I have heard it said, "God didn't die for frogs. So he was responding to our value as humans." This turns grace on its head. We are worse off than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren't bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it.

There is only one explanation for God's sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is "the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7). It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, at great cost, with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty.

- John Piper, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. ~ Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda

I saw this quote as the heading of an editorial a while back... and since we also have it in our quote rotation here at thinklings, it got me thinking, "Did Goebbels really say that? And if so,what did he mean?"

So here's what I found out from some internet research. It is listed at a quote website although I don't know if you can even trust websites anymore. It bugs me to run into quotes without a reference to when it was said or where it was written. (Though I've been guilty of just listing the author without saying where I found it myself.) I wish that everyone would say where and when a quote came from. In this day and age where anyone can say anything on the internet or in an email, it is all the more important. I'm a real stickler for authenticity and I try never to attribute a quote to someone unless I can personally verify it.

And so the quotes website I link to above may be just proliferating a myth. I never found an actual citation for this quote. I did however learn from wikiquote, if that can be trusted, that a similar quote is often misattributed.

Misattributed
* But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success. -o Actually from "War Propaganda", in volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler.

* (multiple alternatives) If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. // If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. // If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. // If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth. // If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.
o no reliable source; probably misquotations of the Big Lie idea

The "Big Lie" idea was not Goebbels revealing some secret of Nazi propaganda. (At least not willingly.) His point in context was that it is the British who are lying. Oh the irony, that this quote has been repeated so often and attributed to Goebbels that it doesn't seem to be questioned anymore.

The following is an authentic Goebbels quote. Or at least I think it is, becomes it comes from wikiquote and the actual original source is cited.

That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

* "Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik" ("Churchill's Lie Factory"), 12 January 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1941), pp. 364-369
* This and similar lines in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf about what he claimed to be a strategem of Jewish lies using "the principle & which is quite true in itself & that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily," are often misquoted or paraphrased as: "The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."

Here's my conclusion: It looks like Goebbels never said what is attributed to him at the top of this post, or the more common, "If you tell a lie often enough (or big enough) it will be believed."

And if he did say that or something like it, I don't think he meant it as it appears - Like the inside secret confession of a Nazi propagandist...though that implication makes it rather delicious for the modern day propagandist...er opinion writer. Drawing a conclusion from the actually verifiable quotes and speeches of Goebbels, if he did say anything like this, he most likely meant it as a criticism of what his enemies were doing. (i.e. claiming that Jews and the Allies were the liars.) He was not admitting that he was a purveyor of lies. (Although you and I know he was an evil liar, that's probably not what he meant.)

Here's a pretty good selection of Goebbels speeches and articles.

So doubting that he said it in the first place, and believing that if he did, he was actually criticizing Jews or the English, I will never use that quote again. That's my take.

If there's one thing I hate more than a made-up or misattributed quote, it's a quote taken out of context. Imagine how shocked I was when I learned that when Mark Twain said, "It's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that trouble me, it's the ones that I do understand." He meant something entirely different than how many pastors and books had quoted it to me. I had heard it quoted as meaning that rather than Christians spending too much time on the difficult passages, we should spend more time dealing with the parts we do understand. i.e. we should spend more time obeying, and less time worrying about who the sons of God were that married the daughters of men.

So in researching the quote for something I was working on to make sure it was authentic, I found out that Twain was actually criticizing the Bible! When he said that the parts he understood troubled him, he was talking about God commanding the Israelites to slaughter men, women and children. He was explaining why he didn't believe the Bible was the word of God, and criticizing how awful it was.

So how about you? Can you shed light on the authenticity and meaning of the Goebbels quote?

Is there another quote that people use all the time that is wrong, misattributed or out of context?

One of my favorite Luther quotes:

I first lay down these two propositions, concerning spiritual liberty and servitude.

A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.

-- Martin Luther

“The Lord held to this orderly plan in administering the covenant of his mercy: as the day of full revelation approached with the passing of time, the more he increased each day the brightness of its manifestation. Accordingly, at the beginning when the first promise of salvation was given to Adam [Gen. 3:15] it glowed like a feeble spark. Then, as it was added to, the light grew in fullness breaking forth increasingly and shedding its radiance more widely. At last — when all the clouds were dispersed — Christ the Sun of Righteousness fully illumined the whole earth.”

- John Calvin

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
-- Hebrews 1:3

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.
-- Revelation 21:23

Perhaps I'm biased, because the author is a very close relative of mine, but this post on divorce, marriage and the Gospel is one of the best I've ever read.

Money quote:

Marriage is sacred because of what it represents. The bond itself is the Incarnation. Two become one flesh, the burdens and troubles of one become the burdens of the other. The two carry each other, love each other, show mercy to one another, forgive one another, and and lift one another up above themselves. This is why Christ called his gift of Redemption a marriage. The one true and perfect Groom, brings his wounded, unfaithful Bride in and replaces her filthy rags with a wedding dress, kisses her scars and lavishes her with his all-surpassing love. He parades her down the aisle for all to see, and truly makes her worthy and good and beautiful. It is the one marriage that not even death can tear apart.

Does God forgive divorcees? Yes, yes, yes! Will he forgive an arrogant, lying idiot like me? Yes! Divorce is the failure to live up to a sacred oath, but the wonderful truth is that Jesus never goes back on his word. We are unfaithful and unaccommodating and untrusting, and He still goes out looking for us and finds us, even in our sin, and makes us new.

Highly recommended: read the whole thing . . .

I was just looking for Easter Poems for our Easter Bulletin and I found a picture of C.S. Lewis' wife's grave. The engraving has a mini-poem. Here it is:

"Here the whole world (stars, water, air
And field, and forest as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day."

How awesome is that! What he's saying, is that Easter makes a difference. For those of us who are in Christ, just as Jesus had his "Easter day", his Resurrection day, so will we.

And the reference to "Lenten lands" (the same as Douglas Greshem's autobiography) is, if I understand it right a reference to the fact that "Lent" is the days of preparation up until Easter. So living here on earth was for Joy, as it is all Christians, the days of preparation for her very own Easter Day...

Because Christ did it first!

Lent means "40" and is a reference to the 40 years Moses spent in the wilderness preparing to lead his people from slavery, and the 40 years Israel spent in the wilderness preparing for the Promised Land, and the 40 days Jesus spent preparing for his ministry.

So if this earthly life of ours are our "Lenten Lands" then we are in the wilderness preparing for exodus from slavery, preparing for the Promised Land, preparing for ministry(service) in heaven...and preparing for our own Easter Day!

We are preparing for our Resurrection day. We will each have one, because Christ had one too. That's part of the joy of Easter. Because Jesus walked out of his grave, alive, more alive than ever before, gloriously victorious over death, so will you, because he went first.

The first "Easter" guaranteed that there will be many more...one for every Christian.

I think that's awesome.

Perhaps you Lewis scholars can elaborate on the meaning of this poem more for me....like what does "holy poverty mean? And to whose mind is he referring in the first two lines? Joy's or God's? I love the way he rhymes this whole thing.

AND I'm still looking for a good Easter verse, so please put any suggestions in comments. Who knows, maybe it'll show up in our church bulletin. :)

The cost for the recipient of God’s grace is nothing—and no price could be higher for arrogant people to pay.

- Dan Allender

As seen on The Spyglass

"We are all ministers of the Gospel. Some of us just happen to be clergymen."

-- Martin Luther

Have you ever heard that? Man, I've been hearing that saying all my life.

There are all sorts of descriptions that follow that intro. Here's two I heard recently:

Those who keep score and those who don't.

Those who think and those that feel.

Respond in comments.

In the spirit of this post, you have a choice.

There are those people who will suggest other "two kinds of people" sayings and those who will tell us what kind of person they are based on one (or all) of the suggetions.

Which one are you?

"Forgetting God's goodness is part of our fallen DNA."

- Jared

Milton Stanley on the dirty work of the Kingdom.

. . . don’t let the messiness blind us to the blessedness. Jesus sometimes compared the Kingdom of God to seed, and of course seeds grow in dirt. The seed of God's Word is the power of Jesus Christ himself. And something unique happens when Jesus touches dirt: instead of getting dirty himself, Jesus makes the dirt clean.

So Christians, let's be encouraged in the church. At times we may see mainly dirt, but God sees what's growing underneath—for our blessing and his glory.

"“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy . . . God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, chapter 8

From Prayer by Richard J. Foster:

Sometimes we are invaded to the depths by an overwhelming experience of the love of God. Walking down the streets of New York, D.L. Moody was so overcome by God's loving presence that he rushed to the home of a friend in order to have a room alone where, for two hours, wave after wave of God's ravishing love swept over him. At other times we experience such a flaming vision of light that we are forever blinded to all competing loyalties. In the center of his greatest spiritual moment Blaise Pascal wrote the single word "Fire!"

Primary Wonder
Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well

Days pass when I forget the mystery
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversion, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the
throng's chamber recedes; the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all, let alone
cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void; and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

(quoted in Philip Yancey's Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference?)

Now I begin to be a disciple. . . . Let fire and cross, flocks of beasts, broken bones, dismemberment, . . . come upon me, so long as I attain to Jesus Christ.
-- Ignatius of Antioch

I have an affinity for many of the early church fathers, Ignatius of Antioch being no exception. Like Polycarp, he lived closely to the time of Jesus, and it was (spuriously?) said of Ignatius that he was the child whom Jesus picked up and placed among his disciples. While I doubt the veracity of that legend, Ignatius would have been about the right age, since he was born somewhere between 30 and 35 A.D.

All indications are that he was martyred in Rome. I love his response to Christians who wanted to save him from martyrdom: "I fear your kindness, which may harm me." You see, Ignatius' wanted to die for his Lord. Like Peter who chose to be crucified upside down (because he did not think he was worthy to be crucified in the same manner as JESUS), Ignatius knew the glory that awaited him.

He was rightly called The Bearer of God. May we all attain to his level of devotion.

As seen on Jollyblogger, here are some quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on complaining about the church and about Christian community. I'm not sure I'd thought about these matters quite this way before:

A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men. When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief.

. . .

Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature.

. . .

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.

That's some good stuff. I posted the quote about pastors and complaining to God with trepidation, because I'm not a pastor, and I certainly know some pastors who have some massively valid complaints about their congregations. What do you think? Does Bonhoeffer have a point?

Jollyblogger also posts this quote from John Calvin. As messed up as the Corinthian church was, Paul still called them brothers. Let that rattle around for a bit . . .

Among the Corinthians it was not a few that erred, but almost the whole body had become tainted; there was not one species of sin merely, but a multitude, and those not trivial errors, but some of them execrable crimes. There was not only corruption in manners, but also in doctrine. What course was taken by the holy apostle, in other words, by the organ of the heavenly Spirit, by whose testimony the Church stands and falls? Does he seek separation from them? Does he discard them from the kingdom of Christ? Does he strike them with the thunder of a final anathema? He not only does none of these things, but he acknowledges and heralds them as a Church of Christ, and a society of saints. If the Church remains among the Corinthians, where envyings, divisions, and contentions rage; where quarrels, lawsuits, and avarice prevail; where a crime, which even the Gentiles would execrate, is openly approved; where the name of Paul, whom they ought to have honoured as a father, is petulantly assailed; where some hold the resurrection of the dead in derision, though with it the whole gospel must fall; where the gifts of God are made subservient to ambition, not to charity; where many things are done neither decently nor in order: If there the Church still remains, simply because the ministration of word and sacrament is not rejected, who will presume to deny the title of church to those to whom a tenth part of these crimes cannot be imputed? How, I ask, would those who act so morosely against present churches have acted to the Galatians, who had done all but abandon the gospel (Gal. 1:6), and yet among them the same apostle found churches?

The Bride is beautiful.

From Brant Hanson via Jared.

"Ministry is loving people you didn't handpick."

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Read the rest of Jared's post as well - it's awesome.

Some quotable goodness from the Blogosphere:

"What we call 'morality' is God's way of creating a livable world and a life we're glad to have." - Weekend Fisher.

"I have to put myself in locations conducive to spiritual nourishment" - Jared. This one seems straightforward, but it had me doing the "I coulda had a V-8" noggin-smack. Living with intentionality. Yes, yes, 1,000 times, yes.

"Do you think David was afraid when he faced Goliath? I mean, the verses don't give us much insight into his emotions. I don't think he was, because he was a pretty rad dude. I think, like Ace of Bass, he 'saw the sign and it opened up his eyes.' I think like Christian Hosoi or Tony Hawk on a half pipe, he was ready to get gnarly. And when Goliath challenged him he thought, 'can I beat this guy?' No doy!" - Stuff Christians Like (doing an impression of a 1990's youth pastor "speaking the young people's language")

I might say, "This person is GOOD because he is who he is." God would judge, "this person is not good because he is not who I am." - Lauren, on right judgement.

"Halfway Christianity is the most miserable existence of all. Halfway Christians know enough to feel guilty about themselves but haven’t gone far enough to get happy in Christ. Wholehearted Christianity is very happy." - Roy Ortlund (from a post in memory of his father) - h/t The Spyglass.

And, finally, this one sums up my feelings exactly (and, no, I'm not anti-environmental. I'm just pro-seriousness and anti-chicken-little-ism): “I’ll believe climate change is a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” - Planet Gore.

Something to think about, from D. A. Carson (he's a Hoss!)¹

. . . many of those who speak easily and fluently of redeeming the culture soon focus all their energy shaping fiscal and political policies and the like, and merely assume the gospel. A gospel that is merely assumed, that does no more than perk away in the background while the focus of our attention is on the "redemption" of the culture in which we find ourselves, is lost within a generation or two. At the same time, I worry about Christians who focus their attention so narrowly on getting people "saved" that they care little about doing good to all people, even if especially to the household of God. Getting this right is not easy, and inevitably priorities will shift a little in various parts of the world, under various regimes. Part of the complexity of the discussion, I think, is bound up with what the church as church is responsible for, and what Christians as Christians are responsible for: I have argued that failure to make this distinction tends to lead toward sad conclusions.

[H/T Jollyblogger


¹ The Thinklings by-laws stipulate that I must say this, but he is anyway.

Overheard at Element's PRAXIS small group, via Gospel-Driven Church:

"I became a Christian eight months ago. If I go back to my country, they'll hang me." (Pause) "But it's okay."

Beautiful . . .