I have noticed that whenever a person gives up his belief in the Word of God because it requires that he should believe a good deal, his unbelief requires him to believe a great deal more. If there be any difficulties in the faith of Christ, they are not one-tenth as great as the absurdities in any system of unbelief which seeks to take its place.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that rejecting faith often requires a greater leap of belief in contrasting ideologies.
Charles Spurgeon highlights the irony that while faith may seem demanding, rejecting it in favor of unbelief can lead to even greater contradictions and complexities. He argues that the challenges faced by believers in Christ pale in comparison to the absurdities encountered by those who choose to abandon their faith, ultimately emphasizing the rationality and strength of belief in God over disbelief.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the importance of holding onto faith in challenging times.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
The Tower. He would come to the Dark Tower and there he would sing their names; there he would sing their names; there he would sing all their names. The sun stained the east a dusky rose, and at last Roland, no longer the last gunslinger but one of the last three, slept and dreamed his angry dreams through which there ran only that one soothing blue thread: There I will sing all their names!
No American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found guilty of a crime by a court.
They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.
When I was writing The Satanic Verses, if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
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