Calvin Sun > Calvin's Quotes

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Technology does make possible advance toward shalom; progress in mastery of the world can bring shalom nearer. But the limits of technology must also be acknowledged; technology is entirely incapable of bringing about shalom between ourselves and God, and it is only scarcely capable of bringing about the love of self and neighbour.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace

“For when man is faced with a curse he answers, "I'll take care of my problems." And he puts everything to work to become powerful, to keep the curse from having its effects. He creates the arts and the sciences, he raises an army, he constructs chariots, he builds cities. The spirit of might is a response to the divine curse.”
― Jacques Ellul, Meaning of the City

“When your will is God's will, you will have your will.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“True and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”
― John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols

“May we be prepared, whatever happens, rather to undergo a hundred deaths than to turn aside from the profession of true piety, in which we know our safety to be laid up. And may we so glorify thy name as to be partakers of that glory which has been acquired for us through the blood of thine only-begotten Son. Amen.”
― John Calvin

“If everything is mission, nothing is mission.”
― Stephen Neill

“What is there within the Bible?"
"It is a dangerous question. We might do better not to come too near this burning bush. For we are sure to betray what is—behind us! The Bible gives to every man and every era such answers to your questions as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more: high and divine content if it is high and divine content that we seek; transitory and "historical" content, if transitory and "historical" content that we seek. Nothing whatever, if it is nothing whatever that we seek. The hungry are satisfied by it, and to the satisfied it is surfeiting before they have opened it. The question, "What is in the Bible?" has a mortifying way of converting itself into the opposing question, "Well, what are you looking for, and who are you, pray, who make bold to look?”
― Karl Barth

“Wisdom is the power to see, and the inclination to choose, the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.”
― J.I. Packer, Knowing God

“The only thing more important than ministry is being ministered to [ at the feet of Jesus ].”
― Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem

“All the flowers of the field, and many of the beasts of the plain, and now the very orbs of heaven, are turned into metaphors and symbols by which the glory of Jesus may be manifested to us. Where God takes such pains to teach, we ought to be at pains to learn.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Reproof is unavoidable. God’s Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin. The practice of discipline in the congregation begins in the smallest circles. Where defection from God’s Word in doctrine or life imperils the family fellowship and with it the whole congregation, the word of admonition and rebuke must be ventured. Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship, when we allow nothing but God’s Word to stand between us, judging and succoring. Then it is not we who are judging; God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing. Ultimately, we have no charge but to serve our brother, never to set ourselves above him, and we serve him even when we must speak the judging and dividing Word of God to him, even when, in obedience to God, we must break off fellowship with him. We must know that it is not our human love which makes us loyal to the other person, but God’s love which breaks its way through to him only through judgment. Just because God’s Word judges, it serves the person. He who accepts the ministry of God’s judgment is helped.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that make it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger. Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”
― Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

“Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.”
― Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

“Leaders do not choose, rather they respond to God choosing them. Thus, the first responsive step of leadership is of utmost importance. It is an act of rebellion against the society of the spectacle - It is to relinquish a life of many options so that you can receive God's one option.”
― Mark Sayers, Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm

“In the democratic, egalitarian spirit of our day, we hold in suspicion positions of social authority, yet we submit to the power of peers. Social anxiety, peer group pressure, and competition all dictate our lives. Many are more afraid of offending their friends than they are of offending figures of authority. We have moved from a culture based upon hierarchy to a peerarchy. Ironically we flee from relational distinctions and boundaries, yet without these traditions and boundaries we become mired in codependency.”
― Mark Sayers, Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm

“People have gotten into the practice of following private religious hunches rather than learning of God from His Word; we have to try to help them unlearn the pride and, in some cases, the misconceptions about Scripture which gave rise to this attitude and to base there convictions henceforth not on what they feel but on what the Bible says…modern people think of all religions as equal and equivalent – they draw their ideas about God from pagan as well as Christian sources; we have to try to show people the uniqueness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s last word to man…people have ceased to recognize the reality of their own sinfulness, which imparts a degree of perversity and enmity against God to all that they think and do; it is our task to try to introduce people to this fact about themselves and so make them self-distrustful and open to correction by the Word of Christ…people today are in the habit of disassociating the thought of God’s goodness from that of His severity; we must seek to wean them from this habit, since nothing but misbelief is possible as long as that persists.”
― J.I. Packer, Knowing God

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”
― C.S. Lewis

“Knowledge is essential, but it’s not sufficient.”
― John MacArthur

“Perseverance means the engagement of our persons in the most intense and concentrated devotion to those means which God has ordained for the achievement of his saving purpose. The scripture doctrine of perseverance has no affinity with the quietism and antinomianism which are so prevalent in evangelical circles.”
― John Murray

“Justice in a fallen world is not equality of outcome but equal treatment under a fair law.”
― Kevin DeYoung, What is the Mission of the Church?: Making sense of social justice, Shalom and the Great Commission

“The church is biblical, therefore, when it seeks to embody the words in the power of the Spirit and so become a living commentary. The church is thus not only the "people of the book" but also "the (lived) interpretation of the book.”
― Kevin J. Vanhoozer

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
― Eugene Cho, Overrated: Are We More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World Than Actually Changing the World?

“The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition.”
― ruth haley barton, Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God's Transforming Presence

“our amnesia is a state-sponsored sport.”
― Louisa Lim, The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited

“Let me outline briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health -- his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order -- a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring