A Few Good Quotes

We can all use help sometimes, and today I am asking for your help.

I’ve been asked to provide marketing materials to the publisher of my new book about Christian worldviews. I pulled some direct quotes from the book that can be used for marketing, but I have to get my list down to the top ten. Could you please read through these quotes and tell me in the comment section which ones stood out to you? If you were reading these quotes in a description of the book, which ones would make you want to pick up the book and learn more?

1. It can be confusing and disconcerting to discover that not everyone agrees with what you believe—even people who, like you, call themselves Christians—even people who go to the same church as you.
2. We cannot live our best lives for God if our heads are filled with untested ideas, including half-truths, false assumptions, incorrect teachings, and self-serving philosophies.
3. In a world of random, relentless sensory input, we strive to find connections, to see order, to discover the underlying story.
4. There are several important elements that make up a good story: the setting where the story takes place, the characters who move the story forward, the inciting incident, and the climax, to name a few. Those same elements can help us understand the story of God’s work in his creation and our own place in it. They can help us define our worldview.
5. Each person has a worldview—a collection of beliefs that guides their lives—but few of us take the time to sort through our beliefs to see if they hold together to make a consistent whole.
6. While it isn’t always possible to know what people believe about God, themselves, or the world they live in, their actions often reveal what’s going on inside their minds. Sometimes our actions reveal we don’t really believe what we say we believe—or even think we believe.
7. It’s important to not only know what we believe but also why we believe it if we want to hold onto those beliefs and be secure in our worldview. It is only then that our actions will consistently reflect what we say we believe.
8. God is a master storyteller, and we are part of his story. If we are to understand our place in that story, every part of the story matters—the beginning, the middle, and the end.
9. An internal worldview, then, is a commitment to beliefs deep inside us rather than a list of things we say we believe. When we look carefully at those deeply-held beliefs, we find that we don’t always act as if we believe what we say we believe. It’s only when we align our internal beliefs with the external propositions we say we believe that our walk will begin to match our talk.
10. When we use propositions and presuppositions to define who God is, we can forget that the infinite cannot be fully explained in finite words and phrases. We end up putting God in a box of our own making.
11. Examining your personal, internal worldview in light of God’s master story can lead you to that place of knowing God instead of just knowing about him.
12. Instead of focusing on the story of my life and trying to decide how Christianity fits my storyline, I need to understand the bigger story—God’s Master Story—and look for my place in his storyline.
13. For Christians of every denomination, the first three chapters of Genesis are the principal source for understanding the rest of God’s master story. Before dismissing them as myth or legend, or even allegory, we should seriously consider what God meant to reveal through them regarding himself, the world he created, and our place in it.
14. The most important point of any worldview is what we believe about God and what he is doing in the world. No matter what we believe about God’s plan and purpose, if we don’t believe he has the power to do it—that he WILL do it—we don’t have a very firm foundation on which to stand.
15. If I don’t want my worldview to be based on falsehoods, half-truths, and wishful thinking, I need to carefully consider my beliefs and develop my worldview intentionally. I need to understand what I believe and why I believe it.
16. The simple fact is that Christians in different churches and denominations see things differently when it comes to where we came from, what went wrong, what God is doing to fix it, and how we are to help in that great mission. But we have more in common than we might think.
17. If we allow our personal relationship with God and our continual study of his word to shape our worldview, we can’t fail to find our own part in God’s master story.

My book on worldviews is just starting to be edited, and it won't be available for purchase until the end of 2020. To be sure to hear about its release date and an opportunity to help launch the book, please sign up for my email list here. 

---