Latest Greg Koukl Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Every worldview has its ambiguities - debatable elements that people simply will not see to eye on. There's nothing wrong with that as long as the disagreement is principled and dignified. I actually think that arguments - as opposed to quarrels - are good things because they're the best way to figure out what's true. Share your reasons, listen carefully to each other, be nice, and may the best idea win.

  Greg Koukl

  Nice, Eye, Thinking

  Source: www.patheos.com

• You may be a fantastic person, and you may have some wonderful religious views that might even turn out to be true, but the religion you'd be following would not be Christianity.

  Greg Koukl

  Religious, Wonderful, Christianity

  Source: www.patheos.com

• In the Story of Reality a man is a helpless slave - enslaved to his own passions, the flesh, and enslaved to a cruel master, the devil - a slave who God Himself rescues and adopts into His own family. It is the very worst news coupled with the very best news.

  Greg Koukl

  Passion, Reality, Men

  Source: www.patheos.com

• The word "Christian" means something in particular. The basic outline and general truths and doctrines central to Christianity have been hammered out over 2000 years of reflection on the teachings of Jesus and his apostles. If you disagree with these foundational concerns - the kinds of things I focus on in The Story of Reality - then you're simply not a Christian.

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Jesus, Teaching

  Source: www.patheos.com

• In the Story of Reality man does not rescue himself for his own glory. Instead, God rescues man for His glory. Every other story describes what man needs to do to fix himself and save him from whatever else is wrong with the world.

  Greg Koukl

  Reality, Men, World

  Source: www.patheos.com

• If the Christian doesn't get reality right, he loses effectiveness in this life. If the non-Christian doesn't get reality right, he loses much in this life, and everything and the next one. As Jesus put it, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?"

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Jesus, Reality

  Source: www.patheos.com

• Reality has a way of injuring people who don't take it seriously. If you don't believe in gravity, for example, and then step off a tall building, you won't just float away.

  Greg Koukl

  Believe, Reality, People

  Source: www.patheos.com

• When we encounter new details of our world we fill in more of the spaces. When we discover details that don't seem to fit with our view of the world, we have a kind of "crisis of faith," even if our worldview is not especially religious. We're forced to redraw our "map" a bit.

  Greg Koukl

  Religious, World, Kind

  Source: www.patheos.com

• I'm hoping that The Story of Reality will fill in more details for the Christian believer and will create a crisis of faith for the nonbeliever.

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Reality, Crisis

  Source: www.patheos.com

• Some people suggest that a worldview is like a set of glasses that color the way you see the world around you. A Christian interprets the world one way, and an atheist interprets the same world a completely different way since he's looking through different worldview "glasses."

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Atheist, People

  Source: www.patheos.com

• Two things have been bothering me for a long time. The first is the tendency of people in general - and that includes Christians - to "relativize" religion. Any religious belief is only "true for," so to speak - true for you or true for me or true for those people on the other side of the world. Second, I've been bothered by how poorly believers understand their own Story. They have bits and pieces, of course, but they're missing enough that they can easily become prey to ideas that sound spiritual, but end up being foolishness in the end.

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Spiritual, Religious

  Source: www.patheos.com

• Most Christians who've been around for a while have their Story in bits and pieces, but have never seen how powerful it really is when assembled as a whole. I want them to see how well it fits together and how it offers tremendous explanatory power regarding the world as we actually find it. I want them to see how it resolves the problem of evil, and why God's solution - the God/man Jesus - is the only solution.

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Jesus, Powerful

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Christianity is actually "true Truth," as Francis Schaeffer used to put it. God really does exist, Heaven actually is real (along with Hell), Jesus really did live and He did the things the historical records - the Gospels - say He did, the resurrection of Christ really happened, and there really is hope each of us can count on for "the kind of perfect world our hearts have always longed for."

  Greg Koukl

  Jesus, Real, Heart

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Why so many mentions regarding Jesus from such a wide variety of sources (Pliny, Tacitus, Lucian, Josephus, to name a few)? Because Jesus of Nazareth was a man of history, who made a profound impact on history. There's no good reason to doubt that Jesus existed, or to think the real Jesus was completely different from the one depicted in the Story.

  Greg Koukl

  Jesus, Real, Men

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Evil did not catch God by surprise. He had a rescue plan, and He's still in the process of working out His plan.

  Greg Koukl

  Work Out, Evil, Surprise

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Our reasons for believing Jesus existed and also that He was who He claimed to be - the God who came down - are the same reasons for believing any fact of history: the documentation is substantial and it passes all the tests of historical reliability. Scholars - both liberal and conservative - overwhelming agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a man of history and the Gospels, on the main, tell His story accurately.

  Greg Koukl

  Jesus, Believe, Men

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Trouble, hardship, difficulty, pain, suffering, conflict, tragedy, evil - they're all part of the [Christian] Story. Indeed, the problem of evil is the reason there's any Story at all.

  Greg Koukl

  Christian, Pain, Evil

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• When God's children disobeyed their heavenly Father, they damaged everything. When Adam and Eve rebelled against the King of the universe, they broke the whole world. This is why there is evil and suffering. Bad things happen in a world that's broken.

  Greg Koukl

  Kings, Children, Father

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Man had freedom to choose the good, but this same freedom also allowed him to choose the bad. This is called moral freedom.

  Greg Koukl

  Men, Moral Freedom, Moral

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Something good made something bad possible (though not inevitable). Humans, however, didn't use their freedom well. Instead of using it to honor God in friendship, they used it to rebel.

  Greg Koukl

  Honor, Use, Rebel

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• God created man to share friendship with Him and share in His happiness.

  Greg Koukl

  Men, Share

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Though it's hard to be completely certain about things like this, I have a suspicion that only someone with deep freedom (one who makes decisions for reasons that are his own) and who's also a moral being (can experience goodness) can have a meaningful friendship with God. If friendship with God and sharing in His happiness are good things (and it seems they are), then making a creature who could enjoy these things is also a good thing, even if it comes with a liability. There's a risk.

  Greg Koukl

  Meaningful, Decision, Risk

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• People are tempted to think (understandably) that if God were really good He'd never allow any evil in the world at all. But I don't think a perfectly good God would never permit any evil, and neither would others, I wager, if they thought about it. Rather, I think that a good God always prevents suffering and evil unless He has a good reason to allow it. That's the crux.

  Greg Koukl

  Thinking, Perfectly Good, Evil

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• Sometimes (at least in principle) God might allow some evil because doing so will prevent a greater evil, and sometimes He might allow evil because it will produce a greater good.

  Greg Koukl

  Evil, Might, Principles

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

• If man is not special, if he's not deeply different from any other thing, then there's no good reason not to treat him just like any other thing when it's convenient for us to do so.

  Greg Koukl

  Men, Special, Different

  Source: www.biblegateway.com