Of Sin and Suffering: Quotes for Growing in Christ: A Christian Response to America’s Mental Health Crisis, #4

By Roger Ball

Over 500 inspiring quotes from Christians and non Christians alike.
There is no easier way to gain exposure, knowledge and wisdom more quickly than by reading the quotes of some of the best writers of yesterday and today. Focusing on the themes of sin and suffering from a Christian perspective "employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for." —Socrates

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Ball
• Release date: Nov 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201357825

Roger Ball

Roger Ball is a Reformed Christian writer who lives on the Florida Spacecoast. He writes on Christian theology, apologetics, psychology and worldview.

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Of Sin and Suffering: Quotes for Growing in Christ

Roger Ball

© 2022 by Roger Ball

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Over 500 inspiring quotes from Christians and non-Christians alike.

There is no easier way to gain exposure, knowledge, and wisdom more quickly than by reading the quotes of some of the best writers of yesterday and today. Focusing on the themes of sin and suffering from a Christian perspective employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for. —Socrates

Please Note

This collection of quotes is by no means an endorsement of the secular philosophies or religious beliefs of all that are included. This also includes Christian authors who may be sound in some areas of doctrine but deficient in others. The same can be said for the character of those known for public slander, malice, or gross immaturity.

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"Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay they could scarcely shine forth at all.

If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired…

So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect." —Jonathan Edwards

Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far. —Friedrich Nietzsche

The dignity and significance of human life—of these, and of these alone, tragedy will never let go. Without them there is no tragedy. To answer the question, what makes a tragedy, is to answer the question wherein lies the essential significance to life, what the dignity of humanity depends upon in the last analysis.… It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows.… What do outside trappings matter, Zenith, or Elsinore? Tragedy’s preoccupation is with suffering. —Edith Hamilton

Sorrow is divine. Sorrow is reigning on all the thrones of the universe, and the crown of all crowns has been one of thorns. There have been many books that treat of the sympathy of sorrow, but only one that bids us glory in tribulation, and count it all joy when we fall into divers afflictions, that so we may be associated with that great fellowship of suffering of which the incarnate Son of God is the head, and through which He is carrying a redemptive conflict to a glorious victory over evil. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. —Harriet Beecher Stowe

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. —1 Corinthians 6:9–10

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed with second thoughts; we cannot enjoy any thing for hankering to know whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with eyes; we see with our feet; the time is infected with Hamlet’s unhappiness,— ‘Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’ Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. Would we be blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink truth dry? —Ralph Waldo Emerson

The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse. —John Piper/Desiring God

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.—C.S. Lewis

We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. The mystery of life is the plainest part of it. The clouds and curtains of darkness, the confounding vapors, these are the daily weather of this world. Whatever else we have grown accustomed to, we have grown accustomed to the unaccountable. Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.​ —G.K. Chesterton

[tolerance is] the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die. —Dorothy Sayers

Habit, routine, our daily humdrum apathy and indifference, this is the shield we put between us and reality, the shield with which we protect ourselves from life while we are engaged in the business of living. It is the function of the arts to pierce that shield, to re-awaken in us a forgotten knowledge. —John Hall Wheelock

My strong advice to you is to soak, soak, soak in philosophy and psychology, until you know more of these subjects than ever you need consciously to think. It is ignorance of these subjects on the part of ministers and workers that has brought our evangelical theology to such a sorry plight. . . . The man who reads only the Bible does not, as a rule, know it or human life. —Oswald Chambers

The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oasis’s in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses. —Robert Greene/The 48 Laws of Power

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. —C.S. Lewis

"Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities,