Non Fiction Authors

"Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God that the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever."

"It comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, look out from within our reality, that is would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater that reality, or it would not be reasonable."

"It was the affection of Christ, not the brutality of a town, that healed Zacchaeus."

"I hear addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is so powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self addiction."

"The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me."

"Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall."

"I think it is interesting that God designed people to need other people. We see those cigarette advertisements with the rugged cowboy riding around alone on a horse, and we think that is strength, when, really, it is like setting your soul down on a couch and not exercising it. The soul needs to interact with other people to be healthy."

"When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn't normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body."

"Tony the Beat Poet says the words alone, lonely and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language. I agree with Tony. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul."

"I no longer think being in love is the polar opposite of being alone, however. I say that because I used to want to be in love again as I assumed this was the opposite of loneliness. I think being in love is an opposite of loneliness, but not the opposite. There are other things I now crave when I am lonely, like community, like friendship, like family. I think our society puts too much pressure on romantic love, and that is why so many romances fail. Romance can't possibly carry all that we want it to."

"I mean that to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people," Paul says. "That is why God tells us so many times to love each other."

"You know, Don, marriage is worth the trade. You lose all your freedom but you get this friend. This incredible friend."

"I've had about fifty people tell me that I fear intimacy. And it is true. I fear what people will think of me, and that is the reason I don't date very often. People really like me a lot when they only know me a little, but I have this great fear that if they knew me a lot they wouldn't like me. That is the number one thing that scares me about having a wife because she would have to know me pretty well in order to marry me and I think if she got to know me pretty well she wouldn't like me anymore."

"I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up."

"All great characters in stories are the ones who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. And in all of the stories I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus."

"There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out."

"I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it...God's love will never change us if we don't accept it."

"Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all."

"It took me a while to realize that these stories, while often used with children, are not at all children's stories. I think the devil has tricked us into thinking so much of biblical theology is a story fit for kids. How did we come to think the story of Noah's ark is appropriate for children? Can you imagine a children's book about Noah's ark complete with paintings of people gasping in gallons of water, mothers grasping their children while their bodies go flying down white-rapid rivers, the children's tiny heads being bashed against rocks or hung up in fallen trees? I don't think a children's book like that would sell many copies."

"I associated much of Christian doctrine with children's stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity."

"Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror."

"I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his or her own depravity."

"For a moment, sitting there in above the city, I imagined life outside narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasures and attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself."

"Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me."

"I went there to try to get my head around this idea, this idea that the problem in the universe lives within me. I can't think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea."

"I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change wound have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM.""

"I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest."

"I honestly don't believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been. I am the problem."

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."

"Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder whether we are moving through time or time is moving through us."

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way."

"In America, the first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a free-form expression. It comes from the soul and it is true."

"Many of us associate the Christian faith as a list of do's and dont's, to be sure. But the Christian life is to be oriented in relationship, why is there so much talk of formula? Could it be that the reason we are more interested in forumla than relationship is that we would like to deal with our need for religion without dealing with the complications of relationship? That even though we have chosen the Christian faith instead of "poppycock religion," we ultimately want the same thing as the pagan? And what is that? Easy answers, comfortable sentiments, beliefs that make us feel good. So we go through the motions. We go to our churches, we read our self-help books, we watch our religious television, and we check each item off our to-do list as if we were doing work for pay. One thing I am sure of. This is not the kind of real-life faith I'm looking for."

"The multitude of formulas (for living the Christian life with success) proposed by Christian writers, preacher, conference speakers, and televangelists simply confuse me. They have different ideas about how it is done, offering promises of fulfillment and joy based on three easy steps, four points of action, or the five smooth stones that David threw."

"It is the occupation of a Christian to glorify God."

"It is Christianity, I believe, that truly faces the facts of reality. The Christian does not try to create his or her own reality. Our search for the truth leads us to Christ. Faith costs something (as all things of worth do) and obedience is hard, but God has poured out His love for us and given us the grace that empowers us to obey."

"Poppycock religion is America's new faith. It is easy. It is quick. It allows a person to feel spiritual, seem intellectual, have a faith to follow, and have something interesting to talk about over coffee. Poppycock is the quick-fix diet of the spiritual industry. It sells. It rarely threatens or confronts the seeker, allowing each to forge his own individual "religion." The poppycock believer changes the rules as he goes. If he misses a basket, he will say that a missd basket is still worth two points. The poppycock believer does not serve his god, rather his god serves him. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose."

"Cupid is fat and slow and can't hit moving targets."

"Well, a lot of times we are looking for a sign that tells us we're godly. We want to preach, or be a missionary or whatever, all to help ourselves believe that God is using us. We look everywhere but to God to make us feel godly. We try to convince others we are godly so that we can convince ourselves we are godly. The bottom line is that godliness is about relationship, not about image"

"But I think that God does not so much take us from point A to point B in the physical world as He takes us from not knowing Him to knowing Him."

"I'm saying that a lot of Christians want to be recognized for their godliness, and a lot of people mistake the recognition for godliness itself."

""I think that is a big problem with a lot of Christians," Paul begins. "We want to feel special. And there are times when it does, you know. But not all the time. Sometimes life just feels like life. We have to put our faith in God."

"When we ask ourselves if we are walking with Christ, I believe we need to ask oursleves this question: Has Christ changed the way I view the world lately?"

"The more I ponder God's way, the more I believe He changes a person, or molds a person through enlightenment. He changes a person's mind."

"Life is, without a doubt, complex and confusing. My faith is my sanity. There are people who choose to live on the surface of things. I have yet to find the surface. And with all the beauty in the underneath, I am not certain I want to live on the surface should I find it. I stopped looking a long time ago."

"The uncomfortable moments in a person's life make great stories down the road."

"I don't mean any disrespect. I truly don't. But Texas isn't nature. Texas is city and smog and humidity and heat."

"Don." "Yeah." "Why don't people believe?" "Why don't they believe what?" "In God." "I don't know. Not everyone has a Volkswagen."

"We have come one hundred miles and both the tortoise and the hare have passed us laughing."

"It is the process that is godliness, not so much the end result. A godly man will involve himself in the process of being godly. For godliness is not so much a place we are going as it is the going itself."