Barry > Barry's Quotes

“I am not fond of the word psychological.
There is no such thing as the psychological.
Let us say that one can improve the biography of
the person.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE”
― R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness

“People do not reject the gospel primarily because they’re too thickheaded to get it. Unbelief grows out of other soils besides intellectual confusion. Instead, people reject the good news because they’re enslaved to other kinds of news. They’re in love with something unworthy of such devotion, and it won’t let them go.”
― Randy Newman, Questioning Evangelism

“As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered.”
― Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

“That is why our Churches are half empty and also why millions never darken a Church door. People are not fed. They are hungering and thirsting for the pure Gospel and they get pulpit essays and discussions of questions. They go away empty and disgusted and then they stay away.’ Time proved Moody right. Had clergy been in less of a hurry to trot out the latest undigested critical theory, the churches of America and Britain would not have sunk into the trough of the 1920s and 1930s.”
― John Charles Pollock, D. L. Moody: Moody without Sankey

“You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God.1”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“One way to think of Christ’s intercession, then, is simply this: Jesus is praying for you right now. “It is a consoling thought,” wrote theologian Louis Berkhof, “that Christ is praying for us, even when we are negligent in our prayer life.”4 Our prayer life stinks most of the time. But what if you heard Jesus praying aloud for you in the next room? Few things would calm us more deeply.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“Every epistle in the New Testament begins with a reference to grace and peace, and this grace and peace is “from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Holy Spirit is not mentioned directly, but I believe, following Jonathan Edwards, that this is because the Spirit is the grace and peace. The Church is therefore the place where the Holy Spirit is most in evidence, as He anoints the preaching, as He inhabits the praises of His people, and as He blesses the sacraments.”
― Douglas Wilson, Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World

“Because the word justice is so abused in our day, I need to say something brief about the civil magistrate’s duty to enforce justice. Injustice is not the violation of autonomous human rights, however those rights may be defined. Injustice is the violation of God-given rights. God gave us all the right to a fair trial if we are accused of some crime. And so, if we get an unfair trial, the kind that Jesus got, this is an injustice. But God did not give us the “right” to fifteen dollars an hour. For if He did, that means that somebody else has the obligation to pay you that amount. And when the state steps in to enforce that kind of obligation, the result is always tyrannical. So what is the relationship of these three governments? In God’s order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others. Each has its assigned task, and each one needs to tend to its own knitting. The Church does not declare war, or collect the trash. The family does not administer the sacraments. The state does not review cases of church discipline. And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.”
― Douglas Wilson, Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World

“Thomas Goodwin quotes Jeremiah 31:20 and then deduces that if this is true of God, how much more of Christ. He explains that such a text “may afford us the strongest consolations and encouragements” in the presence of many sins in our lives: There is comfort concerning such infirmities, in that your very sins move him to pity more than to anger. . . . Christ takes part with you, and is far from being provoked against you, as all his anger is turned upon your sin to ruin it; yea, his pity is increased the more towards you, even as the heart of a father is to a child that has some loathsome disease, or as one is to a member of his body that has leprosy, he hates not the member, for it is his flesh, but the disease, and that provokes him to pity the part affected the more. What shall not make for us, when our sins, that are both against Christ and us, shall be turned as motives to him to pity us the more?2”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“we were dead. Utterly helpless. That’s what his mercy healed. Well, you say, that really doesn’t describe me. I grew up in a law-abiding home. We went to church. I kept my nose clean. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve been decent to my neighbors. But look at what Paul says: “. . . among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh.” Surely not. This is Paul the former Pharisee, the law keeper to end all law keepers, “a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil. 3:5–6). How could he include himself among those who were devoted to the passions of the flesh? Neither of these is a one-time self-description, moreover. Multiple times in Acts, as in Philippians 3, Paul describes his earlier life as “according to the strict manner of our fathers” (Acts 22:3), or “according to the strictest party of our religion” (Acts 26:5), even from a young age (Acts 26:4). And yet, as in Ephesians 2, in Titus 3 he again identifies his former life as “foolish, disobedient, led astray, [enslaved] to various passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3). So which was it? The only way to make sense of these two kinds of passages is to understand that we can vent our fleshly passions by breaking all the rules, or we can vent our fleshly passions by keeping all the rules, but both ways of venting the flesh still need resurrection. We can be immoral dead people, or we can be moral dead people. Either way, we’re dead.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“Perhaps you have difficulty receiving the rich mercy of God in Christ not because of what others have done to you but because of what you’ve done to torpedo your life, maybe through one big, stupid decision or maybe through ten thousand little ones. You have squandered his mercy, and you know it. To you I say, do you know what Jesus does with those who squander his mercy? He pours out more mercy. God is rich in mercy. That’s the whole point. Whether we have been sinned against or have sinned ourselves into misery, the Bible says God is not tightfisted with mercy but openhanded, not frugal but lavish, not poor but rich.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“There is an entire psychological substructure that, due to the fall, is a near-constant manufacturing of relational leveraging, fear-stuffing, nervousness, score-keeping, neurotic controlling, anxiety-festering silliness that is not something we say or even think so much as something we exhale. You can smell it on people, though some of us are good at hiding it. And if you trace this fountain of scurrying haste, in all its various manifestations, down to the root, you don’t find childhood difficulties or a Myers-Briggs diagnosis or Freudian impulses. You find gospel deficit. You find lack of felt awareness of Christ’s heart. All the worry and dysfunction and resentment are the natural fruit of living in a mental universe of law. The felt love of Christ really is what brings rest, wholeness, flourishing, shalom—that existential calm that for brief, gospel-sane moments settles over you and lets you step in out of the storm of of-works-ness.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“We are perversely resistant to letting Christ love us. But as Flavel says, “Why should you be such an enemy to your own peace? Why read over the evidences of God’s love to your soul . . . ? Why do you study evasions, and turn off those comforts which are due to you?”3”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“For more than forty years, efforts to tame the SIOP, to limit it, reduce it, make it appear logical and reasonable, had failed. “With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan, this was the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life,” General Butler later recalled. “I came to fully appreciate the truth . . . we escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“Reliable sources narrate how in his dotage the elderly apostle John, no longer able to ambulate or preach, was carried into Christian assemblies where his exhortation consisted of a mere five words which he simply repeated—the main theme of his first New Testament epistle: “Little children, love one another” (1 John 3:18).”
― Harold L. Senkbeil, The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor's Heart

“A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman competing at the highest levels must be able to take in and consume as much as eight liters of oxygen per minute; an average male is capable of taking in roughly four to five liters at most. Pound for pound, Olympic oarsmen may take in and process as much oxygen as a thoroughbred racehorse. This extraordinary rate of oxygen intake is of only so much value, it should be noted. While 75–80 percent of the energy a rower produces in a two-thousand-meter race is aerobic energy fueled by oxygen, races always begin, and usually end, with hard sprints. These sprints require levels of energy production that far exceed the body’s capacity to produce aerobic energy, regardless of oxygen intake. Instead the body must immediately produce anaerobic energy. This, in turn, produces large quantities of lactic acid, and that acid rapidly builds up in the tissue of the muscles. The consequence is that the muscles often begin to scream in agony almost from the outset of a race and continue screaming until the very end. And it’s not only the muscles that scream. The skeletal system to which all those muscles are attached also undergoes tremendous strains and stresses. Without proper training and conditioning—and sometimes even with them—competitive rowers are apt to experience a wide variety of ills in the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, ribs, neck, and above all the spine. These injuries and complaints range from blisters to severe tendonitis, bursitis, slipped vertebrae, rotator cuff dysfunction, and stress fractures, particularly fractures of the ribs. The common denominator in all these conditions—whether in the lungs, the muscles, or the bones—is overwhelming pain. And that is perhaps the first and most fundamental thing that all novice oarsmen must learn about competitive rowing in the upper echelons of the sport: that pain is part and parcel of the deal. It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

“Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

“A hundred years ago G. K. Chesterton wrote, “If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”*13”
― Alan Jacobs, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

“As the eighteenth-century scientist G. C. Lichtenberg once wrote, “A book is like a mirror: if an ass looks in, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“George Eliot was so wounded by bad reviews that her lover and companion George Henry Lewes used to go through the papers and magazines to make sure she never saw one. And Brendan Gill tells a story about the American writer John O’Hara, who, among his many accomplishments, wrote the book for the Broadway musical Pal Joey: when some friends passed him on the streets of New York and told him that they had just seen Pal Joey again and had enjoyed it even more than they had the first time, O’Hara snapped, “What was wrong with it the first time?”
― Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“But Auden was not prepared for the viewers’ reactions to this film. Whenever the Poles appeared on the screen—always as prisoners of the Wehrmacht—the audience would shout, “Kill them! Kill them!” Auden was utterly taken aback. “There was no hypocrisy,” he recalled many years later: these people were unashamed of their feelings and attempted to put no “civilized” face upon them. “I wondered, then, why I reacted as I did against this denial of every humanistic value.” On what grounds did he have a right to demand, or even a reason to expect, a more “humanistic” response? His inability to answer this question, he explained, led him by a circuitous yet sure route back to the Christian faith in which he had been raised.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“a prayer that Thomas Cranmer had composed when England was at war with Scotland in 1548: Most merciful God, the Granter of all peace and quietness, the Giver of all good gifts, the Defender of all nations, who hast willed all men to be accounted as our neighbours, and commanded us to love them as ourself, and not to hate our enemies, but rather to wish them, yea and also to do them good if we can: . . . Give to all us desire of peace, unity, and quietness, and a speedy wearisomeness of all war, hostility, and enmity to all them that be our enemies; that we and they may, in one heart and charitable agreement, praise thy most holy name, and reform our lives to thy godly commandments.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis

“Be of good cheer then, O my soul; it is thy Father’s voice that calls thee hence – his voice that called thee into being, and out of a state of sin and death, and bade thee live unto him – that called thee so often from the grave, forgave thy sins, renewed thy strength, restored thee to the comforts of his house and service, and hath so graciously led thee through this howling wilderness almost to the sight of the Promised Land. And wilt thou not willingly go when such infinite love calls thee? Art thou not desirous of his presence? Art thou afraid to go to him who is the only cure of thy fears? What was it but this glory to which he elected thee – not to the riches and honours of this world, or to the pleasures of the flesh, but chose thee in Christ to an inheritance in glory? If God chose thee to blessedness, refuse it not thyself, nor behave like a refuser.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“It is far better for me to be with Christ, as thereby my knowledge will be perfected. A soul that is with Christ is more likely to know Christ and the Father in him, than a soul that is present with the body and absent from the Lord. What less can the promise of being with him signify? How much more excellent will intuitive or immediate knowledge be, than our present artificial knowledge. There will be no expensive labour in getting it. It will have no mixture of dark and bewildering uncertainty and ambiguity when it is acquired. It will be perfectly free from those contentions which so much rob the ingenious of their time, destroy their love, hinder their minds from ascending to God and heavenly things, and fill the church with sects and parties. Nor will it leave any of that dissatisfaction so common among the learned, while they have only the shadow of knowledge, licking but the outside of the glass, and leaving the wine within untasted.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“Nothing comforts me more in my greatest sufferings, nor seems more fit for me while I wait for death, than singing psalms of praise to God, nor is there any exercise in which I had rather end my life.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“When we have read and heard, spoken and written the soundest truth and strongest arguments, we still know as if we knew not, and believe as if we believed not, unless God powerfully impresses the same things on our minds, and awakens our souls to feel what we know.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“My God, I have often sinned against thee; but thou knowest I long to be thine. I can say with Paul, thou art the ‘God whose I am, and whom I serve;’ and O that I could serve thee better. To serve thee is but to receive thy grace, and use it for my own and others’ good, and thereby please and glorify thee. I have nothing to do in this world but to seek and to serve thee. I have nothing to do with my tongue but to speak to thee, and for thee; and with my pen, but to publish thy glory and thy will. What have I to do with all my reputation and influence over others, but to increase thy church, and propagate thy holy truth and service? What have I to do with my remaining time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy grace and thy salvation? O pardon all my carnal thoughts, all my unthankful treatment of thy grace and love, and all my wilful sins against thy truth and thee. Under the terrors of the law thou didst even proclaim thyself ‘the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.’ And is not ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ revealed in the gospel for our more abundant faith and consolation? My God, I know I can never be sufficiently confident of thine all-sufficient power, wisdom, and goodness. When I have said, ‘Will the Lord cast off for ever; and will he be favourable no more? Is his mercy clean gone for ever? Doth his promise fail for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious; hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?’ conscience has replied, This is mine infirmity; I never lacked comfort for want of mercy in thee, but for want of faith and holiness in myself. And hast thou not mercy also to give me that faith and holiness? My God, all is of thee, and through thee, and to thee; and when I have the felicity, the glory of all for ever will be thine. None that trust in thy nature and promise shall be ashamed. If I can live and die trusting in thee, surely I shall not be confounded.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“Thou didst trust thy parents to provide thee food and raiment, and didst implicitly obey them. Thou hast trusted physicians to give thee medicines, without inquiring after every ingredient. If a pilot undertake to carry thee to the Indies, thou canst trust his conduct without knowing either the ship or how to govern it, or the way, or the place to which thou art conveyed. And must not thy God and Saviour be trusted to bring thee safe to heaven unless he will satisfy all thine enquiries?”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“What abundant experience have I had of God’s fidelity and love; and after all that, shall I not trust him? His undeserved mercy gave me being, chose my parents, gave them affectionate desires for my real good, taught them to instruct me early in his Word, and educate me in his fear; made my habitation and companions suitable, endowed me with a teachable disposition, put excellent books into my hands, and placed me under wise and faithful schoolmasters and ministers. His mercy fixed me in the best of lands, and in the best age that land had seen. His mercy early destroyed in me all great expectations from the world, taught me to bear the yoke from my youth, caused me rather to groan under my infirmities than struggle with powerful lusts, and chastened me often, but did not give me over unto death. Ever since I was at the age of nineteen, great mercy has trained me up in the school of affliction, to keep my sluggish soul awake in constant expectation of my change, to kill my proud and worldly thoughts, and to direct all my studies to things the most necessary. How has a life of constant but gentle chastisement urged me to “make my calling and election sure,” and to prepare my accounts, as one that must quickly give them up to God. The face of death, and nearness of eternity, convinced me what books to read, what studies to prosecute, what companions to choose; drove me early into the vineyard of the Lord, and taught me to preach as a dying man to dying men.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter

“How many send their children to get sciences, trades, or to travel in foreign lands, before ever they were instructed, at home, against those temptations which they must encounter, and by which they are so often undone. How commonly, when they have first neglected this great duty to their children, do they plead a necessity of thrusting them out, from some petty point of honour, or conformity to the world, or to adorn them with some of the plumes of fashionable modes and ceremonies, which will never compensate the loss of heavenly wisdom, mortification, and the love of God and man. As if they might send them to sea for some trifling reason, without pilot or anchor, and think that God must save them from the waves. And when such children have forsaken God, and given themselves up to sensuality and profaneness, these parents wonder at the judgments of God, and with broken hearts lament their own infelicity, instead of lamenting their own misconduct.”
― Richard Baxter, The Dying Thoughts of Richard Baxter