“Even if God could lie, He would have no motivation. He can gain nothing by lying. Everything He wants to have happen happens.”
Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 51
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James MacDonald 34
American pastor 1960Related quotes
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 28
Context: Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and among these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are. You know something and then the Quality stimulus hits and then you try to define the Quality stimulus, but to define it all you've got to work with is what you know. So your definition is made up of what you know. It's an analogue to what you already know. It has to be. It can't be anything else. And the mythos grows this way. By analogies to what is known before. The mythos is a building of analogues upon analogues upon analogues. These fill the collective consciousness of all communicating mankind. Every last bit of it. The Quality is the track that directs the train. What is outside the train, to either side—that is the terra incognita of the insane. He knew that to understand Quality he would have to leave the mythos. That's why he felt that slippage. He knew something was about to happen.
“He waited, but nothing happened.
"Boom? Was something suppose to happen there?"”
Jace to Imogen, pg. 303
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)
Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 16 (p. 164)
2:2 <!-- p. 317 -->
Paraphrased variant: Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God … but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.
Quoted in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1998) by James Beasley Simpson.
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)
Context: Man can certainly keep on lying (and he does so); but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel (he does so); but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God. He can certainly flee from God (he does so); but he cannot escape Him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God (he does and is so); but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in His hate. He can certainly give himself to isolation (he does so — he thinks, wills and behaves godlessly, and is godless); but even in his isolation he must demonstrate that which he wishes to controvert — the impossibility of playing the "individual" over against God. He may let go of God, but God does not let go of him.
Source: A Fine Balance
“He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”
"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington", The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=kqMDAAAAQAAJ (1867), ed. John Paul
Cited by: William E. Phipps, Mark Twain's Religion https://books.google.nl/books?id=y8e2zLpDngQC&pg=PA18&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Mercer University Press, 2003, p. 18
Richard Locke, Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels https://books.google.nl/books?id=38erAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Columbia University Press, p. 12