“Negative liberty is freedom from — refusing any barriers or constraints on our choices. Positive liberty is freedom for — using your freedom to live in a particular way. Our modern culture’s idea of freedom is wholly negative. We are free as long as no one is constraining our choices. However, this concept is too […]
“The ‘harm principle’ appears to make freedom of choice into a self-correcting absolute that gives us guidance for life together without the need for value judgments of any kind. . . . The harm principle is useless and even disingenuous as a guide. . . . How can you know what hurts people unless you […]
“The modern definition of freedom is the ability to do whatever we want. However, how does that definition work when your wants are in conflict? . . . There is, then, not just one thing called ‘freedom’ that we either have or do not have. At the level of lived life there are numerous freedoms, […]
“You don’t really freely choose most of these necessary limitations in life. You are just recognizing the limitations that are actually there in the world, that are independent of you desires and choices. . . . Then [you are] not free to do whatever you choose. That is an impossible idea and not the way […]
“How do we actually know [God’s] love? You can’t just tell yourself ‘God loves me’ and expect your heart to change. Nor can you just say, ‘From now on I will love God.’ Love cannot be generated simply by an act of the will. . . . We must grasp and be gripped by the […]
“Augustine . . . observed that the heart’s loves have an order to them, and that we often love less important things more and the more important things less. . . . The ultimate disordered love, however — and the ultimate source of our discontent — is failure to love the first thing first, the […]
“But the day comes when you’re lying in the bath and you notice . . . that the way you’re living bares scarcely any resemblance to what you thought you always wanted, and yet, you realize you got there by a long series of choices.”- Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make […]
“If you are younger, it is natural to way to yourself, ‘I have heard about those disillusioned celebrities and wealthy people who say their life isn’t happy. But if I get anything like what I’m hoping for, I’ll be different.’ No you won’t. Though there is a spectrum of experience, nobody in the end has […]
“Most people, if they really learn how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. . . . […]
“We need Jesus’ eyes even more when we face those real-life adversities. We’ve heard it a thousand times — in the storm, keep your eyes on Jesus rather than the wind and the waves. It’s good counsel, but here’s an even better offer: you can look at the storm through Jesus’s eyes.”- Alan Wright, Seeing […]
“Christians believe that Jesus is the Logos that the Greeks intuited — the meaning behind the universe, the reason for life. But unlike the philosophers, Christians believe that the Logos is not a concept to be learned but a person to be known. And therefore we don’t believe in a meaning we must go out […]
“Traditional belief in God was the basis for discovered, objective meaning — meaning that is there, apart from your inner feelings or interpretations. If we were made by God for certain purposes, then there are inherent meanings we must accept. The meanings that secular people have are not discovered but rather created. They are no […]