Quotes by Criss Jami

We tend to think that refusing to exalt Christ is staying true to our self-will and personal freedom when really we are condemning ourselves. Sure, we can pretend to stay true to ourselves, but if you want to talk about reality, all of that is completely trivial if this life is an island and Hes the only pilot with a plane and a flight plan.

Freedom of speech is detestable only to those who have no desire to think for themselves.

He has a way of drawing His loves back to Himself. A psyche separated from the peace (and the freedom) of Christ is liable to entangle itself in all sorts of folly and vanity, or confused witchcraft. On the one side it will preach, Empowerment! But on the other it will scream, Oppression! Yes, you now have the power to be oppressed: because as long as you look to be a victim, you will find yourself to be a victim.

To be respected is not my concern. So long as I seek to live in obedience to my Lord, respect will come accordingly from the people He deems it necessary.

The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy.

They have a special confidence in Christ, plus thoughtfulness plus faithfulness plus humility: for there are no things, in all creation, more beautiful, more rare than the so very disciplined and free, joyful and principled daughters of God.

Even the self-assured truth-finders and self-proclaimed freedom-fighters reject Truth. As admirable as such endeavors may be, they still only really want it so long as it to some extent confirms what they had already presumed to be true.

On the whole the modern world has been conditioned to have a chip on its shoulder against devoutly religious people. I disagree with this in some instances - particularly in, believe it or not, matters of integrity. Deep down I often rather believe the man who honestly thinks - or better yet even, prefers - that he has an omnipotent Judge breathing down his neck, holding his every word and his every move accountable, than the man who much like his modern peers, and ironically enough, claims or wishes to bask in complete independence. As it appears actually, the former is more free of guilt than the latter.

Of course, if one does not fully trust the promise of Gods Kingdom, he will have a hard time taking risks and making sacrifices in this life. A gospel centered around the temporal self - fleeting happiness, earthly success, vain prosperity, things such as these - is the primary ambition of the half-hearted Christian; the one who somewhat believes he is subject to an eternal death; the one who just might believe in men before God, who morbidly fears seeming less than anyone else. The man of this school feels deeply that he has but one life to live, that this must be his only chance, and therefore must have it all in his favor - from glory to comfort to riches - and have it right this instant. He is but hinting that he is overcome because he insists always that he must overcome, that his judgment comes now and by the persons around him. The point is, however, in this sense, that by grace the Christian is indeed free, but only for as long as he wants to be free - the practicality of true freedom: that of God which offers not so much freedom to be like the world as it does freedom from the pressures of having to be like the world. For Divine Law is based solely on love and freedom; whereas secular law, pressure and imitation.

Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind rears its head as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.

Man is the only god of confusion. In a political sense the liberal man is like one shouting over the voice of God thus making it difficult to hear God; the conservative man is like one standing in the way of God, making it difficult to see God.

Those who stand for different causes during different generations often experience the same oppositions and the same difficulties as those of the previous and the next generations. That is the basis of history repeating itself.

Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living.

I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly.

There is this common notion that young conservatives are the few, that most people had liberal worldviews when they were young. If this is true, then it is with great irony that a number of old liberals must never had progressed into conservatives as they grew older.

Perhaps not everything happens for a reason. That is, until you make it so; because for everything there is a season, which can, in fact, become beautiful.

To understand even remotely the holy omnipotence of God is to understand at least from mostly to wholly the magnificence of Christ.

If beauty is relative, then any and everything when compared to the beauty of God is absolutely hideous.

Together, we form a necessary paradox; not a senseless contradiction.

For the believer, humility is honesty about ones greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.