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.

HOPE

'Christian hope and suspicion are interdependent. Without informed mistrust, hope is sure to be naive. Hope is solid when it has passed through the many preemptive suspicions of Christian awareness.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.226.

MOUNTAINS & MOLEHILLS

'When molehills are turned to mountains, inevitably mountains are reduced to molehills - forgetting humility, truth, justice and love.'
Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.207.

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.

EVIDENCE

'Evidence can never compel belief, because evidence is always interpreted.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.142.

GOD'S GOODNESS

'I remember a professor saying that his brother had just died in his late twenties, leaving a wife and several children. My professor asked, "How can I look at that and say that God is good?" He continued, "I can't. But that is not all that God has given me to look at." He went on to say that he looked not to his own limited evaluation of the fairness of history for his assurance of God's character, but to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything else is seen in that light.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Suspicion: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.115.

EVIL

'There are many arguments that promise to be logically satisfying but which in the end miniaturize both God's transcendence and the seriousness of human agonies in the interests of somebody's idea [of] philosophical neatness. It is intriguing that the Bible itself never leads us down this road. It pictures the mystery of evil in the world not as an intellectual riddle to be solved but as a reality of inexhaustible depth that deepens even as we reflect on it.'

Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion, p.111.

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.