• "Animosity in fact loves, but in a different sense. Meaning it loves in the same way that, as it is often said, misery loves company. And just as love seeks unity, so does hatred crave uniformity."
• "Every stance unchallenged is positioned to boast on some victorious moral high ground."
• "Wherever it takes disaster to unite, politics generally divide: and in eras of intense uncertainty, a nation's people retreat into the tribes in which they feel the most secure."
• "Objectivity of truth, reality, facts, data - they matter; otherwise, you have the 'good guys', the moral persons, in the name of what they call justice, in a fight against what they call injustice, unwittingly adopting the roles of oppressors by persecuting the innocent."
• "Charity by principle that God will bless you in return is to give with a heart of greed rather than with a heart of love."
• "The order of the day is people are constantly nerve-stricken after previously following the permission to live lies. An overlap into discomfort largely comes from an excess of comfort."
• "Envy is Pride's infection on inspiration...while Angered then Eaten by the Greed of a Lazy Lust."
• "Narcissists often feign oppression because narcissists always feel entitled."
• "...There are also those who inadvertently grant power to another man's words by continuously trying to spite him. If a man gets to the point where he can simply say, 'The sky is blue,' and people indignantly rush up trying to refute him saying, 'No, the sky is light blue,' then, whether they realize it or not, he has become an authority figure even to such adversaries."

Healology

"There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection." ~George MacDonald

You may have heard of the portmanteau "killosophy", which is also the name of my previous book released in 2015; but here and now, in 2016, it is marked: the birth-year of my latest work and book number five, Healology. Philosophy and theology, as one might think, are 2 of my favorite subjects; symbolically, I see them as the question and the answer, or the co-pilots of wisdom, or maybe, in a sense, like the many dualistic elements as represented by yin and yang, or perhaps even like in the heartagram: the pentagram and the heart. The essence of Christianity is to lose one's life for Christ's sake in order to find it (Matthew 16:25); hence, Killosophy (the question/"the killing of knowledge") came first, then came Healology (the answer/"the power of Christ").

Healology was constructed as a partner of Killosophy, so it characterizes a continuation of that format. The first half, "Healing Power", contains more of my original aphorisms on key topics - e.g. life, love, relationships, society, art, Christ, apologetics, and countless others. I imagine this section being most welcomed by the intellectual and the truth-seeker, the one who appreciates a good brain teaser, or who perhaps needs to ruminate on some brief thoughts of influence from time to time.

On the latter, "Studying Christendom" is a book comprised of all of my latest poems and lyrics as well as a number of previously unreleased rhymes from my earliest of writing days. This I believe has plenty of room for the adventurer and the creative artist; it includes themes ranging from steampunk to cyberpunk, nursery rhymes, the return of the fictional character Sgt. Griffin, and a variety of others, both fictional and non-fictional.

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. If you enjoyed Killosophy, you might also enjoy Healology.

"Is Satan misunderstood?"

Many good people throughout history were misunderstood; it is sometimes even considered a mark of greatness. Could one also apply this to Satan? As, in Christ, we are moved to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44), I do not doubt that any Christian thinker, theologian, or apologist has at some point asked (or been asked), "What if Satan is actually a good guy but just misunderstood?" But perhaps God responded, "What if? Would that really matter?" With this I concur - a question on that caliber may be best kept a mystery among men and left fully answered only between God and Satan. At any rate, just because one could be misunderstood, and even good-intentioned, it does not always mean that they are right in their convictions. Rebellion against God, whether man or angel, is and always will be the biggest mistake one can make, mainly to his own well-being.

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.

Even in my short time on this earth, it seems I am already seeing much in repetition. Perhaps from now to the beginning, even before man, 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. This brings me back to what George MacDonald wrote, "[God desires] not that He may say to them, 'Look how mighty I am, and go down upon your knees and worship,' for power alone was never yet worthy of prayer; but that He may say thus: 'Look, my children, you will never be strong but with my strength. I have no other to give you. And that you can get only by trusting in me. I can not give it you any other way. There is no other way.'"

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.'"