Gordon Taylor

“What I needed was flying. . . . I needed to fly so much that my subconscious mind would become so reconditioned to the air that it would accept it as its natural element.”

Suffering the loss of a loved one, suffering from an inability to sleep, pilot Gordon Taylor believes that flying, his only joy, will become his only life; Gordon Taylor, The Sky Beyond (New York: Ballantine, 1970), 91.

Michael Horton

“I told God that it all seemed too calculated, that he seemed all too real, too involved, too present in our lives, especially my parents’, as if he had cruelly dished out the very end that each most feared.”

When looking at the deteriorating health of his parents; Michael Horton, Too Good to be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 13.

C. S. Lewis

“You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to five them their proper name are merely man’s own invention – Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn’t understand – thunder, pestilence, snakes etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing sons and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being[s] were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful. Thus religion, that is to say mythology grew up.”

Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 230-31; written to friend, Arthur Greeves, possibly dated 12 October, 1916.

C. S. Lewis

“I must only add that ones views on religious subjects don’t make any difference in morals, of course. A good member of society must of course try to be honest, chaste, truthful, kindly etc: these are things we owe to our own manhood & dignity and not to any imagined god or gods.”

Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 231; written to friend, Arthur Greeves, possibly dated 12 October, 1916.

C. S. Lewis

“You ask me whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not quite such a fool as all that. But if one is only to talk from firsthand experience on any subject, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the thing they call love, I have what is better – the experience of Sapho, of Euripides of Catullus of Shakespeare of Spenser of Austen of Bronte of – anyone else I have read.”

Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 146; writing to friend, Arthur Greeves, dated 12 October, 1915.

R. C. Sproul

“When we call things holy when they are not holy, we commit the sin of idolatry. We give to common things the respect, awe, worship, and adoration that belong only to God. To worship the creature instead of the Creator is the essence of idolatry.”

R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1998), 40.

John Calvin

“. . . consulting our self-interest is the pestilence that most effectively leads to our destruction, so the sole haven of salvation is to be wise in nothing and to will nothing through ourselves but to follow the leading of the Lord alone.”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 7, 1.  

N. T. Wright

“According to the early Christians, the church doesn’t exist in order to provide a place where people can pursue their private spiritual agendas and develop their own spiritual potential. Nor does it exist in order to provide a safe haven in which people can hide from the wicked world and ensure that they themselves arrive safely at an otherworldly destination.”

N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (Harper One: New York, 2006), 203.

N. T. Wright

“[Many Christians] treat it [the Bible] as a form of verbal wallpaper: pleasant enough in the background, but you stop thinking about it once you’ve lived in the house a few weeks.”

N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (Harper One: New York, 2006), 174.

N. T. Wright

“Look hard at Jesus, especially as he goes to his death, and you will discover more about God than you could ever have guessed from studying the infinite shining heavens or the moral law within your own conscience.”

N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (Harper One: New York, 2006), 138.