The Last Christian on Earth Quotes

“The Christianization of the modern world is leading to the modernization of the Christian faith and away from the way of Jesus. Similarly, as we shall see, the Christianization of America has led to the Americanization of the Christian faith and away from the way of Jesus.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Worldliness is always a spiritual myopia. It falls for the spirit and system of the age and fails to correct itself through the correcting lenses of the perspective of the global (the Church in other continents), the historical (the Church in other centuries), and above all, the eternal (the Word of God across all places and times). Over”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Whether or not the Christian faith is true is now irrelevant. All that matters is that to more and more people in the modern world it no longer seems true.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Reality rebounds, and things turn out the opposite of what they seem and what people expect. Strength becomes weakness; love becomes pornography; pleasure becomes boredom; and so on.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“The Christian faith contributed to the rise of the modern world, but the Christian faith has been undermined by the modern world it helped to create. The Christian faith thus becomes its own gravedigger.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“This basic problem of relevance-cum-subservience has been given an added twist in the modern world, where relevance has become not only hollow but fragile and short-lived. A wider range of choices, a deeper uncertainty of events, a more pressing need for new styles—all this makes for an accelerating turnover of issues, concerns and fads. Nothing tires like a trend or ages faster than a fashion. Today’s bold headline is tomorrow’s yellowing newsprint. Thus the relevance-hungry liberals achieve relevance, but their victory is Pyrrhic. It is precisely as they win that they lose. As they become relevant to one group or movement, they become irrelevant to another and find themselves rudely dismissed. Far from being in the avant-garde, Christian liberals trot smartly behind the times. Far from being genuinely new or radical, they catch up and announce their discoveries breathlessly, only to see the vanguard disappearing down the road on the trail of a different pursuit.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“The faithfulness principle (of the conservative) and the flexibility principle (of the liberal) are two sides of the same coin. They are both necessary if Christians are to follow their instructions and remain simultaneously “in” the world but not “of” it.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Under the impact of the modern world, there has been a definite melting down of the assurance of faith. Secularization makes the Christian faith seem less real, privatization makes it seem merely a private preference, and pluralization makes it seem just one among many.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“With the ability to produce more goods than people need, consumer capitalism has to make children into consumers earlier and keep them at it longer. Hence contemporary America, a culture of perennial adolescents.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Christians,” as that crusty old philosopher Bertrand Russell used to quip, “would sooner die than think—in fact they do.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Or of the fact that in the United States, where Evangelicals, the people of the good news, are still strong numerically, they have become one of the shallowest, noisiest and most corrupt parts of the Christian Church, bringing down an unprecedented avalanche of disdain on their heads—almost none of which has anything to do with Jesus?”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“by what criteria? By those of modern”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church

“Religion was once life’s central mystery, its worship life’s most awesome experience, its beliefs life’s broadest canopy of meaning as well as its deepest guarantee of belonging. Yet today, where religion still survives in the modern world, no matter how passionate or committed the believer, it amounts to little more than a private preference, a spare-time hobby, and a leisure pursuit.”
― Os Guinness, The Last Christian on Earth: Uncover the Enemy's Plot to Undermine the Church