Fool's Talk Quotes

“The age of the Internet, it is said, is the age of the self and the selfie. The world is full of people full of themselves. In such an age, “I post, therefore I am.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Once when the great slaver turned abolitionist John Newton was praised for what he had achieved, he responded quickly: “Sir, the devil already told me that.” In a similar situation, when the eminent Scottish preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne was congratulated by a parishioner for his saintliness, he replied sharply, “Madame, if you could see in my heart, you would spit in my face.” In each case, they refused to let others think that they were what they weren’t. They resisted hypocrisy by exposing the gap that was its essence—the gap between the inner and the outer, appearance and reality.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Just as to a man with a hammer, everything is a nail, so in the age of science and technology, everything is a scientific and technical matter to be solved by scientific and technical means.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“To follow Jesus is to pay the cost of discipleship, and then to die to ourselves, to our own interests, our own agendas and reputations. It is to pick up our crosses and count the cost of losing all that contradicts his will and his way—including our reputations before the world, and our standing with the people and in the communities that we once held dear. It is to live before one audience, the audience of One, and therefore to die to all other conflicting opinions and assessments. There is no room here for such contemporary ideas as the looking-glass self, and no consideration here for trivial contemporary obsessions such as one’s legacy.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“the story of Issa, the eighteenth-century Haiku poet from Japan. Through a succession of sad events, his wife and all his five children died. Grieving each time, he went to the Zen Master and received the same consolation: “Remember the world is dew.” Dew is transient and ephemeral. The sun rises and the dew is gone. So too is suffering and death in this world of illusion, so the mistake is to become too engaged. Remember the world is dew. Be more detached, and transcend the engagement of mourning that prolongs the grief. After one of his children died, Issa went home unconsoled, and wrote one of his most famous poems. Translated into English it reads,      The world is dew.      The world is dew.      And yet.      And yet.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“far too much Christian evangelism and apologetics is based on the assumption that almost everyone is open, interested and needy—when most people most of the time are quite simply not.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“All good thinking is a matter of asking and answering three elementary questions. What is being said? Is it true? What of it?”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“In the biblical view the issue is not modern versus postmodern. Both these views are partly right, and both are finally wrong. Nor is it rational argument versus story, or reason versus imagination. In fact it is not either-or at all. The deep logic of God’s truth can be expressed in both stories and arguments, by questions as well as statements, through reason and the imagination, through the four Gospels as well as through the book of Romans.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Balaam’s ass is the patron saint of apologists. Madness, as we shall see, is an appropriate term for the unreality of unbelief.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“This challenge means that each of us as apologists must examine our own hearts. Have we loved enough to listen, or is it that we love to hear the sound of our own answers? Are we really arguing for Christ, or are we expressing our need always to be right?”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“nowhere is the modern church more worldly than in its breathless idolizing of such modern notions as change, relevance, innovation and being on the right side of history.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“As the early church boasted rightly, the message of Jesus is both simple enough for a child to paddle in and deep enough for an elephant to swim in.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“If the Christian faith is true, it is true even if no one believes it, and if it is not true, it is false even if everyone believes it. The truth of the faith does not stand and fall with our defense of it.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Jesus never spoke to two people the same way, and neither should we. Every single person is unique and individual and deserves an approach that respects that uniqueness.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great
achievement to persuade him. ERASMUS, LETTER”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Questions are always more subversive
than statements. For one thing, they are indirect. Whereas it should be crystal
clear what a statement is saying and where it is leading, a good question is not
so obvious, and where it leads to is hidden. For another thing, questions are
involving. Whereas a statement always has a “take it or leave it” quality, and we
may or may not be interested in what it tells us, there is no standing back from
a well-asked question. It invites us, challenges us or intrigues us to get into it
and follow it to see where it leads. In short, even a simple question can be a
soft form of subversion.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“the multiple angry assaults on the “traditional family” are the rotten fruit of Christians corrupting the beauty and strength of the “covenantal family” of the Bible into the hated “hierarchical family” of the stereotypes so loved by feminists and others. Still”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“It is realistic rather than cynical to observe that in a fallen world there are degrees of virtue in relation to what is right, and good and just. These are important in our human judgments of others, even though they may be blown to the winds by the grace of God. To “do good because we know it is good” is different from “doing good only because we know we are seen,” and this in turn is different from “doing good only because we are afraid of being thought to be bad,” which in turn is different again from “the complete abandonment of any pretense of caring about being good or being seen.” The first type of action springs from what we call morality, the second respectability, the third hypocrisy, and the fourth sheer wickedness. This”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“There is a time for stories, and there is a time for rational arguments, and the skill we need lies in knowing which to use, and when. Put”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“The despicable modern resort to playing the victim card or charging one’s opponent with being “phobic” in one way or another was not for Paul. If”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“For a consumer society thrives by stoking unquenchable desires into unsustainable cravings and fanning them with an inflated rage for rights. The restlessness it creates by providing false satisfactions and deadening true desires simultaneously fuels the economy and destroys happiness.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“The truth is that, properly understood, confession is a key strength of the Christian faith and a vital part of countering hypocrisy. For a start, open, voluntary confession is part and parcel of a strong and comprehensive view of truth, and therefore of realism and responsibility. Whatever we do and have done, whether right or wrong, is a matter of record and reality. Responsibly owning up to it therefore aligns us to reality and to truth in a way that liberates. And far from being weak or an act of surrender, confession is the expression of rare moral courage, for in confessing a person demonstrates the strength of character to go on record against himself or herself.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Truth is the best shield and safeguard against an array of modern and postmodern objections to Christian faith. Many Christians have skipped over the question of truth, often unwittingly, and they cover its absence with all sorts of genuine but inadequate answers. They believe in God because faith “works for them” or “the family that prays together stays together” and so on. Such faith may be sincere, but it will always be vulnerable. From one side it will be open to doubt, and from the other it will be open to all the accusations of modern skepticism—that faith is only “bad faith,” believed for reasons other than that it is true, and that it fears to face the challenges surrounding truth. There has to be a moment when, as Chesterton puts it, he and millions of Christians with him believe in the Christian faith because the key “fits the lock, because it is like life.” “We are Christians,” he continues, “not because we worship a key, but because we have passed a door; and felt a wind that is the trumpet of liberty blow over the land of the living.”25”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“There are no foolproof methods of persuasion, and those that come closest are coercive and dangerous because they override the will rather than convince the mind.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“The inner, the real and the unseen are irrelevant in today’s world. All that counts is appearance, and the world of consumerism has lost no time in catering to every need, and then creating even more, in this burgeoning market of the appearance.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“Yale philosopher Harry Frankfurt writes, “One of the salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“In short, sin frames God falsely. Thinking of him as he isn’t, sin justifies itself in rejecting him as he is—and therefore draws the false view around itself like a security blanket to provide itself with an alibi for not believing or obeying God. Again, as we saw earlier, our overall attitude must then be that the defense never rests. Whenever and however God is not seen for who he is, but stands in the dock falsely framed and wrongly accused, we must reframe the issue and so defend God’s name and restore the truth to the distorted view of reality.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“God is the God of truth. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The Scriptures are the truth. The gospel is the word of truth. Conversion is a turnaround triggered by truth. Discipleship is the way of life that is living in truth. Confession is a realignment with the truth. Spiritual growth is life formation through the power of the Spirit of truth. And the Last Judgment is the final vindication and restoration of truth for humanity and for the very cosmos itself.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“apologists we are never out simply to establish an idea or to prove a theory. We stand as witnesses to a Person who is love, and out of our own love for him we are introducing others to being known and loved by him, so that they can know and love him in their turn. Without love, as St. Paul has told us, apologists too are only noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

“The modern world is highly secular in certain parts, and nowhere more than in the world of the educated elites. Such people are notoriously “tone deaf” and their natural habitat is “a world without windows,” as Weber and Berger have described them.”
― Os Guinness, Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion