An unwelcome intervention

Yesterday this blog published a scam type letter from Nigeria, since deleted. How this happened I do not know. I did not publish it. It is the first time I have been hacked.

Usury - christiansquoting.org.uk

Calvin dealt with the absolute prohibition upon lending money at interest (usury), for example, by arguing that it was merely an accommodation to the specific needs of a primitive society. Since there was no similarity between such a society and Geneva;interest is merely rent paid on capital, after all; he allowed lenders to charge a variable rate of interest. - Alister McGrath, Calvin and the Christian Calling, First Things 94 (June/July 1999): 31-35.

Unkindness - christiansquoting.org.uk

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
Robert Burns. 1759-1796. To a Mouse.

Unity - christiansquoting.org.uk

Daisies of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your chains.
Eunuchs of the world unite - you have nothing to lose.
Misspellers of the world, untie.

Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all. -Richard Baxter 1651

If we do not depart from God, and disinite by that departure, and fall into disunion among ourselves, I am confident, we doing our duty and waiting upon the Lord, we shall find He will be as a wall of brass round about us till we have finished that work which he has for us to do.- Oliver Cromwell, to his army officers, 23 March 1649

I may worship in a different building from you, I may worship in a different style, but all we hold dear is God's gift in Christ Jesus, who is our Unity. In Him we have all and lack nothing.- Michael J Davis

When we talk about what we believe we divide. When we talk about who we believe in we unite.--E Stanley Jones

Unity is the ultimate goal of all the ways of God.- Abraham Kuyper, Uniformity:The Curse of Modern Life

Unique - christiansquoting.org.uk

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

Nature made him, and then broke the mold.-Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)_Orlando Furioso_ [1532], Canto X, Stanza 84

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.-Tallulah Bankhead

There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.- Deborah Tannen (1951 - )

UFOs - christiansquoting.org.uk

I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence.-- Richard Feynman

Tyranny - christiansquoting.org.uk

He who fights against tyrants is holy, and he who tames the arrogant serves the Lord.-- Ernst Moritz Arndt

The tyranny of the multitude is a multiplied tyranny. -- Edmund Burke

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.-- Frederick Douglass

Typing - christiansquoting.org.uk

The typewriter, *ike all macæines, has amind of it sown ~Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, 1890-1971

My fingers are not as fast as my brain - which isn't that much to type home about anyway. Frank Lane

TV - christiansquoting.org.uk

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work

All television is children‚s television.-- Richard P. Adler

In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows.~Woody Allen

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what the people do want.~Clive Barnes

Whoever controls the media -- the images -- controls the culture. - Allen Ginsberg

Television-a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.~Ernie Kovacs

Television is a golden goose that lays scrambled eggs; and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar. Anyway more people like scrambled eggs than caviar. Lee Loevinger

I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book. (Julius Henry) Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam. Herbert Marshall McLuhan

There is a gulf between reality, which for Christians is Christ, and he world of fantasy that the media project, and . . . Western people are being enormously misled by being induced to regard things on the screen as real, when actually they are fantasy. But, of course, God can use all things - even television, even you and me.-- Malcom Muggeridge, Christ and the Media, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977, p. 90

I have never seen a bad television program, because I refuse to. God gave me a mind, and a wrist that turns things off.
Jack Paar (1918-____) In "TV Guide."

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.- Shimon Peres (1923-____) : A Bend in the River, by V.S. Naipaul, 1979

It's just hard not to listen to TV: it's spent so much more time raising us than you have. ---Bart Simpson

There is a lot of hype going on about high-definition television. But is it really worth it to pay more money to see the same junk in sharper detail?- Thomas Sowell

Oh, great altar of passive entertainment, bestow upon me thy discordant images at such speed as to render linear thought impossible! - Bill Watterson

I just read this great science fiction story. It's about how machines take control of humans and turn them into zombie slaves! ...HEY! What time is it?? My TV show is on! -Bill Watterson

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.-Frank Lloyd Wright

Truth- christiansquoting.org.uk

It's only arrogance if you're wrong

Fight truth decay. . study the Bible daily.

Do you believe in truth?
If so, why?
What is truth?
Is truth real?
Can you prove truth?
How? Who says?
Is my truth different to your truth? If so, who is right? I think we must conclude wisely that as truth is incomprehensible we are not bound to regard it.
Do you believe in love?
If so, why?
What is love?
Is love real?
Can you prove love?
How? Who says?
Is my love different to your love? If so, who is right? I think we must conclude wisely that as love is incomprehensible we are not bound to regard it

When you shoot an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey.--Arab proverb

Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it. -Arab proverb

Tell the truth and run. -- Yugoslav proverb

Sentences which simply express moral judgements do not say anything. They are pure expressions of feeling and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood. -- A J Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic, ch6, 1936

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.-- Francis Bacon. 1561-1626. Of Truth.

The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth. Pierre Bayle

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false. Pierre Bayle

As scarce as the truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.-- Josh Billings

Solomon bids us (Prov 23:23) to buy the truth, but doth not tell us what it must cost, because we must get it though it be never so dear. We must love it both shining and scorching. Every parcel of truth is precious as the filings of gold; we must either live with it, or die for it. THOMAS BROOKS

Christians are not to receive anything lightly that concerns faith and salvation. They need to try and examine it over and over. We are not to reject an error ignorantly, but rationally; nor are we to embrace a truth till we have debated and examined whether it is a truth or not. --Thomas Brooks

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. -- Giordano Bruno

Truth may be stretched, but it cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water. ~Miguel de Cervantes

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. -G.K. Chesterton ILN, 4/19/30

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. G. K. Chesterton

Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship -- and not as ends in themselves. --Francis Schaeffer, letter: 1954

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. --Chesterton, _The Man Who Was Orthodox_, 1963

The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth. --William J. Clinton. 10/15/95 speech at Univ. of C T

Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves. --Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) _Lacon_ [1825], Vol 2, No. 108

Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us, as those that are not wholly wrong; as no watches so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right. --C. C. Colton

The truth will make you free, but first it will make you miserable.-- Tom DeMarco

It is the pursuit of truth itself that the modern critics spurn. By reducing all truth to the level of opinion, they deny the legitimacy of distinctives between truth and error. Yet what is the goal of liberal education if not the ongoing search for truth? If education cannot help to separate truth from falsehood, beauty from vulgarity, right from wrong, then what can it teach us? DINESH D'SOUZA

Taxi drivers are always asking me, "Federico, why don't you make pictures we can understand?" I answer them that it is because I tell the truth, and the truth is never clear, while lies are quickly understood by everyone. An honest man is contradictory, and contradictions are more difficult to understand.I Fellini, by Charlotte Chandler,, p.97

The truth doesn't hurt unless it ought to.-- B. C. Forbes (1880-1954) In "The Speaker's Electronic Reference Collection," AApex Software, 1994.

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. ~Mohandas Gandhi

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it: always. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1869 - 1948

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it. --Goethe

Americans understand that truth telling matters, I think. I hope. And I thought the press understood this, but I'm changing my mind. Look at all of the time and energy the media has spent policing George Bush's verbal gaffes while ignoring Gore's lying. While annoying and sometimes embarrassing, a speech problem is almost entirely meaningless. Moses stuttered, for heaven's sake. But lying goes to the heart of politics and turns it black. It is always relevant. And after eight years of Bill Clinton it is supremely relevant. -- Jonah Goldberg, Oct. 2000

Everyone may be entitled to his own opinion but everyone is not entitled to his own truth. Truth is but one.-- DOUG GROOTHIUS

Truth is not determined by majority vote.-- Doug Gwyn

The greatest jihad is to say the truth in front of the king. --Hadith

The only reason reason any one should believe Christianity is that it is true. Its truth rests on historical facts which do not change, truths which are open to tests normally applied to other events or claims. It is not a matter of whether it sells or whether it works or whether it feels good or provides meaningful experiences. What Christianity teaches is the correct explanation of reality. DICK HALVERSON

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more interesting. - William Randolph Hearst (863 &endash; 1951)

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated ; the only question is; "Is it true in and for itself?" ~Georg Hegel (1770-1831), The Philosophy of History, ch.2 (1837)

No one truth is rightly held till it is clearly conceived and stated, and no single truth is adequately comprehended till it is viewed in harmonious relations to all the other truths of the system of which Christ is the centre.- A. A. Hodge

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not. --Eric Hoffer

Live truth instead of professing it. - Elbert Hubbard

Veracity is the heart of morality. -- Thomas Henry Huxley

Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate. Thomas Jefferson

There is no truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world. -- Thomas Jefferson

......and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. Jefferson, Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. draft.Section I

Inconsistencies ... cannot both be right; but, imputed to man, they may both be true.
Samuel Johnson: Rasselas [the character Imlac]

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences you are to tell the truth. Johnson (1709-1784)

Truth is scarcely to be heard but by those from whom it can serve no interest to conceal it.- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #150

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee. - Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Do not be influenced by the importance of the writer, and whether his learning be great or small, but let the love of pure truth draw you to read. Do not inquire, "Who said this?" but pay attention to what is said. --Thomas à Kempis'_The Imitation of Christ_ [c. 1420]: --Bk. 1, ch. 4: "On Prudence in Action"

Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not suggestions but ten commandments. -- TED KOPPEL, Duke commencement address

Satan knows that he can undermine the structure of the church by slyly removing just one fundamental doctrine at a time. He frequently loosens a large foundation gradually, chiseling it away bit by bit. That is why tolerance for the sake of peace may be dangerous. One step by giving in will lead to a next step, and will not God visit us with blindness if we deliberately darken the truth He has graciously entrusted to us. How shall we justify ourselves if we permit even a little of the truth to be laid aside? Is that ours to do? When peace is injurious to the truth, peace must give way. Peace with God is of greater value than peace with men.. -- Abraham Kuyper

Your Hindus certainly sound delightful. But what do they deny? That's always been my trouble with Indians--to find any proposition they would pronounce false. But truth must surely involve exclusions? --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Letters of C.S. Lewis_ [1966], "8 February 1956" (In a letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, O.S.B. who was in India at the time.)

One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience's mind the question of Truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true but because it is good.... You have to keep forcing them back, and again back, to the real point. --God in the Dock , CS Lewis

Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that 'only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations.' You see the little rift? 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' That's the game."
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters end of chapter XXIII

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa. Lazarus Long (R. A. Heinlein)

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
James Russell Lowell

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. --Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Peace if possible, truth at all costs. Martin Luther

You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all. But let all you tell be truth.-- Horace Mann

What must we contend for? For every truth of God, according to its moment and weight. The dust of gold is precious; and it is dangerous to be careless in the lesser truths: There is nothing superfluous in the cannon. - Thomas Manton

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make believe.-- W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938

Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.--Mencken,_Men versus the Man_ III:22

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.-- H. L. Mencken

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realised until personal experience has brought it home." -- John Stuart Mill

It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons. Henry Miller

Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintain'd
Against revolted multitudes the Cause
Of Truth, in word mightier than they in Arms;
And for the testimony of Truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence.
John Milton. 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. Book VI, 29 - 35
Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.-- John Milton The Reason of Church Government. Introduction, Book ii.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.-- John Milton Areopagitica.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? --John Milton Areopagitica.

We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge. --Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) _Essays_, Book III, Chapter 8 [1595], "Of the Art of Conversation"

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth, to see it like it is and to tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth and live with the truth. That's what we'll do.-- Richard M Nixon , Nomination acceptance speech, Miami, 8 Aug 1968, 1968

I let down my friends, I let down my country. I let down our system of government.
Richard M Nixon , The Observer, `Sayings of the Week', 8 May 1977, 1977

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold. Theodore Parker (1810-1860 _A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion_ [1842]

We must always hold truth, as best we can determine it, to be more important, more vital to our self-interest, than our comfort.
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors -- Charles Peguy

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers."William Penn

Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of truth, for then he can be trusted. -- Plato, 'Laws'

After the truth what is there save error?-- Quran 10:32

It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things until the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth. --Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853)

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.-- Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals, 1929

Never assume the obvious is true.-- William Safire

She took to telling the truth; she said she was forty-two and five months. It may have been pleasing to the angels, but her elder sister was not gratified.--Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] (1870-1916) _Reginald_ [1904]

Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless. If our reflex action is always accommodation, regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong. Just as what we may call holiness without love is not God's kind of holiness, so also what we may call love without holiness, is not God's kind of love... A false spirit of accommodation is sweeping the world as well as the Church, including those who claim the label of evangelical. Francis Schaeffer The Great Evangelical Disaster

"There are no truths," he (Nietzsche) wrote. "only interpetations." Now, either what Nietzsche said is true - in which case it is not true, since there are no truths - or it is false. - Roger Scruton, The West and the Rest, ISI Books, 2002, p 74

A writer who says there are no truths, or that all truth is merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't. --Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy.

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness. - Dodie Smith (1896-1990) "I Capture the Castle," 1948.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Truth is always the strongest argument.-- Sophocles (B.C. 495-406s

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth: anonymously and posthumously. -- Thomas Sowell

Long ago I ceased to count heads. Truth is usually in the minority in this evil world. C. H. SPURGEON

The quickest way to slay error is to proclaim the truth. The surest mode of extinguishing falsehood is to boldly advocate Scripture principles. Scolding and protesting will not be so effectual in resisting the progress of error as the clear proclamation of the truth in Jesus. CHARLES SPURGEON

Henry the Eighth would listen to Hugh Latimer though he denounced him to his face and even sent him on his birthday a handkerchief, on which was marked the text, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." (Hebrews 13:4) Henry cried, "Let us hear honest Hugh Latimer." Even bad men admire those who tell them the truth. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) _Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit_ Volume 24 [1880]

Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths. -- Baroness Edith Summerskill

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)_Walden_ [1854], "Conclusion"

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -- Leo Tolstoy

Truth is a glorious but hard mistress. She never consults, bargains or compromises.--A. W. Tozer

I would rather know the truth than be happy in ignorance. If I cannot have both truth and happiness, give me truth. We'll have a long time to be happy in heaven. --A. W. Tozer

"Let God be true but every man a liar" is the language of true faith. --A. W. Tozer

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell. -- Harry S Truman

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. --Mark Twain

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. Mark Twain

Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth. - quoted by Maisie Ward, in Gilbert Keith Chesterton, p. 156, with no citation.

Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves. --Daniel Webster

The present always needs to be deprived of its pretensions to being the most elevated moment in the story of the human spirit (or, as some charismatics would have it, the most dramatic), for this opens wide the door to pride and folly.-- David F. Wells No Place For Truth, p. 100

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.-- Oscar Wilde

I believe that in the end truth will conquer.--John Wycliffe (?1330-1384) in The Lion Christian Quotation Collection, 1997

But it is good to repeat fundamental truths and, if possible, bring them into new and fresh focus. A great truth is like a mountain that one walks around, and the changes of its contour, as one moves his position, only emphasize and revivify its majesty. - N C Wyeth

To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true. But if denial of the statement is also true, then all religions are not true. -- Ravi Zacharias "Jesus Among Other Gods"

Trust - christiansquoting.org.uk

Trust in Allah, but tie your camel. --Arabian proverb.

Tust in God but lock your doors -- russian proverb

Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore. -- Russian Proverb

Trust everybody, but cut the cards -- finley peter dunne

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal. --Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

Trolls - christiansquoting.org.uk

I post thought-provoking discussion starters, you are contentious, he trolls.- Graham Nye

Trinity - christiansquoting.org.uk

What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussions concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity? For verily it is not deep words that make a man holy and upright; it is a good life which maketh a man dear to God. I had rather feel contrition than be skillful in the definition thereof. If thou knewest the whole Bible, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what should this profit thee without the love and grace of God? ... Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), Of the Imitation of Christ

The doctrine of the blessed Trinity is a reminder of the supernaturalness of biblical Christianity. The doctrine defies rationalization, yet it provides for the believer the answer to the unity and diversity of the world.... Robert P. Lightner (1931- )

Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity, THERE ARE NO ANSWERS.
F A Schaeffer He Is There And He Is Not Silent

We must appreciate that our Christian forefathers understood this very well in A.D. 325, when they stressed the three Persons in the Trinity, as the Bible had clearly set this forth. Let us notice that it is not that they invented the Trinity in order to give an answer to the philosophical questions which the Greeks of that time understood. It is quite the contrary. The unity and diversity problem was there, and the Christians realised that in the Trinity, as it had been taught in the Bible, they had an answer that no one else had. They did not invent the Trinity to meet the need; the Trinity was already there and it MET the need. They realised that in the Trinity we have what all these people are arguing about and defining but for which they have no answer.
Let us notice again that this is not the BEST answer; it is the ONLY answer. Nobody else, no philosophy, has ever given us an answer for unity and diversity. So when people ask whether we are embarrassed intellectually by the Trinity, I always switch it over into their own terminology -- unity and diversity. Every philosophy has this problem, and no philosophy has an answer. Christianity does have an answer in the existence of the Trinity. The only answer to what exists is that He, the triune God, is there. F A Schaeffer He Is There And He Is Not Silent

We need the full biblical content concerning God: that He is the infinite-personal God, and the triune God. Now let me express this in a couple of other ways. One way to say it is that without the infinite-personal God, the God of personal unity and diversity, there is no answer to the existence of what exists. We can say it in another way, however, and that is that the infinite-personal God, the God who is Trinity, has spoken. He is there, and He is not silent. There is no use having a silent God. We would not know anything about Him. He has spoken and told us what He is and that He existed before all else, and so we have the answer to the existence of what is.
He is not silent. The reason we have the answer is because the infinite-personal God, the full Trinitarian God, has not been silent. He has told us who He is. Couch your concept of inspiration and revelation in these terms, and you will see how it cuts down into the warp and woof of modern thinking. HE IS NOT SILENT. That is the reason we know. It is because He has spoken. What has He told us? Has He told us only about other things? No, He has told us truth about Himself -- and because He has told us truth about Himself -- that He is the infinite-personal, triune God -- we have the answer to existence. Or we may put it this way: at the point of metaphysics -- of Being, of existence -- general and special revelation speak with one voice. All these ways of saying it are really expressing the same thing from slightly different viewpoints.
In conclusion, man, beginning with himself, can define the philosophical problem of existence, but he cannot generate from himself the answer to the problem. The answer to the problem of existence is that the infinite-personal, triune God is there, and that the infinite-personal, triune God is not silent.
F A Schaeffer He Is There And He Is Not Silent

[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. -- Mark Twain

Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light; and I will explain to you the mode of the divine existence. John Wesley

Q. 9. How many persons are there in the Godhead?
A. There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties. WESTMINSTER LARGER CATECHISM #9

Archbishop’s Homeless Charity Suspends Christian for Answering Questions about His Faith to Colleague at Work

Christian Legal Centre says,'An employee at a Christian ‘homeless’ charity, whose Patron is the Archbishop of Canterbury, s been suspended for answering questions about his faith to a colleague at work.

David Booker, aged 44, a Christian from Southampton , has worked for the English Churches Housing Group for almost four years .On 26 March, whilst working an evening shift, he had a 35 minute conversation with female colleague Fiona Vardy. Ms Vardy asked him about his faith and beliefs. During the conversation he was asked the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and same-sex marriages, which Mr Booker explained. The conversation was free-flowing and Mr Booker clearly explained that he had homosexual friends and that he was not homophobic.

The following day he was summoned by his employers and told that he was suspended for “events that happened last night”. On March 30, he was given a formal suspension notice alleging that: “ On 26 March 09, whilst on shift with Fiona Vardy, you seriously breached ECHG’s (English churches House group) Code of conduct by promoting your religious views which contained discriminatory comments regarding a person’s sexual orientation.”

Threatened with the sack for ‘gross misconduct’ under the charity’s Culture and Diversity Code of Conduct, Mr Booker has sought the advice of the Christian Legal Centre (CLC), who in turn have instructed Paul Diamond, the leading human rights lawyer to represent him.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, barrister and director of CLC said: “Mr Booker has been suspended since 27 March for two weeks pending investigation. No date has been set for the investigation and disciplinary hearing. This case shows that in today’s politically correct, increasingly secularized society, even consenting reasonable discussion on religion between two employees is being twisted by employers to discriminate and silence the Christian voice and freedom of expression.

“To date, the English Churches Housing Group is funded largely by churches throughout Hampshire, who we are sure will be shocked at the attitude and action taken by a Christian organisation towards a Christian employee. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as Patron, has confirmed the Church’s teaching on marriage, same-sex relationships and homosexuality and that is in the public domain. We are interested to know whether his Patronage is now under threat under the charity’s Culture and Diversity Code of Conduct?”.

ECHG (English Churches House Group) has recently been taken over by Society of St James ( a charity providing homes for the homeless).'

Transcendence - christiansquoting.org.uk

Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God - such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is now passing.- Martin Buber, quoted in The Eclipse of Heaven, A J Conyers, Inter Varsity Press, 1992.

What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope,and if our heart did not hasten beyond this world through the midst of the darkness upon the path illumined by the word and Spirit of God? - John Calvin on Hebrews 11:1.

If within us we find nothing over us we succumb to what is around us.- P T Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, 1907

The new age cannot live on naturalism or on secularism. Life becomes sterile and futile without the depth and power which come from participation in eternal realities. But this new age cannot any more successfully live on religious faiths that are out of harmony with known truth, or that hang loose in the air, cut apart from the fundamental intellectual culture of the age. The hour has struck for the serious business of rediscovering the foundations, and of interpenetrating all life and thought with the truths and realities of a victorious religious faith. ... Rufus Jones (1863-1948), Christian Faith in a New Age

Tourism - christiansquoting.org.uk

Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? -George Carlin

Like tourists huffing and puffing to reach the peak we forget the view on the way up-- Nietzsche

Totalitarian - christiansquoting.org.uk

From the descriptive point of view, the difference between the physician and the veterinarian is that the former treats human diseases or sick people, whereas the latter treats animal diseases or sick animals. From the moral and political point of view, the difference between them is that the physician is expected to be the agent of the persons who are his patients, whereas the veterinarian is expected to be the agent of persons who own sick animals. In proportion, then, as the physician becomes the agent of the State and in proportion as the State is totalitarian, the physician becomes, from a moral and political point of view, a veterinarian- that is, the agent of a State that owns its citizens, just as the farmer owns his animals. This is why killing animals is part of the normal function of the veterinarian and why incarcerating people is, and killing them may yet become, a part of the normal function of the physician employed by the Therapeutic State.--Thomas Szasz

Total depravity- christiansquoting.org.uk

If you think that there is good in everybody, you haven't met everybody.

I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like, but I do know what the heart of a good man is like... and it is terrible.

Every new generation is a fresh invasion of savages. --Hervey Allen, "Anthony Adverse"

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.-- Aristophanes

The bad man is continually at war with, and in opposition to, himself. -- Aristotle

The doctrine of Total Inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue, nor that human nature is evil in itself, nor that man's spirit is inactive, and much less does it mean that the body is dead. What it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive. -- Boettner

There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.--Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 249.

At this day... the earth sustains on her bosom many monster minds, minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God. Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him different from the brutes; ... but, substituting Nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God. -- John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.
Calvin on 1Cor 1:20.

We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.-- Winston Churchill

If man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend on it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast.--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, _Table Talk_, August 30, 1833

Denying the Enlightenment doctrine of a person‚s innate goodness, evangelicals believe in the total depravity of humanity. All the goodness that exists in human nature is tainted by sin, and no dimension of life is free from its effects. Humanity was originally created perfect; but through the fall sin entered the race, making people corrupt at the very core of their being, and this spiritual infection has been passed on from generation to generation. Sin is not an inherent weakness or ignorance but positive rebellion against God‚s law. It is moral and spiritual blindness and bondage to powers beyond one‚s control. The root of sin is unbelief, and its manifestations are pride, lust for power, sensuousness, selfishness, fear, and disdain for spiritual things. The propensity to sin is within a person from birth, its power cannot be broken by human effort, and the ultimate result is complete and permanent separation from the presence of God. - Pierard, R.V. and Elwell, W.A. (1984 & 2001). "Evangelicalism." In W. Elwell (Ed.), *Evangelical Dictionary of Theology* (pp. 405-410). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Most people are just selfish and egocentric, wanting what they want, when they want it, without regard to the rest of society. The vast majority of people are cave-men in designer clothes, without morals or ethics. -- Frederick A. Farris, Las_Vegas_Sun (Thu 25 Apr 2002)

I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect men. - Alexander Hamilton

Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), _Pillars of Society_

He who undertakes to guide men must never lose sight of the fact that they are malicious monkeys.... The folly of the revolution was in aiming to establish virtue on the earth. When you want to make men good and wise, free, moderate, generous, you are led inevitably to the desire of killing them all.
Anatole France(1844-1924)

Alongside getting faith out of a heart that is utterly hostile and unbelieving, making a silk purse out of a sow's ear or getting blood from a turnip is child's play. JOHN GERTSNER

Seward: "One should think that sickness, and the view of death, would make more men religious."
Johnson: "Sir, they do not know how to go about it: they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick, than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of calculation." - James Boswell: Life of Johnson

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.-- Samuel Johnson

Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild. --Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)

In youth, in middle age, and now after many battles, I find nothing in me but corruption. --John Knox (1505-1572) [Scottish Protestant reformer]

We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with. --CS Lewis

Man's problem has never been not knowing what he should do. His problem, rather, has been that he lacks power to do what he knows he should. Paul E.Little

It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone˜that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The men of the educated minority, no doubt, know more than their predecessors, and of some of them, perhaps, it may be said that they are more civilized˜though I should not like to be put to giving names˜but the greatmasses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge.
H. L. Mencken, "Homo neanderthalis", The Baltimore Evening Sun, June 29, 1925

It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons. -- Henry Miller

Worm theology is too high for me. -- Jack Miller

"You do not think highly of men, Mr Eliot." "I am one," I said. --C. P. Snow, _The Light & the Dark_

The Human Race has improved everything except the Human Race.-- Adlai Stevenson

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.-- Mark Twain Following the Equator, Chapt. XXX, Vol I

I do not wish to divulge or publish this because of the evil nature of men. ~ Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519, quoted in Serge Bramly , Leonardo (1988) - writing in his Notebook on his invention of a method of remaining underwater to sink ships.

The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,....neither can he know them' (1 Cor. 2:14). He may have more insight into the things of the world than a believer, but he does not see the deep things of God. A swine may see an acorn under a tree, but he cannot see a star. - THOMAS WATSON

Man, by his Fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.
Westminster Confession.. Of Free Will

Some natural skepticism as to the purity of all human motives came and sat upon my chest.--ZELAZNY, ROGER (1937-1995){Nine Princes in Amber, 1970}

Tongue - christiansquoting.org.uk

I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.-John Calvin

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.- Francis Bacon. 1561-1626. Of Discourse.

God has given us two ears, but one tongue, to show that we should be swift to hear, but slow to speak. God has set a double fence before the tongue, the teeth and the lips, to teach us to be wary that we offend not with our tongue.- Thomas Watson

Books read in April 2009 (3)

1. Banner in the West: A Spiritual History of Lewis and Harris by John Macleod

There is no place like The Long Island. There is no church history book like this one. This is no pretendedly objective academic church history. It is by a man commited to his home, its religion and culture. He writes with passion and humour. It is rare for a Christian tome to make one laught out loud as this one does, at of all things, church discipline. The Outer Hebridees are the most Christian part of the UK. Where else do people still leave houses unlocked? It helps if you have visited to know the places described here. You journey through the history of Christianity in Scotland, from its first missionaries to Reformation, the coming of evangelical Presbyterianism and its subsequent splits. The divisions are dealt with in historical detail save for the latest split in the Free Church over which the author maintains a discreet silence as his father was at its centre. Here you learn the church history of a special island but much more also about its distinctive culture. Where else has a minister refused to meet the Queen because he adjudged he a sabbath breaker? As well as laughter this book also moved me to tears over the disaster of January 1919 which was the worst British peacetime maritime loss since the Titanic. The reaction of one elder to the loss of his sons is a wonderful story of island Calvinistic piety. A special place, special people and a very special history book full of anecdotes of Christian piety and pastoral care. No hagiography. but some debinking of A W Pink and Duncan Campbell and the latter's claim to have started revival. MacLeod relates how the revival predated the arrival of Campbell. It is astonishing to read how sober Presbyterians could behave like the followers of Wimber were later to do. This is a book of surprises.

2. The Canvas Chapel by Edward Brinley Little

This is the best account of WWII army life I have ever read. It is the story of an ordinary soldier from South Wales who was a driver in N African and Italian campaigns. He was a Christian who sought to help his comrades spiritually eventually becoming a Baptist minister. One reads of the boredom, hardship and risk in being a soldier. After being dive bombed in N Africa he carried supplies to the front line at Monte Cassino. This is described as the hardest fighting of the war, the only place where the conflict resembled WWI. Front line infantry said the drivers did a more dangerous job than them. On two succsesive nights he was recommended for the Military Medal for helping the wounded under fire. As a result he was given the medal straight away in the field. A brave man indeed.

3, Make Your Church's Money Work: Achieving Financial Integrity in Your Congregation (Ministering the Master's Way) by John Temple

This is an excellent primer on church finances and good stewardship. It gives basic teaching on how churches should organise their finances according to Biblical principles. Giving is taught from grace not law. There are helpful sections on remuneration for church workers, I only have a couple of minor quibbles. I do not think that churches can direct that all giving should go through them. My experience is that church treasurers do not want the hassle of designated giving tp para-church groups. My second quibble is that the pay scale for pastors does not take account of whether the wife is earning. If she chooses to do this why should the married man be paid more than the single? It does not happen in any other work.

Tolerance - christiansquoting.org.uk

The way to disarm any idea is to tolerate it.

Tolerance to all faiths is obedience to none.

There is a rule in sailing that the more maneuverable ship should give way to the less maneuverable. I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relations as well. -- Joyce Brothers

There are those who believe something, and therefore will tolerate nothing; and on the other hand, those who tolerate everything, because they believe nothing. -R. Browning

There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.-G.K. Chesterton

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. G.K. Chesterton

Creeds must disagree: it is the whole fun of the thing. If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit; but, obviously, we must argue. Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent's faith is to say I must not discuss it . . . It is absurd to have a discussion on Comparative Religions if you don't compare them. -- G K Chesterton

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. -- G. K. Chesterton(1874-1936)

In the clash of civilizations, the West seems bent on unilateral disarmament -- that is, unless people are willing to risk being ostracized by their neighbors who have a badly misshapen notion of tolerance. But thatís exactly what Christians are called to do -- speak the truth in love. - Chuck Colson, BreakPoint, 16 May 2002

Tolerance used to mean an open market for the free discussion of everyone's truth claims&emdash;not anymore. Over the past few decades, it has been redefined to be the notion that not only should I have the right to do what I want to do, but you have to approve of it, as well.- "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" 2 May 2003

Tolerance does not...do anything, embrace anyone, champion any issue. It wipes the notes off the score of life and replaces them with one long bar of rest. It does not attack error, it does not champion truth, it does not hate evil, it does not love good.--Walter Farrell, _The Looking Glass_, 1951

Toleration is a good thing in its place; but you cannot tolerate what will not tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat. J. A. Froude

I respect those who resist me; but I cannot tolerate them.- Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970) In "The Ultimate Success Quotations Library," by http://www.cyber-nation.com, 1997.

One hears endless calls for 'tolerance' and 'civility'. But those calls invariable ask Christians to be 'tolerant' and 'civil' about being gagged in public life. No one seems to ask, in the name of pluralism, that the atheist 'tolerate' the creche. No, the civility is all on one side and the toleration is a sham--in which Christians are complicit so long as they play by the current misconceived rules. So, yes, Virginia (and Rhode Island and Jersey City and Pittsburgh and Scranton)...'tis the season to fight injunctions. Christmas (or Hanukkah or Ramadan) is only truly worth celebrating when Christians (or Jews or Muslims) can proclaim--even on the public square--their unadulterated message. That is what American religious freedom is about, not about holiday scenes that hid Jesus in his manger behind the jolly snowman Frosty and the red-nosed reindeer Rudolph. -- John Grondelski, Seton Hall professor of Christian ethics, quoted _First Things, Dec. 2000

Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draft from here.-- Groucho Marx, on Chico Marx

Tolerance is only another name for indifference. -- W. Somerset Maugham A Writer's Notebook

One of the paradoxes of liberal societies arises from the commitment to tolerance. A society committed to respecting the viewpoints and customs of diverse people within a pluralistic society inevitably encounters this challenge: will you tolerate those who themselves do not agree to respect the viewpoints or customs of others? Paradoxically, the liberal commitment to tolerance requires, at some point, intolerance for those who would reject that very commitment. - Minow, M. (1990). Putting up and putting down: Tolerance reconsidered. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 28, 409-448.

Toleration is not the *opposite* of intoleration, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.
Thomas Paine, _Rights of Man_

I hate people who are intolerant.~ Laurence J. Peter.

It is easy to be tolerant when you do not care. Clement F. Rogers

No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. -- Francis Schaeffer

Historically, then, tolerance was the liberal, secular answer to the inability of conservative religionists to compromise with those who differed from them. Tolerance, in this sense, is relatively new, not something even thought desirable through most of human history. After all, why tolerate error? This is precisely what tolerance requires of us. Genuine tolerance, as opposed to its pale counterfeits, requires us to allow those who espouse or live out ideas we think wrong, perhaps even harmful, not only to do so but also to try to persuade others to do the same. - Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/9t1/9t1042.html

... one is not tolerant of something unless one objects to it. I do not tolerate something I either accept or am indifferent to, because it requires nothing of me. Most social liberals, for instance, cannot rightfully be said to be tolerant regarding homosexual behavior since they have no objection to it. You do not have to tolerate that which you accept or affirm. If you want to know whether a liberal is tolerant, ask what he or she thinks of Jesse Helms or Pat Robertson or Kenneth Starr.
If tolerance requires an initial objection, then conservatives, ironically, may be much more tolerant than liberals, because there are so many more things to which they object. The least tolerant person is the person who accepts everything, because such a person is not required to overcome any internal objections. To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, turnips are singularly tolerant. - Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42.

Too much of what passes as tolerance in America is not the result of principled judgment but is simple moral indifference. Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42.

If I would stop something if I could, but am powerless to do so, I am not tolerant, merely impotent. True tolerance means I voluntarily withhold what power I have to coerce someone else's behavior. Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42.

The intolerant person is the one thing that cannot be tolerated, the one person who must be shamed or silenced. A guest commentator on National Public Radio shocked even his progressive hosts, but spoke for many, when he objected to the Southern Baptist belief that a lot of people are going to hell: "The evaporation of 4 million [people] who believe in this crap would leave the world a better place." (It's comforting to see that the dreaded Religious Right is not the only source of intolerance in our society.) Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42.

Nevertheless‚ - and here's the rub‚ - it is widely acknowledged that no moral person tolerates everything. For some, the intolerable grows largely from issues of justice and fairness‚ - racism, sexism, homophobia, economic inequity. Such people are divided on an issue like pornography, where values that they hold with equal passion‚ - freedom of expression versus ending the exploitation of women‚ - collide. Given that everyone agrees that some things should not be tolerated, the real issue should not be whether one is tolerant or intolerant, but what's included on one's list. Daniel Taylor, Deconstructing the gospel of tolerance., Christianity Today. January 11, 1999 Vol. 43, No. 1, Page 42.

No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen. Wendell L. Willkie

Foster mother 'struck off' after Muslim girl converts

A foster mother has been struck off by a council after a teenage Muslim girl in her care became a Christian.

The carer, who has ten years’ experience and has looked after more than 80 children, said she was ‘devastated’ by the decision.
‘This is my life,’ she revealed. ‘It is not just a job for me. It is a vocation. I love what I do. It is also my entire income. I am a single carer, so that is all I have to live on.’
The foster mother said she had recently bought a larger car and had been renting a farmhouse, with a pony in a field, so that she could provide more disadvantaged children with a new life.
‘That was always my dream and then suddenly, bang, it was gone. I am now in a one-bedroom flat,’ she added.

The girl is understood to be back with members of her family, who have not been told of her conversion. A second girl the woman was fostering has been moved to another carer.
The woman insisted that, although she was a Christian, she had put no pressure on the Muslim girl, who was 16 at the time, to be baptised.
But council officials allegedly accused her of failing to ‘respect and preserve’ the child’s faith and tried to persuade the girl to reconsider her decision.
The carer, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is now preparing to take legal action against the council with the support of the girl, now 17, who also cannot be named.
Her case follows the controversy over Caroline Petrie, 45, the Christian nurse in Somerset suspended without pay in December for offering to pray for an elderly woman patient. She was reinstated this week.
Yesterday, Christians expressed outrage over the foster carer’s treatment, saying that it was a basic right for people to be able to change their religion and the woman should be praised, not punished.
Mike Judge, a spokesman for the Christian Institute, a pressure group which is funding her case, said: ‘I cannot imagine that an atheist foster carer would be struck off if a Christian child in her care stopped believing in God.
‘This is the sort of double standard which Christians are facing in modern Britain. In recent months, we have seen grandparents, a nurse, adoption agencies, firemen, registrars, elderly care homes and now a foster carer being punished because of the Christian beliefs they hold. It has got to stop.’
The carer, a mother-of-two in her 50s, has worked with young children for much of her life and became a foster parent for the local authority in the North of England in 1999.

In 2007, she was asked to look after the girl, who had been assaulted by a family member. She told council officials that she was very happy to support the girl in her religion and culture. ‘We had a multicultural household and I had no problems helping the young person maintain her faith of birth,’ she said. ‘I have always prided myself in being very professional in what I do. If something works for a young person, whether I agree with it or not, I am happy to support them in that.’
But the girl, whom the foster mother describes as caring and intelligent, defied expectations by choosing not to wear overtly Muslim clothes or to eat Halal food.

The girl, whose interest in Christianity had begun at school some time before her foster placement, also made it clear that she wanted to go to church.
The carer, an Anglican who attends a local evangelical church, said: ‘I did initially try to discourage her. I offered her alternatives. I offered to find places for her to practise her own religion. I offered to take her to friends or family. But she said to me from the word go, “I am interested and I want to come.” She sort of burst in.’
The carer said that the girl’s social workers were fully aware that she was going to church and had not raised any objections.
The girl had told her auxiliary social worker of her plans to convert before she was baptised in January last year, and the social worker had appeared to give her consent.
‘At that point the brakes were off,’ the carer said. ‘I couldn’t have stopped her if I had wanted to. She saw the baptism as a washing away of the horrible things she had been through and a symbol of a new start.’
Three months later, however, senior officials complained that they had not been fully informed of the girl’s intentions to become a Christian.
They said that she should have undergone counselling to ensure that she understood the implications, especially as such conversions are dealt with harshly in some Muslim countries.
The foster carer said, however, that the girl had thought about her decision very carefully and was aware that members of her family might react strongly, so she was adamant that they should not be told.
The carer said that as the auxiliary social worker knew about the baptism, she had not thought it necessary to tell the fostering team as well.
But she received a phone call from the fostering manager who was ‘incandescent with rage’ that the baptism had gone ahead.
The carer said: ‘Up to that point, we had had a good relationship, so I was quite taken aback. I was very shocked.’
In April, council officials told the girl that she should not attend any church activity for six months, so that she could reconsider the wisdom of becoming a Christian.
The carer was also instructed to discourage the girl from participating in any Christian activities, even social events. The council then told the carer there had been a breakdown of trust and in November removed her from the register.
‘It never occurred to me that they would go that far,’ she said. ‘I was concerned that the council seemed to view Christianity in such a negative light. I wonder whether if it had gone the other way – if one of my Christian young people had decided to embrace another faith – there would have been this level of fuss.’
She added that the girl has been devastated by the experience.

The carer’s solicitor Nigel Priestley said: ‘There is no doubt that the event that provoked the council was the decision by the girl to be baptised. This girl was 16 and has the right to make this choice, so for the council to react in this way is totally disproportionate. Even at this late hour, we hope that the council will resolve the issue.’
A council spokes-man said: ‘From the details provided, we believe that this information relates to a child who is the subject of a final care order in favour of the council. In those circumstances, we are unable to pass any comment.
‘We would never be able to comment on sensitive issues surrounding a child in care. ‘To do so would be irresponsible and in this particular case may put the child at risk of harm.’

For further information, contact Nigel Priestley at Ridley & Hall Solicitors Tel: 01484 538421 or email info@ridleyandhall. co.uk

I think the girl could have a case unner human rights law to take on this dhimmi social services department.

Toasts - christiansquoting.org.uk

May you never lie, steal, cheat or drink. But if you must lie, lie in each other's arms. If you must steal, steal kisses. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink with us, your friends.

Here's a health to all those that we love,
Here's a health to all those that love us,
Here's a health to all those that love them -
that love those - that love them -that love those - that love us.

Titles - christiansquoting.org.uk

Empty heads are very fond of long titles.--German Proverb

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.--Niccolo Machiavelli

I weigh the man, not his title: 'tis not the king's inscription can make the metal better or heavier.--William Wycherley

Time - christiansquoting.org.uk

So many pedestrians, so little time.

Give us back our eleven days!
Popular cry in England after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. 2 September 1752 was immediately followed by 14 September 1752.

Hours are Time's shafts, and one comes winged with death. --Scottish Clock Motto

Loss and Possession, Death and Life are one.
There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
Inscription on sundial
I am a shadow, so art thou,
I mark the time, dost thou?
Inscription on sundial

When thou dost look upon my face,
To learn the time of day:
Think how my shadow keeps its pace,
As thy life flies away.
Take, mortal this advice from me
And so resolve to spend
They life on earth, that heaven shall be
Thy home when time shall end.
Inscription on sundial

You can't turn back the clock but you can wind it up again.

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.

You can find the time for the people and things that are most important to you.

How dreadfully silent is the ticking of time

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, (121-180), Roman Emperor

It dawns on me more and more how trivial and short our lifespan is. It is like smoke; it is like a flower, it is like grass, it is like a butterfly&emdash;for it passes so quickly, flying away. Nobody, no one can bring back wasted years. One wishes that one would have always lived with Eternity in mind. - Emmy Arnold

There is a hidden double standard. The past can be relativized simply by explaining the misconceptions of the ancient worldview. "The present, however, remains strangely immune from relativization...In other words, the New Testament writers are seen as afflicted with a false consciousness rooted in their time, but the contemporary analyst take the consciousness of his time as an unmixed intellectual blessing. The electricity- and radio-users are placed intellectually above the Apostle Paul.-- PETER BERGER

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.-- Hector Berlioz

When asked what time it is: Do you mean now?..Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra (b. 1925)

We're lost, but we're making good time...Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra (b. 1925)

Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.- The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.- Ps. 90:12

Roman Church historian Dionysius Exiguus (ca.500_550), in calculating his history of the Christian Church, took 25 March as the supposed date of the Annunciation. March 25th afterward became the first day of the calendar year, until the Gregorian Calendar Reform of 1582 changed the day to January 1st.-- Bill Blake

Brand's Asymmetry
The past can only be known, not changed. The future can only be changed, not known. -- Stewart Brand

Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose. Oh, that God would make me more fruitful and spiritual.... David Brainerd (1718-1747)

Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. -- Art Buchwald

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. -- Charles Buxton

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. --Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

If you don't think every day is a good day, just try missing one. --Cavett Robert

There's time enough, but none to spare.N: Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) "The Marrow of Tradition," 1901.

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.-- G.K. Chesterton Tremendous Trifles

Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.--William Jefferson Clinton, Inaugural Address (January 20, 1993)

Time goes, you say? Ah, no!
Alas, Time stays, *we* go.
Austin Dobson (1840-1921). "The Paradox of Time".

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.--- Peter F. Drucker

It is never too late to be what you might have been. --George Eliot [Marian Evans Cross] (1819-1880)

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.--Emerson

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Poor Richard's Almanac [1746], June

We have passed a lot of water since then. -Sam Goldwyn

The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post. Thomas Holcroft

Think to yourself that every day is your last. --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65-8 BC) _Epistles_, Book I, Epistle iv, Line 13

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you, before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my fingers into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch my self taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want all the more for your return.-Mary Jean Irion

Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.- Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #108

Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.... Samuel Johnson

Time's fun when you're having flies.-- Kermit the Frog

God is never too late, nor too early, but just on time.-- R T Kendall

The future is that time when you'll wish you had done what you aren't doing now. You can‚t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. -- Charles F. Kettering

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional", 1897

It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth--and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up--that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had. -- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! ~ Abraham Lincoln

Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it, you can never get it back.... Harvey Mackay

That virgin, vital, beautiful day: today -- Stephane Mallarme 1842-1898, Plusieurs sonnets (1881)

All the gold in the world cannot buy a dying man one more breath - so what does that make today worth?" - Og Mandino

When people ask me to speak at some meeting or to lecture or deliver anaddress they sometimes say: 'Professor, how much time would you like?' To which I reply: 'Well - I do pretty good with a microcentury!' This sure gives them a quandry - a dilemma - a puzzle - which is, of course, just my intention. Cruel - wicked - calculating - all with the intent to make them THINK. So - quickly now - how long do _you_ think a microcentury is?- Professor Julius Sumner Miller, "Millergrams", Ure Smith, Sydney, 1966, Q64.

We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it's gone -- its value is incontestable.Joyce Carol Oates (1938-____) A: In "Words of Women Quotations for Success," by Power Dynamics Publishing, 1997.

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present.-- Babatunde Olatunji

You are eternity's hostage. A captive of time.--Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)_Night_ [1957]

My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New;
Old Year! a parting word that's true,
For we've been comrades, you and I--
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!
-Robert W. Service

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.-- Shakespeare, Richard II

Five decades? Six? Seven? How long should it take to understand that the life of a community cannot be reduced to politics or wholly encompassed by government? The time in which we live has unfathomable depths beneath it. Our age is a mere film on the surface of time.--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, _November 1916_

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do. -- Thomas Sowell

Right now counts forever. R. C. SPROUL

A man who does nothing never has time to do anything. - C H Spurgon

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
R.L.Stevenson, "Bed in Summer"

How men hate waiting while their wives shop for clothes and trinkets; how women hate waiting, often for much of their lives, while their husbands shop for fame and glory. Thomas Szas

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends. -- Jeremy Taylor, _Holy Living_, 1650

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Alfred Tennyson_In Memoriam_ CVI (1850)

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.~James Thurber

We have uniformly rejected all letters and declined all discussion upon the question of when the present century ends, as it is one of the most absurd that can engage the public attention, and we are astonished to find it has been the subject of so much dispute, since it appears plain. The present century will not terminate till January 1, 1801, unless it can be made out that 99 are 100... It is a silly, childish discussion, and only exposes the want of brains of those who maintain a contrary opinion to that we have stated -- The Times, 26 December 1799

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear,too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice,but for those who love, time is eternity. - Henry Van Dyke

Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque.(Time bears all away, even memory.) P. Vergilius Maro (Vergil), ECLOGA, IX, 51

There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. --Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

The present always needs to be deprived of its pretensions to being the most elevated moment in the story of the human spirit (or, as some charismatics would have it, the most dramatic), for this opens wide the door to pride and folly.-- David F. Wells No Place For Truth, p. 100

Thinking - christiansquoting.org.uk

A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

Don't be so open-minded your brains fall out.

I don't think so," said René Descartes. Just then, he vanished.

I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

We would worry less about what people think of us, if we knew how seldom they did!

Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire. -- Arab Proverb

Man's mind is a watch that needs winding daily. -- Welsh Proverb

Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.-- Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)

Thinking is sometimes injurious to health. -- Aristotle

Our life is what our thoughts make it.-- Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.)

And the bartender says to Rene Descartes, 'Another beer?' And Descartes says, 'I think not,' and disappears. - Alfred Bester (1913 &endash;-1987)

The average person thinks he isn't. -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), "The Devil's Dictionary", 1911:

No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. -Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought. Robert Browning (1812-1889) "A Death in the Desert."

A man cannot think himself out of mental evil, for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by faith or will. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut. -- G K Chesterton

The mind of each man is the man himself. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.:
William Cowper (1731-1800) Retirement, 623

Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons. Will Cuppy (1884 &endash; 1949)

Leave Him [God] out of our explanations, and the life of thought is decapitated... Without God, everything dries up. ... Martin C. D'Arcy (1888-1976)

There are some days I practise positive thinking and some days I am not positive I am thinking. ~ John M. Eades

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.... Meister Eckhart, Body, Mind and Spirit

My brother, sister, friend - read, study, think, and read again. You were made to think. It will do you good to think; to develop your powers by study. God designed that religion should require thought, intense thought, and should thoroughly develop our powers of thought.-- Charles G. Finney

Thought is fugitive; the mind does not repeat itself; if you do not catch the whisperings of the oracle as they come to you, they are lost forever. You must--and this is absolutely essential--convince yourselves that what is offered you this very moment will never be offered again. --Jean Guitton (1901-1999) _A Student's Guide to Intellectual Work_ [1951], Chapter Eight: "Notes and Courses"

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head." ~ Eric Hoffer

Rule your mind or it will rule you.-- Horace

Most people's minds are like concrete- thoroughly mixed and permanently set. - Seen outside a Manchester church, by David Jackman, in The Communicators Commentary, Ruth 2.

Then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
John Keats
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. -- John Locke

Machines should work. People should think-- Larry Lorenzoni

"It is a great mistake ... to suppose that we who are called 'conservatives' hold desperately to certain beliefs merely because they are old, and are opposed to the discovery of new facts. On the contrary, we welcome new discoveries with all our hearts, and we believe that our cause will come to its rights again only when youth throws off its present intellectual lethargy, refuses to go thoughtlessly with the anti-intellectual current of the age, and recovers some genuine independence of mind. In one sense, indeed, we are traditionalists ... But on the whole, in view of the conditions that now exist, it would perhaps be more correct to call us 'radicals' than to call us 'conservatives' ... We are seeking in particular to arouse youth from its present uncritical repetition of current phrases into some genuine examination of the basis of life; and we believe that Christianity flourishes not in the darkness, but in the light. A revival of the Christian religion, we believe, will deliver mankind from its present bondage. Such a revival will not be the work of man, but the work of the Spirit of God. But one of the means which the Spirit will use, we believe, is an awakening of the intellect ... The new Reformation, in other words, will be accompanied by a new Renaissance; and the last thing in the world that we desire to do is to discourage originality or independence of mind. J. Greshem Machen

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. Charles Mackay

Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here! Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx 1890 - 1977

Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples,don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious. -- Bill Meyer

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. --A. A. Milne, _The House at Pooh Corner_

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
She ransacked her mind but there was nothing in it.
Joyce Carol Oates (1938-____) "Them," pt. 1 ch. 15, 1969.

An Englishman thinks seated; a Frenchman, standing; an American, pacing; an Irishman, afterward. Austin O'Malley

There was a young student called Fred
Who was questioned on Descartes and said:
'It's perfectly clear
That I'm not really here,
For I haven't a thought in my head.
V. R. Ormerod
The Evangelical is not afraid of facts, for he knows that all facts are God's facts; nor is he afraid of thinking, for he knows that all truth is God's truth, and right reason cannot endanger sound faith. He is called to love God with all his mind; and part of what this means is that, when confronted by those who, on professedly rational grounds, take exception to historic Christianity, he must set himself not merely to deplore or denounce them, but to out-think them. It is not his business to argue men into faith, for that cannot be done; but it is his business to demonstrate the intellectual adequacy of the biblical faith and the comparative inadequacy of its rivals, and to show the invalidity of the criticisms that are brought against it. This he seeks to do, not from any motive of intellectual self-justification, but for the glory of God and of His gospel. A confident intellectualism expressive of robust faith in God, whose Word is truth, is part of the historic evangelical tradition. If present-day Evangelicals fall short of this, they are false to their own principles and heritage. - J. I. PACKER

You can think best when you're happiest. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

There is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.- Theodore Roosevelt, 1858 - 1919

Change your thoughts, and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) in "The Book of Success," ed. Richard Shea, 1993.

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being, the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of, is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness - it means more to me than my life itself. -- The Marquis de Sade

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. -- Thomas Szasz

Thoughts have power. Thoughts are energy. You can make your world or break it by your thinking. - Susan Taylor

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.-- Oscar Wilde

Theory - christiansquoting.org.uk

It is the theory that decides what can be observed.-Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.- Jan van de Snepscheut

See and hear me preach

Click on the link. There is translation into Korean. But it did not work on my Mac.