Greg Koukl Quotes
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In matter-ism (materialism), there can be nothing wrong with the world since there is no right way for the world to be in the first place. Everything is just matter in motion and that's that. In Mind-ism (monism) there's a different route to the same problem. There cannot be a problem of evil, even in principle, since in Mind-ism even morality is maya; illusion. In neither story, then (if we're to be consistent with their principles), can the issue of evil be raised. But in real life the problem comes up all the time. That's the difficulty.
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If the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.
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When we encounter new details of our world we fill in more of the spaces. When we discover details that don't seem to fit with our view of the world, we have a kind of "crisis of faith," even if our worldview is not especially religious. We're forced to redraw our "map" a bit.
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Sometimes (at least in principle) God might allow some evil because doing so will prevent a greater evil, and sometimes He might allow evil because it will produce a greater good.
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Something good made something bad possible (though not inevitable). Humans, however, didn't use their freedom well. Instead of using it to honor God in friendship, they used it to rebel.
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Every religion, every philosophy, every individual outlook on life tells a story of reality.
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Almost everyone agrees the world is not the way it ought to be. It's called the problem of evil.
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There is no neutral ground when it comes to the tolerance question. Everybody has a point of view she thinks is right, and everybody passes judgment at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeonholed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too, even people who consider themselves relativists.
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Wisdom is an artful method—a skillful, tactical, fair, and diplomatic use of knowledge.
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Our value is built into us, and nothing and no one can take it away.
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I want people to see that Christianity claims to be true in the deep sense, and if it isn't, then it solves nothing at all.
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In the Story of Reality man does not rescue himself for his own glory. Instead, God rescues man for His glory. Every other story describes what man needs to do to fix himself and save him from whatever else is wrong with the world.
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Some say Christianity is just a crutch. But let's turn the question on its edge for a moment. Is atheism an emotional crutch, wishful thinking? The ax cuts both ways. Perhaps atheists are rejecting God because they've had a bad relationship with their father. Instead of inventing God, have atheists invented non-God? Have they invented atheism to escape some of the frightening implications of God's existence? Think about it.
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According to "matter-ism," matter is all that exists. The only things that are real are physical things in motion governed by natural law. That story starts, "In the beginning were the particles," or, as one famous person put it, "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." No God. No souls. No Heaven or Hell. No miracles. No transcendent morality. Just molecules in motion following the patterns of natural law. This is the story that most atheists, most "skeptics," most humanists, and most Marxists believe is true.
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We want to be on the offensive without being offensive.
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Our souls - our invisible selves - bear the mark of God Himself. We're like God in that we bear His image.
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In the Christian Story, mind and matter - invisible things and visible things - are both real. The Christian view is not the only way of viewing the world, of course. It has competition.
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Reality has a way of injuring people who don't take it seriously. If you don't believe in gravity, for example, and then step off a tall building, you won't just float away.
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Everyone has a belief system in his or her mind, a story about the way they think the world actually is, even if they haven't thought about it much or worked out all the details.
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If the Christian doesn't get reality right, he loses effectiveness in this life. If the non-Christian doesn't get reality right, he loses much in this life, and everything and the next one. As Jesus put it, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?"
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People are tempted to think (understandably) that if God were really good He'd never allow any evil in the world at all. But I don't think a perfectly good God would never permit any evil, and neither would others, I wager, if they thought about it. Rather, I think that a good God always prevents suffering and evil unless He has a good reason to allow it. That's the crux.
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Man had freedom to choose the good, but this same freedom also allowed him to choose the bad. This is called moral freedom.
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Two things have been bothering me for a long time. The first is the tendency of people in general - and that includes Christians - to "relativize" religion. Any religious belief is only "true for," so to speak - true for you or true for me or true for those people on the other side of the world. Second, I've been bothered by how poorly believers understand their own Story. They have bits and pieces, of course, but they're missing enough that they can easily become prey to ideas that sound spiritual, but end up being foolishness in the end.
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God existed before He made anything else, and He Himself was never made. God is eternal.
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In the Story of Reality a man is a helpless slave - enslaved to his own passions, the flesh, and enslaved to a cruel master, the devil - a slave who God Himself rescues and adopts into His own family. It is the very worst news coupled with the very best news.
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If man is not special, if he's not deeply different from any other thing, then there's no good reason not to treat him just like any other thing when it's convenient for us to do so.
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An alternate explanation is not a refutation.
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The word "Christian" means something in particular. The basic outline and general truths and doctrines central to Christianity have been hammered out over 2000 years of reflection on the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. If you disagree with these foundational concerns - the kinds of things I focus on in The Story of Reality - then you're simply not a Christian.
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Worldviews have four elements that help us understand how a person's story fits together: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. "Creation" tells us how things began, where everything came from (including us), the reason for our origins, and what ultimate reality is like. "Fall" describes the problem (since we all know something has gone wrong with the world). "Redemption" gives us the solution, the way to fix what went wrong. "Restoration" describes what the world would look like once the repair begins to take place.
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Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
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