{"author":"Os Guinness","author_id":"Os+Guinness","total_quotes":22,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["faith"],"id":8065,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"The author explores the result of endless choice. It is not only overload, but a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["distraction","focus","fragmentation","peace-of-mind"],"id":40321,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"A question is far more subversive, biblically, than a statement.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["critical-thinking","discipleship","leadership","socratic-method"],"id":42420,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["god","life","mystery","os-guinness","religion","the-call","truth"],"id":73796,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"If ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid to doubt. If doubt is eventually justified, we were believing what clearly was not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith has grown stronger. It knows God more certainly and it can enjoy God more deeply.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["belief","faith","faith-in-god","faith","god","religious-faith","spiritual-growth"],"id":85652,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"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.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["freedom","today","power "],"id":98378,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"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.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["love","freedom","health "],"id":109929,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["excellence","freedom","humanity","positive-freedom","truth","virtue","wisdom"],"id":114710,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["faith"],"id":116778,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"},{"text":"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.","author":"Os Guinness","tags":["faith"],"id":123514,"author_id":"Os+Guinness"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":22,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}