Truth has been relegated to subjectivity; beauty has been subjugated to the beholder; and as millions are idiotized night after night, a global commune has been constructed with the arts enjoying a totalitarian rule.
Ravi ZachariasRead
Sometimes the very presence of God is barred by our presuppositions and our intense and constant desire for triumph.
Interpretation
Our preconceived notions and desire for success can obstruct our spiritual connection with God.
In this quote, Ravi Zacharias suggests that our biases and relentless pursuit of victory can create barriers that prevent us from experiencing the divine presence of God. When we cling too tightly to our expectations and desires, we may overlook or dismiss the spiritual truths that are available to us, limiting our ability to connect meaningfully with something greater than ourselves.
In practice
During a sermon about faith and spirituality, this quote can illustrate the challenges of truly connecting with God.
Truth has been relegated to subjectivity; beauty has been subjugated to the beholder; and as millions are idiotized night after night, a global commune has been constructed with the arts enjoying a totalitarian rule.
I am convinced that all our attempts to change the letter of the law and to reeducate people have been, and are, merely band-aid solutions for a fatal hemorrhage. The system will never change because our starting point is flawed. The secular view of man can neither give the grandeur that God alone can give, nor can it see the evil within the human heart that God alone can reveal and cure, for atheism implicitly denudes each individual of the grand image God has imprinted upon His creation.
Does that not sound odd to you? When God decides who should live or die, he is immoral, When you decide who should live or die, it's your moral right. There was a pin-drop silence.
Everyone - pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist - has to answer these questions: 'Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?' Those are the fulcrum points of our existence.
It is the resurrection that makes Good Friday good.
You cannot really have the world and hold on to it. It is all too temporary and the more you try to hold on to it, the more it actually holds you. By contrast, the more you hold on to the true and the good, the more you are free to really live.
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
We have a love affair with the idea of the 'natural,' even though we, as a species, are about as unnatural as you can imagine.
There is no need to invent an ego that is separate from the divine if our basic human nature is trusted. If we trust ourselves, we know how to avoid interfering with nature and how to live in harmony. When we know God as an unseen, loving, and accepting power at the heart of everything, allowing us to make our own choices, then God is a trusted part of our nature.
There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.
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