I do not recall another period when ‘faith’ was as popular as it is today. ‘If only we believe hard enough we'll make it somehow.’ So goes the popular chant. What you believe is not important. Only believe... What is overlooked in all this is that faith is good only when it engages truth; when it is made to rest upon falsehood it can and often does lead to eternal tragedy. For it is not enough that we believe; we must believe the right thing about the right One.
For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.
I have learned that human existence is essentially tragic. It is only the love of God, disclosed and enacted in Christ, that redeems the human tragedy and makes it tolerable. No, more than tolerable. Wonderful.
Although there may be tragedy in your life, there’s always a possibility to triumph. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.
A pornographic novelist is one who exploits the sexual instinct as a prostitute does. A legitimate sex novel elucidates it or brings out its poetry, tragedy, or comedy.
In every life, no matter how full or empty ones purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other peoples store of it.
Marriage -- yes, it is the supreme felicity of life. I concede it. And it is also the supreme tragedy of life. The deeper the love the surer the tragedy. And the more disconsolating when it comes.
It is a tragedy of the Germanic world that Jesus was Judaised, distorted, falsified; and an alien Asiatic spirit was forced upon us. That is a crime we must repair.