Verity's Book

Quotes

Our church's youth group is called Faith Defenders: we focus largely on apologetics, the means of defending our faith. This past year we have been going through J. Gresham Machen's "Christianity and Liberalism"(incidentally, my father is currently at a youth conference speaking on Machen XD); which is an incredibly lucid and beautiful defense of true Christianity. And I have been struck, more than once, by the lovely and almost tear-springing power of his words.

Look at this quote.

"For us Jesus does not merely put his fingers in the ears and say, 'Be opened'; for us he does not merely say, 'Arise and walk.' For us he has done a greater thing -- for us he died."

I just -- that simple sentence moves me almost to tears every time.

And this:

{speaking on communion with God} "Surely this and this alone is joy.  But it is a joy that is akin to fear. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Were we not safer with a God of our own devising -- love and only love, a Father and nothing else, one before whom we could stand in our own merit without fear? But God help us -- sinful as we are, we would see Jehovah. Despairing, hoping, trembling, half-doubting and half-believing, trusting all to Jesus, we venture into the presence of the very God. And in His presence we live."

My favourite paragraph in the entire book.

Please, this is a book I recommend for everyone, even those not Christians. If you want to truly understand Christianity, you should read this book. Direct, intelligent, structured and sensitive, written by a massively intelligent and sensitive man, it overturns both the idea that Christianity is only fluff and sappy sentiment and the opposite idea that it must be full of legalism and gloom.

"Christianity," says Machen, "is not a theory, nor an ethic, but it is a reality."

Oh, and Machen is funny. Very funny. Dry-wit-play-the-devil's-advocate-use-sarcasm-like-a-master funny.