“the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That’s us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That’s the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery. One by one, we let idolatry ruin each good thing. Without faith, we can’t help ourselves. Without faith, we can no more see through our materialist prejudice than we can see through the big blue bowl of the sky and into the eternity beyond. The choice between idolatry and faith—which is ultimately the choice between slavery in the flesh and freedom in the spirit—is the only real choice we have to make. I”
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
“it sometimes seems to me the entire postmodern assault on the concept of truth has been staged to avoid just this conclusion: some cultures are simply more productive than others”
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
“For me to accept baptism, I had to believe in Christ’s reality—in the reality not just of his life but also of his miracles and death and resurrection. But how could I? Such things don’t happen. Look around you. There are no miracles. There can be no resurrection. The clockwork world is all in all. But such things don’t happen, I knew now, was the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That’s us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That’s the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery.”
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
“The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining.”
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
“If, after all, there is no truth, how could it be true that there is no truth? If there is no absolute morality, how can you condemn the morality of considering my culture better than another? Relativism made no sense, as Shakespeare clearly saw.”
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
― The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
Albert’s 2025 Year in Books
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