Quote of the Week

"The kind of thinking that will solve the world's problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place." - Albert Einstein

Quote of the Week

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society....

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" April 16, 1963

Is this still true today? How?

Quote of the Week

"There are two ways of renouncing the devil... and the difference is perhaps the deepest chasm in modern religion. One is to have horror of him because he is so far off; and the other is to have it because he is so near. And no virtue and vice are so much divided as those two virtues." - Chesterton from "The Secret of Flambeau"

Quote of the Week

"All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them." Chesterton 1908

What if those of us in the church allowed each other to be honest about struggles, fear, hopes, and dreams? What if we truly experienced a place where authenticity is assumed and fear of ridicule never existed?

Quote of the Week

"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday." - Chesterton "New York Times" 2/11/1923

Quote of the Week

"If a society requires excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it's an exalted activity, it will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy, neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water"
-John Gardner

Quote of the Week

"If you can't imitate him, don't copy him". -Yogi Berra

Quote of the Week

Here is your "quote of the week", formely known as "G.K. Chesterton Mondays"...

"Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity" -G.K. Chesterton 1908

I don't really know what this means but it sounds profound.

G.K. Chesterton Mondays

"I believe what really happens in history is this; the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid." -ILN 1922

G.K. Chesterton Mondays

"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man". - 1906

"It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary."

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - 1906

G.K. Chesterton Mondays

Religious Theme Today

"The Christian Ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - What's Wrong With the World

"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the 10 Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." - London News 1920

G.K. Chesterton Mondays

In an effort to simplify a little. I have decided to dedicate my Monday posts to some of my favorite quotes from G.K. Chesterton. My wife thinks I have an unhealthy love for his writings and I admit that I am guilty. So I will share some quotes and hope to win you over.

"An incovenience is an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an incovenience rightly considered."
- On Running after Ones Hat

Bonus Quote
"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before." -Tremendous Trifles