I do not know who there is among us that can claim to know God's purpose and God's intent.
All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.
Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.
Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.
If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
God could have created us to be automatons who were always choosing the right side, making the right decision. It is an incredible thing, God said "I want persons" who therefore have freedom.
There are three great truths, 1st, That there is a God; 2nd, That He has spoken to us in the Bible; 3rd, That He means what He says.
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.
I was interested in the mystical element of humor - was humor part of creation? Is God laughing at us, or with us?
If God did not want us to understand the book of Revelation, He would not have given it to us at all.
If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?
If you are going on with God, the only thing that is clear to you, and the only thing God intends to be clear, is the way He deals with your own soul.
What sort of god would deliberately create a world in which his creatures must eat one another to live?
God allows and at times causes us to go through the kinds of circumstances that strip away all falsehood and leave us with our real selves. God's ultimate intent is not to leave us faithless, but to leave us faith-full. There are few things as exhilarating as going through the fire and finding that you had the resilience to make it through. All of us wonder at times whether we have what it takes. God wants to bring us to a place where we have no doubt of the work He has done within us.
