To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth.
Interpretation
Experience alone is insufficient for faith; understanding God's truth is essential.
This quote emphasizes the interdependence of experience, faith, and understanding in the context of Christian belief. It suggests that while personal experience can be important, it is wiser to base one's faith on a deeper comprehension of divine truths, indicating that both faith and understanding enhance the quality of one's spiritual experience.
In practice
A speaker discussing the importance of faith in a community gathering might use this quote.
By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching committment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful, but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine outselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant
The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.
In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.
We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.
The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.
Either we conform our desires to the truth or we conform the truth to our desires.
Tis Man's to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason.
Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly...
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?
All day long he was docile, intelligent, good, Though sometimes changing to a darker mood. He seemed hypocritical, could tell better lies, in the dark he saw dots of colors behind closed eyes, clenched fists, put his tongue out at his elder brother.
We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.
The first reaction to truth is hatred.
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