To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
R. C. SproulRead
The more I learn about God, the more aware I become of what I don’t know about him.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that deepening one's understanding of God reveals the vastness of the unknown.
R. C. Sproul's quote highlights the paradox of knowledge in relation to spirituality; as one learns more about God, the complexities and mysteries of His nature become more apparent, showing that true understanding leads to greater humility. It emphasizes the idea that seeking knowledge of the divine is an endless journey, and with each new insight, we uncover just how much we still have to learn.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of faith, one might quote this to emphasize ongoing spiritual growth.
To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
I’ve often wondered where Jesus would apply His hastily made whip if He were to visit our culture. My guess is that it would not be money-changing tables in the temple that would feel His wrath, but the display racks in Christian bookstores.
The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it's too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?
We talk about predestination because the Bible talks about predestination. If we desire to build our theology on the Bible, we run head on into this concept. We soon discover that John Calvin did not invent it.
Without God man has no reference point to define himself.
I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.
Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.'
People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be.
Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
Politics disappears; it vanishes. What remains constant is human life. So I try to develop a perspective in my writing where politics is just one of the pieces of furniture in this furnished world. It is not the purpose. It is not the goal.
This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.