Quotes about Truth

Any understanding of God that doesn't take into account God's silence is a half truth — in effect, a cruel distortion — and leaves us vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation by leaders who are quite willing to fill in the biblical blanks with what the Holy Spirit never tells us.

This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.

It is wicked to tell a person a lie about God because, if we come to believe the wrong things about God, we will think the wrong things about ourselves, and we will live meanly or badly.

There must be Someone in heaven who knows the truth about me, in highest heaven, some Attorney who can clear my name — My Champion, my Friend, while I'm weeping my eyes out before God. I appeal to the One who represents mortals before God as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor.

The person of faith is not a person who has been born, luckily, with a good digestion and sunny disposition. The assumption by outsiders that Christians are naive or protected is the opposite of the truth: Christians know more about the deep struggles of life than others, more about the ugliness of sin.

People who are forever breaking the rules, trying other roads, attempting to create their own system of values and truth from scratch, spend most of their time calling up someone to get them out of trouble and help repair the damage, and then ask the silly question "What went wrong?" As H. H. Farmer said, "If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters.

The mouth of a good person is a deep, life-giving well, but the mouth of the wicked is a dark cave of abuse.

And then he prayed, "God, I'm asking for two things before I die; don't refuse me—Banish lies from my lips and liars from my presence. Give me enough food to live on, neither too much nor too little. If I'm too full, I might get independent, saying, 'God? Who needs him?' If I'm poor, I might steal and dishonor the name of my God.

Drinking from the beautiful chalice of knowledge is better than adorning oneself with gold and rare gems.

The Bible is basically and overall a narrative - an immense, sprawling, capacious narrative.

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. John pointed him out and called, "This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.

Good poetry survives not when it is pretty or beautiful or nice but when it is true: accurate and honest.