To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
R. C. SproulRead
The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God Himself.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on humanity's tendency to desire God's blessings while avoiding a relationship with Him.
R. C. Sproul's quote highlights a profound moral conflict inherent in human nature: the desire to receive goodness and benefits from God without a genuine commitment to God Himself. It critiques the self-serving attitude that prioritizes personal gain over spiritual integrity, suggesting that true fulfillment can only be found in an authentic relationship with the divine.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on the importance of faith and integrity in spiritual life.
To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
Iβve 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.
We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.
I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up.
Gnostic politics is self-defeating in so far as its disregard for the structure of reality leads to continuous warfare.
History has its truth; and so has legend hers.
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.