Tuesday, May 30, 2006


What an enjoyable read!
I completed it in two sittings. Very engaging & easy to digest. Delightful doses of witty English humour here and there. Plenty of references to movies and thought-provoking truths to be gleaned from there. Some snippets that pulled me in very quickly:
One other factor that has led some people to feel that God might exist is the human sense of loneliness, emptiness and restlessness, not to mention our sense of the infinite. That's why the background story of The Matrix is so ingenious: it feels like it might be true. In the film, Morpheus tells Neo:
Let me tell you why you are here. It's because you know something. What you know you can't explain but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. There is something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. (p3)

I like his explanation of how to define sin.
According to the Bible, sin is ignoring God in the world he has made. But why is ignoring God in this way so serious? Because it cuts us off from God. Because every time I insist on my independence in a world where God sustains everything, I am cutting myself off from the very source of all life. The Bible is clear that to live like that results in death - and not just death here, but eternal death. (p16)

There's self-depracating humour too.
And yet, if I'd listened to my conscience during the month of May, I'd now be - according to Men's Health anyway - a 'leaning tower of power', as opposed to a wobbling vat of fat. Not only that, but listening to my conscience - and by that I mean the God-given sense of what is right and what is wrong - will affect far more than my body. It will affect the destiny of my soul. Why? Because 'we are the choices that we make'. (p94)

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Mark 8: 36,37


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