Noted and Quoted: Strength From Adversaries

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

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I first came across this quote a few years ago, when I was working with a rather difficult individual who was later to become my boss. We ended up getting along quite well, as it turned out, but I've held on to the quotation, nonetheless.

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Whether in the workplace or in our personal lives, our tendency is to see those who disagree with us (not to mention those who are out to get us) as obstacles, problems, and annoyances. But there is a sense in which they are the ones who do the best job of making us think. I may know exactly what I believe, and as long as I'm around like-minded people, I'll never have to think my convictions through. But put me with a person of a different mind, and all the applicable presuppositions, analyses, and conclusions come into question and beg reexamination.

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I'm not at the point of seeking adversaries; they seem to come along often enough, unbidden. But when they do come, I want to welcome them as friends in disguise. They will help me think farther and live better.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
James 1.2-4

For by wise guidance you will wage war, And in abundance of counselors there is victory.
Proverbs 24.6

Noted & Quoted: Faith

"The fidelity of God is more important than the certainty of our minds."

- Overheard on the radio

Words of Wisdom

"Wine improves with age. The older I get, the more I like it."

- Anonymous

I'll Drink to That

"I would like a great lake of ale for the King of kings, and I would like for heaven's family to be drinking it through all eternity."

-- St. Brigid of Kildare (451-525)

Noted & Quoted: Yes, Please

"God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."

- George MacDonald (1824-1905)

Noted & Quoted: Charles Spurgeon on Worthiness

“And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, from doing them good.” - Jeremiah 32.40

You remind me of their unworthiness. Yes, but observe that when he began to do them good they were as unworthy as they could possibly be. He began to do them good when they were "dead in trespasses and sins." He began to do them good when they were enemies, rebels, and under condemnation. When first the sinner feels the movement of divine love upon his heart, he is in no commendable state. In some cases the man is a drunkard, a swearer, a liar, or a profane person. In certain cases the man has been a persecutor like Manasseh or Saul. If God left off blessing us because he could see no good in us, why did he begin to do us good when we were without desire towards him? We were a mass of misery, a pit of wants, and a dunghill of sins when he began to do us good. Whatever we may be now, we are not otherwise than we were when first he revealed his love towards us. The same motive which led him to begin leads him to continue; and that motive is nothing but his grace.

(From a sermon in 1889)

Noted and Quoted: Making Life Count

"I've spent a lot of money on booze, birds, and fast cars - the rest I just squandered."

- George Best (1946-2005)

Lewis On: Does Christianity Matter?

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

-- C.S. Lewis

Noted and Quoted: Can't Stamp Out Religion

Michael Novak, writing in the June/July 2007 edition of First Things (emphasis added):

Atheism is back—or so you might imagine from so many writers in recent months, one after another declaring a proud and militant rejection of God and all His works.

So, for instance, to his new book, God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens appends the insidious subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins asserts that teaching children religion is “child abuse” and ought to be outlawed. In Breaking the Spell, Daniel C. Dennett, in the guise of studying religion objectively, dismisses religion. Sam Harris follows up his bestselling but dyspeptic The End of Faith with a slim but insulting Letter to a Christian Nation.

And yet, there’s an odd defensiveness about all these books—as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation. Everywhere on earth except Western Europe, religion is surging. Each of the authors admits that most people, especially in America, do not agree with him. Each pictures himself as a man who spits against the wind. Each rehearses his arguments for atheism, mostly, it seems, to convince himself.

Certainly these authors are not convincing many others. According to a 2007 Princeton Survey poll for Newsweek, 91 percent of Americans believe in God. Only 3 percent say they are atheists. The whole group of nonbelievers—adding in persons who say they are of no religion and agnostics—account for 10 percent, at best, of all Americans. Worse for the new atheists, a full 87 percent of Americans identify with a specific religion: 82 percent Christian, 2 percent Jewish, and 1 percent each Muslim, Buddhist, and other.

Apropos Truth

"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) .

Noted and Quoted: Dummheit Genug

Man soll keine Dummheit zweimal begehen, die Auswahl ist doch gross genug.

• - Verfasser Unbekannt

(No need to repeat a dumb mistake; the selection is plenty large.)

• - (Anonymous)

Noted and Quoted: High Crimes

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."

• Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), Russian Poet and Nobel Prize Winner

Noted and Quoted: Good Advice for All Blog Writers

"I was learning that one writes for a reader. Writing is too often described as self-expression. But writing is the art of making a story that will engage and hold and satisfy the interest of the reader. I typed a slogan and pinned it over my typewriter: Nobody Owes You A Reading."

• Ralph M. McInerny (philosophy professor and creator of the Father Dowling mystery series), "The Writing Life," First Things, March 2006, p. 22

Noted and Quoted: One Man, Two Faces

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Noted & Quoted: Free Will?

David Hume (Scottish philosopher, 1711-1776):

• Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them; or they are the result of random events, in which case we are not responsible for them.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author, 1902-1991):

• We must believe in free will. We've got no choice.