Andy & Debbie

“Nothing like small enough. For a damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.”
― C. S.Lewis, The Great Divorce

“S. Lewis had his own misconceptions about this notion of praise and wrote of the lesson he learned: But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. . . . The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their game. . . . I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is appointed consummation.7 Lewis realized that praise stems from doing what one can’t help doing—giving utterance to what we regard as supremely valuable: “It is good to sing praises to our God.” Why? “For it is pleasant and praise is becoming” (Ps. 147:1).”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“In prosperity, and when there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him—then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm.”
― Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

“But it is no new idea. It has been around for centuries. ‘In the beginning was the Word… all things were made by him’ wrote the apostle John, author of the fourth Gospel. The Greek for ‘Word’ is Logos, a term that was used by Stoic philosophers for the rational principle behind the universe and subsequently invested with additional meaning by Christians, who used it to describe the second person of the Trinity. The term ‘Word’ itself conveys to us notions of command, meaning, code, communication – thus information; as well as the creative power needed to realize what was specified by that information.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?