#christianity

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. ↗

— John Paul II

#christianity #jesus-christ #beauty

I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth "home." Before you know it, I am calling luxeries "needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don't think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set. ↗

— John Piper

#fitting-in #materialism #mind-set #missions #money

I have been seized by the power of a great affection. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#jesus #gospel

Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll is easy. True christianity…that's rebellion. ↗

— Alice Cooper

#rock-n-roll #rebellion

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#christianity #atheism

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#communism #communism

‎Those who aren't following Jesus aren't his followers. It's that simple. Followers follow, and those who don't follow aren't followers. To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into a society where justice rules, where love shapes everything. To follow Jesus means to take up his dream and work for it. ↗

— Scot McKnight

#church #discipleship #faith #jesus #religion

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #atheist #christianity #death #god

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christianity #jesus-shock #philosophy #pleasure

Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity. ↗

— Stephen Greenblatt

#christianity #faith #religion #war #faith