Signposts

¬ link

More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.

— P.T. Barnum

¬ link

To love means loving the unlovable.
To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable.
Faith means believing the unbelievable.
Hope means hoping when everything is hopeless.

— G.K. Chesterton

¬ link

Both the Believer and the Unbeliever Share Doubt and Belief

Just as the believer is choked by the salt water of doubt constantly washed into his mouth by the ocean of uncertainty, so the non-believer is troubled by doubts about his unbelief, about the real totality of the world which he has made up his mind to explain as a self-contained whole… Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief.

— Josef Ratzinger

¬ link

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

— Dag Hammarskjöld (Dag Hammarskjold), a journal entry from Markings

¬ link

Seek not to understand so that you may believe, but believe so that you may understand.

— St. Augustine

¬ link

Just Enough Light

Pascal says, “God gives us just enough light so that those who really want to find him can, but not so much light that those who don’t really want to find him don’t have to.” So what decides your salvation is not how smart you are, but your heart, your love. Lovers will see, others won’t.

— Peter Kreeft, from lecture on C.S. Lewis’s “Till We Have Faces”

¬ link

A god who lets us prove his existence would be an idol.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

¬ link

Lottery Tickets and God

“The funny thing about lottery tickets,” Mary mused as we waited in line at the cash register, “is that people keep buying them even if they never win. Week after week, month after month, year after year, still they never give up hope. But if they pray for something two or three times, they expect immediate results, and if it doesn’t happen, then they say that God is unfair, disinterested, or dead. Why is it easier to keep believing in the lottery than in God?”

— Diane Schoemperlen, Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship

¬ link

Signposts

The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something from the ground.

“What did that man find?” asked the friend.

“A piece of the truth,” said the devil.

“Doesn’t that disturb you?” asked the friend.

“No,” said the devil, “I shall let him make a belief out of it.”

— Anthony de Mello