THE DANGERS OF NOT RECKONING WITH SUFFERING

'A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering. If we do not make that decision, we are endangered on every side. A man or woman of faith who fails to acknowledge and deal with suffering becomes, at last, either a cynic or a melancholic or a suicide.' 

Eugene H Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.131.

WE'RE TO BE CYNICAL - OF OURSELVES

'...the reality of God is measured by the truthfulness of his speech, not by my grasp of his presence. Under the sun sometimes everything is mixed up and back to front that actually we are meant to learn that God intends for us to be suspicious of ourselves - suspicious of why we doubt him and why cannot find him, suspicious of the deceptions our our own hearts - but nevertheless trusting the truth of his Word with every fibre of our being, even when we cannot see him.' 

David Gibson, Destiny, p.79. 

IDOLATRY

'An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a substitute for God. All sorts of things are potential idols, depending only on our attitudes and actions toward them. If this is so, how do we determine whne something is becoming or has become an idol?

Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God's exiistence or character. It may well come in the form of an overattachment to something that is, itself, perfectly good. The crucial warning is this: As soon as our loyalty to anything leads us to disobey God, we are in danger of making it an idol.'

Dick Keyes, 'The Idol Factory' in Os Guinness & John Seel, No God but God, p.32.

IDOLATRY

'At the most basic level, idols are what we make out of the evidence for God within ourselves and in the world - if we do not want to face the face of God Himself in His majesty and holiness. Rather than look to the Creator and have to deal with His lordship, we orient our lives toward the creation, where we can be more free to control and shape our lives in our desired directions.'

Dick Keyes, 'The Idol Factory' in Os Guinness & John Seel (Eds.), No God but God, p.31.

IDOLATRY

'A careful reading of the Old and New Testaments shows that idolatry is nothing like the crude, simplistic picture that springs to mind of an idol sculpture in some distant country. As the main category to describe unbelief, the idea is highly sophisticated, drawing together the complexities of motivation in individual psychology, the social enviornment, and also the unseen world. Idols are not just on pagan altas, but in well-educated human hearts and minds (Ezekiel 14). The apostle Paul associates the dynamics of human greed, lust, craving, and coveting with idolatry (Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5). The Bible does not allow us to marginalize idolatry to the fringes of life. All too often it is found on center stage.'

Dick Keyes 'The Idol Factory' in Os Guinness & John Seel (Eds.), No God but God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age, p.31.

CYNICISM

'You cannot go on "explaining away" for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on "seeing through" things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it...If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To "see through" all things is the same as not to see.'

CS Lewis in Paul E Miller, A Praying Life, p.91.

CYNICISM

'Cynicism and defeated weariness have this in common: They both question the active goodness of God on our behalf. Left unchallenged, their low-level doubt opens the door for bigger doubt.'

Paul E Miller, A Praying Life, p.77.

CYNICS

'Cynics are only idealists with awkwardly high standards.'
Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, p.128.

CYNICISM

'Here is the ultimate sting for the cynic. God sees through, unmasks and scorns the cynic's cynicism. This is the greatest irony of all - and so something that is rarely imagined - that the transcendent God laughs at cynicism, not with the laughter of glee but of pity and sadness at its grandoise pretensions. When he who knows everything is not cynical, and we who know so little claim cynical insight, we appear ridiculous in his eyes.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.163.

CYNICISM

'Cynicism then works as a protection against the uncomfortable challenge that moral excellence is an actual possibility. There is a certain relief in having removed all heroes from the landscape and all the top rungs from the ladder - in case more might be expected of us than mediocrity.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p. 84.

CYNICISM

'Cynicism has no card-carrying membership, parliament, priesthood or system of tenure. It cannot be compared fairly to various schools of philosophy, psychology or social theory. It is not a school of thought at all but a voice of doubt in your ear, a predisposition for seeing through people and things, a negative idea about human nature, a mood or attitude of suspicion, or friends with a particular sense of humour.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.22.