“Our leisure, even our play, is a matter of serious concern. There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. . . . It is a serious matter to choose wholesome recreations.”

~ C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Eerdmans, 1967), 33-34.

“To confess that Jesus is Lord is to say that Jesus, together with the Father and Spirit, has created all things; he sustains and upholds all things, he rules history and guides it to its goal, restores and renews all things, and at the end he will judge all things. If we confess only ‘Jesus is my personal Savior’ and neglect ‘Jesus is Creator, Ruler, Redeemer, and Judge,’ then we have an emaciated worldview. A biblical worldview is about getting right who Jesus is.”

~ Michael Goheen, Living at the Crossroads (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Baker Academic, 2008), 32.

William Kilpatrick outlines three possible responses to “the heroic and romantic dreams of youth”:

First: “We can turn our back on them, become ‘realistic’ about life, and attempt to feed only on fact, never on fiction.”

Second: “We can wallow in our romantic dreams, always wishing for a life that cannot be, never satisfied with the one we have . . ..”

Or, third: “Best of all — we can transmute them, realizing, in Savater’s words, ‘the best part of an adventure tale is to sense it as prologue and initiation of our own adventure.’”

~ Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1992), 204.

“‘Thinking Christianly’ is  a vital part of expressing a Christian worldview, but thinking will arise from a worldview. And our worldview is deeply connected to our life in Christ. If thinking Christianly becomes disconnected from the whole experience of life in Christ Jesus, it leads to a distorted, intellectualized Christianity lacking grace and humility. A truly biblical worldview is centered in an existential relationship with Christ; it will be as much about nurturing this relationship as it is about rigorous critical thinking that arises from this relationship.”

~ Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholemew, Living at the Crossroads (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Baker Academic, 2008), 20.

“The difference between the hero of legend and the hero of everyday life may be put this way: For the traditional hero such as Ulysses of Jim Hawkins the adventure takes place away from home. Home is where you go after the adventure; it is essentially the end of the adventure. For the average adult, on the other hand, home is the adventure, the place where he lays himself on the line. The adventure consists precisely in those commitments with which the classical hero or child hero rarely allows to be entangled. The temptation for the traditional hero is to avoid the adventure and settle down; the temptation for the ordinary hero is to avoid commitment and have an adventure. For the ordinary hero it is staying home that is the hard thing, the thing that requires courage and energy. He must put aside the child’s fantasy of escaping. Once having accepted the main adventure, he cannot allow himself to be distracted.”

~ William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1992), 201.

“Martin Luther once said that the gospel is like a caged lion that does not need to be defended — only released. Indeed the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18). When it is at work in the words, works, and lives of God’s people, it will accomplish its purposes. But the gospel is ‘caged’ when it is accommodated to the story of humanism. Only when the gospel is set free from its captivity to the dominant cultural story will the church be equipped for its comprehensive mission in Western culture.”

~ Mike Goheen & Craig Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Baker Academic, 2008), 11.

“The great question confronting modern humanity is this: Granted that the universe contains both persons (like you and me) and impersonal structures (like matter, motion, chance, time, space, and physical laws), which is fundamental? Is the impersonal aspect of the universe grounded in the personal or is it the other way around? Secular thought generally assumes the latter — that persons are the products of matter, motion, chance, and so on. . . .

If the impersonal is primary, then there is no consciousness, no wisdom, and no will in the ultimate origin of things. What we call reason and value are the unintended, accidental consequences of chance events. (So why should we trust reason, if it is only the accidental result of irrational happenings?) Moral virtue will, in the end, be unrewarded. Friendship, love, and beauty are all of no ultimate consequence, for they are reducible to blind, uncaring process. . . .

But if the personal is primary, then the world was made according to a rational plan that can be understood by rational minds. Friendship and love are not only profound human experiences, but fundamental ingredients of the whole world order. There is someone who wants there to be friendship, who wants there to be love. Moral goodness, too, is part of the great design of the universe. If personality is absolute, there is one who cares about what we do, who approves or disapproves our conduct. . . .”

~ John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1994), 35-36.

“Human beings are story-shaped creatures. We are born into stories, raised in stories, and live and die in stories. Whenever we have to answer a big question — who am I, why am I here, what should I do, what happens to me when I die? — we tell a story. The Ur-story, the foundational story, is the story of God’s love for creation, and all other stories are to be measured against it. The single best way of conceiving of faith, and of a faithful life, is as a story in which you are a character. Your life task is to be a character in the greatest story every told. It is what you were created for.

If faith were primarily an idea, the intellect alone might be adequate for dealing with it. Since it is instead a life to be lived, we need story. Story, as does life, engages all of what we are — mind, emotions, spirit, body. Faith calls us to live a certain way, not just to think in a certain way. It is no surprise, then, that the central record of faith in human history opens with an unmistakable story signature: ‘In the beginning . . . “

~ Daniel Taylor, “Story-shaped Faith” from The Power of Words and the Wonder of God eds. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2009), 105-106.

“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.”

~ C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York, NY: Harper One, 1996), 2.

I’m really enjoying Hunter Baker’s book The End of Secularism and think he has many insights into the origins, character, influence, and weaknesses of secularism as an ideology. It is historically and philosophically well-informed. Baker helps Christians think through the challenges of living out their faith in a society pervasively influenced by secular assumptions. Here is one paragraph on the relationship between church and state:

When the church is provided for by the state, it becomes concerned with pleasing the state and gains a second master. Though Christians often bemoan the separation of church and state and claim angrily that the separation of church and state is not in the [US] Constitution, they are actually expressing their frustration with secularism as the preferred ideology of many elites in politics, media, and education. Christians should absolutely bring their faith to bear in the public square. They should reject the influence of secularism urging them to keep their faith private and not to argue for a Christian perspective in areas like politics and education. What they must not do is to repeat the mistake of mingling the church’s future with that of the state. Temporal kingdoms have no eternal destiny. The church does.

~ Hunter Baker, The End of Secularism (Wheaton, Ill.; Crossway Books, 2009), 148.