Os Guinness Quotes

We are spokespersons for our Lord, and advocacy is in our genes. ~ Os Guinness

We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us. ~ Os Guinness

There are lots of people depending on the government who are good, honest citizens who have worked all their lives. ~ Os Guinness

God is the ultimate source of all power. All human power is therefore derived, limited, unstable and transient. ~ Os Guinness

Interestingly, God's remedy for Elijah's depression was not a refresher course in theology but food and sleep ... Before God spoke to him at all, Elijah was fed twice and given a good chance to sleep. Only then, and very gently, did God confront him with his error. This is always God's way. Having made us as human beings, He respects our humanness and treats us with integrity. That is, He treats us true to the truth of who we are. It is human beings and not God who have made spirituality impractical. ~ Os Guinness

In the same way, metrics can record the frequency of our church attendance, the regularity of our Bible reading and the exact amount of our tithing, but they can never gauge the genuineness of any of them, or whether they are any better than "the noise of the solemn assemblies" against which the prophets fulminated. ~ Os Guinness

Culturally, one of the best arguments we can make is, wait and see. ~ Os Guinness

The opposite of having faith is having self-pity. ~ Os Guinness

Modern life assaults us with an infinite range of things we could do, we would love to do, or some people tell us we should do. But we are not God and we are neither infinite nor eternal. We are quite simply finite. We have only so many years, so much energy, so many gray cells, and so many bank notes in our wallets. 'Life is too short to ... ' eventually shortens to 'life is too short. ~ Os Guinness

After half a millennium of dominance, the West is being eclipsed in the global era, the United States as the lead society in the West stands on the verge of relative if not absolute decline, and much of the Christian Church in both Europe and North America is in a sorry state of weakness, confusion, unfaithfulness and cultural captivity. ~ Os Guinness

It is realistic rather than cynical to observe that in a fallen world there are degrees of virtue in relation to what is right, and good and just. These are important in our human judgments of others, even though they may be blown to the winds by the grace of God. To "do good because we know it is good" is different from "doing good only because we know we are seen," and this in turn is different from "doing good only because we are afraid of being thought to be bad," which in turn is different again from "the complete abandonment of any pretense of caring about being good or being seen." The first type of action springs from what we call morality, the second respectability, the third hypocrisy, and the fourth sheer wickedness. This ~ Os Guinness

The American 'unum' has been lost since the Sixties. If this continues, there will soon be no unifying American identity and vision to balance the 'pluribus,' and the days of the Republic will be numbered. ~ Os Guinness

One overall conclusion is plain: under the weight of the combined impact of exploding pluralism, the expansion of the state, and emerging separationism, the early American settlement, so brilliantly described by Tocqueville, is gone, and gone for good. ~ Os Guinness

The deep logic of God's truth can be expressed in both stories and arguments, by questions as well as statements, through reason and the imagination, through the four Gospels as well as through the book of Romans. ~ Os Guinness

What is undeniable is that when comforts and convenience sap our energies and idealism, inactivity secretes sloth in to our minds like a poison in the blood. ~ Os Guinness

Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to "break in" the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed. ~ Os Guinness

I give lectures on globalization. I have lived on three continents. I have no quarrel with a global consciousness. ~ Os Guinness

The account in the gospel of John says three times that Jesus was angry. One of the words used is the Greek term for "furious indignation" - the word used by Aeschylus to describe war horses rearing up on their hind legs, snorting through their nostrils, and charging into battle. This was the reaction of Jesus of Nazareth when face to face with a loved one's death. The world that God created good and beautiful and whole was now broken and in ruins. In moments Jesus was going to do something, but his first response was outrage - instinctive, blazing outrage. Clearly, death was even worse in his eyes than in ours. ~ Os Guinness

above all the temptation to think that God is no more certain than our best arguments for him. As C. S. Lewis admitted, I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our own hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments . . . from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. ~ Os Guinness

To follow Jesus is to pay the cost of discipleship, and then to die to ourselves, to our own interests, our own agendas and reputations. It is to pick up our crosses and count the cost of losing all that contradicts his will and his way - including our reputations before the world, and our standing with the people and in the communities that we once held dear. It is to live before one audience, the audience of One, and therefore to die to all other conflicting opinions and assessments. There is no room here for such contemporary ideas as the looking-glass self, and no consideration here for trivial contemporary obsessions such as one's legacy. ~ Os Guinness

Calling is more than purely cultural, but it is also more than purely personal. Discover the meaning of calling and you discover the heart of the gospel itself. ~ Os Guinness

The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society. ~ Os Guinness

I'm obviously not an advocate of Christian America or a simplistic view of America as 'a city on a hill.' ~ Os Guinness

Augustine says that you don't understand a nation by the throw weight of its military or the strength of its research universities or the size of its population, but by looking at what it loves in common. To assess a nation, you look at the health and strength of its ideals. And there's no question that the common love in America is freedom. ~ Os Guinness

The truth is this: We always have sure and sufficient reasons for knowing why we can trust God, but do not always know what God is doing and why. ~ Os Guinness

Once commonly called "atomism," the genealogy of atheism can be traced all the way back through the Enlightenment to Roman poets such as Lucretius and his poem De Rerum Natura, and behind that to Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus and their philosophy of atomism. It was precisely such a philosophy that contributed to the classical world a strong sense of fate and the futility of both life and human purpose. And it also provided the dark setting against which the brilliance of the hope of the good news of Jesus shone by contrast - as soon it will once again. ~ Os Guinness

The logic behind this drive to deception and self-deception is simple. If sin is the claim to "the right to myself," it includes the claim to "the right to my view of things." And since we are each finite, "my view of things" is necessarily restricted and simply cannot see the full picture. We therefore turn a blind eye to all other ways of seeing things that do not fit ours, and especially to God's view of things. As theologian N. T. Wright points out, trees behave as trees, rocks as rocks and the seas as the seas, but "Only humans, it seems, have the capacity to live as something other than what they are."27 ~ Os Guinness

Followers of Jesus who count the cost and are willing to take up their crosses after him must have broad shoulders. ~ Os Guinness

To come to faith on the basis of experience alone is unwise, though not so foolish as to reject faith altogether because of lack of experience ... the quality of a Christian's experience depends on the quality of his faith, just as the quality of his faith depends in turn on the quality of his understanding of God's truth. ~ Os Guinness

God is his own best apologist. ~ Os Guinness

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today. ~ Os Guinness

For all of us, the time is short and the span of life is brief On top of that, our real human problem, the Stoic philosopher Seneca said in a direct rebuke to the modern illusion, is not just that life is short but that we waste so much of it-so that life ceases for us "just when we are getting ready for it."35
But ~ Os Guinness

The faithfulness principle (of the conservative) and the flexibility principle (of the liberal) are two sides of the same coin. They are both necessary if Christians are to follow their instructions and remain simultaneously "in" the world but not "of" it. ~ Os Guinness

In 1916, President Wilson drafted the speech in which he declared, "It shall not lie with the American people to dictate to another what their government shall be." His Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote in the margin: "Haiti, S Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama."6 That ~ Os Guinness

Needless to say, the dynamic of the resurrection and a God who cannot be buried for long is the dynamic of a child's jack-in-the-box writ large in golden cosmic letters. ~ Os Guinness

Beyond any question, the way the American founders consistently linked faith and freedom, republicanism and religion, was not only deliberate and thoughtful, it was also surprising and anything but routine. ~ Os Guinness

Christian advocacy always goes wrong when we become the focus of our efforts, rather than the Lord. For when we are the focus, we subtly come to believe that God is no more certain than our defense of him. Argue and defend God well, and the world of faith appears unshakable. Defend him badly, and doubts creep in or crash down on top of us. ~ Os Guinness

The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, and no worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that skepticism. A dozen people picked at random on the street are at heart as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligentsia. But I would go further. One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed to improve the lot of humanity, is - beware intellectuals.3 ~ Os Guinness

In working out our callings, we are to perform for one audience, the audience of One. ~ Os Guinness

The author explores the result of endless choice. It is not only overload, but a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life. ~ Os Guinness

In our day it's worse to judge evil than to do evil. ~ Os Guinness

Calling means that everyone, everywhere, and in everything fulfills his or her (secondary) callings in response to God's (primary) calling. ~ Os Guinness

Don't trust anyone over thirty," the 1960s radicals cried. "Don't trust anyone under three hundred," came Thomas Oden's wise reply. ~ Os Guinness

We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God - which is another way of saying that our seeking will always fall short unless God's grace initiates the search and unless God's call draws us to him and completes the search. ~ Os Guinness

Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that secular people, losing touch with transcendence, would eventually lose a reference point from which to look down and judge themselves. In the end they would lose even the capacity to despise themselves. Thus, because of the 'death of God', they would confuse heaven with happiness, and happiness with health. ~ Os Guinness

To believe in God is to "let God be God." This is the chief business of faith. As we believe we are allowing God to be in our lives what He already is in Himself. In trusting God, we are living out our assumptions, putting into practice all that we say He is in theory so that who God is and what He has done can make the difference in every part of our lives.
This means that the accuracy of our pictures of God is not tested by our orthodoxy or our testimonies but by the truths we count on in real life. It is demonstrated when the heat is on, the chips are down, and reality seems to be breathing down our necks. What we presuppose at such moments is our real picture of God, and this may be very different from what we profess to believe about God. (God in the Dark, ch. 4) ~ Os Guinness

Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations ~ Os Guinness

Jesus made clear that the Kingdom of God is organic and not organizational. It grows like a seed and it works like leaven: secretly, invisibly, surprisingly, and irresistibly. ~ Os Guinness

Americans might ponder two quotations. One is the much-cited, self-congratulatory saying attributed to Tocqueville (but whose source no one has so far been able to show me): "America is great because America is good." The other is the very real saying of Samuel Johnson, attacking the similar self-congratulatory "greatness" of the English: "We continue every day to show by new proofs, that no people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous. ~ Os Guinness

The only hope of success is the way of love as agape rather than eros. From this rival perspective, the secret of the search is not our "great ascent" but "the great descent" - of God toward us. Instead of the seeker finding love, love seeks out the seeker - not because the seeker is worthy of love but simply because love's nature is to love regardless of the worthiness or merit of the one loved. ~ Os Guinness

The genius of the Reformation lay in the fact that human beings were made free under God. Justification "by faith alone" cut away the bureaucratic jungle of human authorities and subservience. But where this liberty was not balanced by responsibility, the Reformation made human beings so free under God that it was only a short step to their being free from God. We might say that the despair of existentialism is simply the logic of atheism, but this is true only insofar as atheism itself is the logic of ungrateful Protestantism. ~ Os Guinness

Thinking Christians think in believing and they believe in thinking. ~ Os Guinness

We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. ~ Os Guinness

Jesus never spoke to two people the same way, and neither should we. Every single person is unique and individual and deserves an approach that respects that uniqueness. ~ Os Guinness

Calling in the Bible is a central and dynamic theme that becomes a metaphor for the life of faith itself. ~ Os Guinness

All human beings are alike in seeking happiness. Where they differ is in the objects from which they seek it and the strength they have to reach the objects they desire. ~ Os Guinness

In a world congenial to skepticism, skeptics love to play the skeptic's card nonchalantly as if it were the royal flush that trumped all other cards and could not be countered. For many, it has become the skeptics' way of hanging out a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Simply raise a skeptical objection and retire from all argument. But of course, the simplest response is to turn such skepticism back on itself. ~ Os Guinness

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to Jesus' two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds. Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety. ~ Os Guinness

For the grand and inescapable tradition of western literary classics confronts us with fundamental choices over our understanding of words, reading and art, as well as citizenship, civilization, faith, and the whole notion of the true, the good, and the faithful. ~ Os Guinness

I live before the audience of One-before others I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to prove. ~ Os Guinness

Either we serve God and use money or we serve money and use God. ~ Os Guinness

The key to changing the world is not simply being there, but an active, transforming engagement of a singularly robust and energetic kind. ~ Os Guinness

By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching committment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful, but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine outselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant ~ Os Guinness

Everybody is born free. Not everybody is worthy of freedom. ~ Os Guinness

The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, "Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can do without?"4 ~ Os Guinness

Somehow we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us. ~ Os Guinness

Creative persuasion is a matter of being biblical, not of being either modern or postmodern. ~ Os Guinness

In a post-Christian era many of our friends, neighbors, and colleague will reject God for a score of reasons, but we must live and speak that they reject God for God's sake and not because of what we have said or done that has framed God wrongly. ~ Os Guinness

For a consumer society thrives by stoking unquenchable desires into unsustainable cravings and fanning them with an inflated rage for rights. The restlessness it creates by providing false satisfactions and deadening true desires simultaneously fuels the economy and destroys happiness. ~ Os Guinness

When a friend told Francis Bacon that he would prefer not to have an eternal soul than to live in eternal torment, the painter replied with a grim realism that people are so attracted to their egos that they'd probably rather have the torment than simple annihilation. ~ Os Guinness

For at this juncture, the West has cut itself off from its own Jewish and Christian roots - the faith, the ideas, the ethics and the way of life that made it the West. It now stands deeply divided, uncertain of its post-Christian identity, and with its dominance waning in the global era. ~ Os Guinness

What has happened to create this doubt is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or a bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God's place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. Instead of faith sizing up the problem, the situation ends with the problem scaling down faith. The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem. ~ Os Guinness

In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the heart of the gospel. Instead of being 'salt' and 'light' -images of a permeating and penetrating action-Christians and Christian institutions become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within. ~ Os Guinness

There is no question that the Four Spiritual Laws have been remarkably fruitful as a way of evangelism, but they are not good for everyone. ~ Os Guinness

apologetics is pre-evangelism in that it addresses those who do not realize they are in a bad situation, and therefore do not see the gospel as the good news that it is. ~ Os Guinness

The age of the Internet, it is said, is the age of the self and the selfie. The world is full of people full of themselves. In such an age, I post, therefore I am. ~ Os Guinness

Whereas our grandparents lived as if they had swallowed gyroscopes, we think and act as if we have swallowed Gallup polls. ~ Os Guinness

Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind. ~ Os Guinness

Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental position of choice in modern life. "I have chosen you," Jesus said, "you have not chosen me." We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. We have no rights, only responsibilities. Following Christ is not our initiative, merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling. Once we have been called, we literally "have no choice. ~ Os Guinness

Freedom is not the permission to do what you like. It's the power to do what you ought. ~ Os Guinness

One of the key places where sociology should be used is in analyzing 'the world' of our times, so that we can be more discerning. To resist the dangers of the world, you have to recognize the distortions and seductions of the world. ~ Os Guinness

We must also and always be discerning about the spirit of the age in any generation, which today means squarely facing the seductions of technique. ~ Os Guinness

In short, sin frames God falsely. Thinking of him as he isn't, sin justifies itself in rejecting him as he is - and therefore draws the false view around itself like a security blanket to provide itself with an alibi for not believing or obeying God. Again, as we saw earlier, our overall attitude must then be that the defense never rests. Whenever and however God is not seen for who he is, but stands in the dock falsely framed and wrongly accused, we must reframe the issue and so defend God's name and restore the truth to the distorted view of reality. ~ Os Guinness

What we also need is a constructive overarching vision of Christian engagement in today's advanced modern world, one that is shaped by faith in God and a Christian perspective rather than by current wisdom, and one that can inspire Christians to move out with courage to confront the best and worst that we may encounter. ~ Os Guinness

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. ~ Os Guinness

In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like. ~ Os Guinness

The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes. ~ Os Guinness

In short, contrary to the founders - and in ways they do not realize themselves - Americans today are heedlessly pursuing a vision of freedom that is short-lived and suicidal. Once again, freedom without virtue, leadership without character, business without trust, law without customs, education without meaning and medicine, science and technology without human considerations can end only in disaster. ~ Os Guinness

use questions to raise questions, ~ Os Guinness

This combination of the abandonment of evangelism, the divorce between evangelism, apologetics and discipleship, and the failure to appreciate true human diversity is deeply serious. It is probably behind the fact that many Christians, realizing the ineffectiveness of many current approaches and sensing the unpopularity and implausibility of much Christian witness, have simply fallen silent and given up evangelism altogether, sometimes relieved to mask their evasion under a newfound passion for social justice that can forget the gaucheness of evangelism. At best, many of us who take the good news of Jesus seriously are eager and ready to share the good news when we meet people who are open, interested or in need of what we have to share. But we are less effective when we encounter people who are not open, not interested or not needy - in other words, people who are closed, indifferent, hostile, skeptical or apathetic, and therefore require persuasion. ~ Os Guinness

Calling is not only a matter of being and doing what we are but also of becoming what we are not yet but are called by God to be. ~ Os Guinness

The point of a knighthood for British actors is to enable them to play butlers. ~ Alec Guinness

Hollis blew gently on the thin tan island of foam afloat in her half pint of Guinness, to see it move, then drank some. Always a mysterious beverage to her. Unsure why she'd asked for it. She liked the way it looked more than how it tasted. How would it taste, she wondered, if it tasted the way she thought it looked? No idea. ~ William Gibson

Halt glared at his friend as the whistling continued.
'I had hoped that your new sense of responsibly would put an end to that painful shrieking noise you make between your lips' he said.
Crowley smiled. It was a beautiful day and he was feeling at peace with the world. And that meant he was more than ready to tease Halt 'It's a jaunty song'
'What's jaunty about it?' Halt asked, grim faced. Crowley made an uncertain gesture as he sought for an answer to that question.
'I suppose it's the subject matter' he said eventually. 'It's a very cheerful song. Would you like me to sing it for you?'
'N-' Halt began but he was too late, as Crowley began to sing. He had a pleasant tenor voice, in fact, and his rendering of the song was quite good. But to Halt it was as attractive as a rusty barn door squeaking.
'A blacksmith from Palladio, he met a lovely lady-o'
'Whoa! Whoa!' Halt said 'He met a lovely lady-o?' Halt repeated sarcastically 'What in the name of all that's holy is a lady-o?'
'It's a lady' Crowley told him patiently.
'Then why not sing 'he met a lovely lady'?' Halt wanted to know.
Crowley frowned as if the answer was blatantly obvious.
"Because he's from Palladio, as the song says. It's a city on the continent, in the southern part of Toscana.'
'And people there have lady-o's, instead of ladies?' Asked Halt
'No. They have ladies, like everyone else. But 'lady' doesn't rhyme with Palladio, does it? I could hardl ~ John Flanagan

I admit I was drinking a Guinness ... but I did not swallow. ~ Kinky Friedman

Love is agony, isn't it? I've been involved with someone for some time now, but it's all so complicated. It's never straightforward is it? You meet someone, you fall in love, it's the most wonderful thing ever but ... There's always something that's not quite right about love, isn't there? ~ Daphne Guinness

I hate the idea of making any of my children into a mini-me. That would be terrible. ~ Daphne Guinness

We're not ignored by The Guinness Book Of Records, but we've been largely ignored by the media during our lifetime. If you read any article, no mention is ever made of Pink Floyd. We're never included in the same sentences as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I wrote 'The Wall' as an attack on stadium rock - and there's Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations. ~ Roger Waters

When he really wanted to get juicy, he would write in Latin. Remember? I was seventeen before I realised that immissio penis in os meant sticking it in the mouth."
"And immissio penis in anum, those who practiced that, he called us moral imbeciles and moral depravities, certain barbarous races devoid of morality. I grew up in constant fear! ~ Larry Kramer

I started a deli when I was 19 years old. Kevin O's. The sandwiches at Kevin O's were a little like Subway before Subway - fresh baked bread. My best seller was turkey with cream cheese and artichoke hearts. I just made it up. ~ Kevin McCarthy