The only basis for genuine human rights and dignity is a fully biblical worldview.

So when Paul says he is "not ashamed of the gospel," he is saying that a Christian worldview will not let you down. It will not disappoint. 69 Christianity fulfills the human hunger for a unified, integrated worldview to live by. It has the intellectual resources to provide a holistic, internally consistent guide to life.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.

Mark Twain had a point when he concluded that it was not the parts of the Bible he did not understand that bothered him—but the parts he did understand!)

I often crossed it inadvertently when out that way on my daily rounds. But I also liked to cross it on purpose, deliberately stepping to and fro. A dozen times, or several dozen times. I'd amuse myself like that for half an hour—playing the game of crossing the border. It gave me pleasure, because I could remember the time when it wasn't possible. I love crossing borders.

The clouds were so low that one could hook onto them and let oneself be carried away to a distant land, to the south, to warmer climes.

When I look into the future, it's so bright it burns my eyes.

But the fact is that the Bible itself is the grandest of grand stories, yet it prizes truth and reason without being modernist, and it prizes countless stories within its overall story without being postmodern either. In short, the Bible is both rational and experiential, propositional as well as relational, so that genuinely biblical arguments work in any age and with any person.

Don't trust anyone over thirty," the 1960s radicals cried. "Don't trust anyone under three hundred," came Thomas Oden's wise reply. "Vox temporis" (the voice of the times) is no more trustworthy than "vox populi" (the voice of the people) when set against "vox dei" (the voice of God).

Many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it aright. More often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it, we despair because our lives seem meaningless. The secret of a great life is often a man's success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them and so learning to walk in the true path.

Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.