I have heard professing Christians of our own day speak as 
though the historicity of the Gospels does not matter--all that 
matters is the contemporary Spirit of Christ. I contend that 
the historicity does matter, and I do not see why we, who live 
nearly two thousand years later, should call into question an 
Event for which there were many eye-witnesses still living at 
the time when most of the New Testament was written. It was no 
"cunningly devised fable" but an historic irruption of God into 
human history which gave birth to a young church so sturdy that 
the pagan world could not stifle or destroy it.

 -- J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Ring of Truth

The usual biblical word describing the “no” we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance...

Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbor and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth.

... Eugene H. Peterson

"The conscience of fallen human beings is often mistaken (it needs to be educated by the Word of God) and often sleepy (it needs to be awakened by the Spirit of God).  True also, some people deny that they have any sense of sin, insisting at the same time that everything is relative now, for there are no moral absolutes anymore.  Do not believe them.  For by creation God still endows all human beings with a moral sense, which our inherited fallenness has distorted but not destroyed.  Unless and until people so violate and smother their conscience as to 'cauterize' it (a word Paul uses in 1 Tim. 4:2) or render it insensitive, it continues to trouble them.  They know they are sinful and guilty, however much they may protest to the contrary."

– John R.W. Stott

"Machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force people to behave like machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to "communicate" with them and with each other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use. The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. "

-- Ivan Illich

In the birth stories of Luke and Matthew, only one person seems to grasp the mysterious nature of what God has set in motion: the old man Simeon, who recognized the baby as the Messiah, instinctively understood that conflict would surely follow. “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against…..” he said, and then made the prediction that a sword would pierce Mary’s own soul. Somehow Simeon sensed that though on the surface little had changed – the autocrat Herod still ruled, Roman troops were still stringing up patriots, Jerusalem still overflowed with beggars – underneath everything had changed. A new force had arrived to undermine the world’s powers…

-Philip Yancey

"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

- John Gray

"Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete." 

-- G.K. Chesterton