What is the devil’s due Evangelicals can glean from Nietzsche? It is the willingness to be driven like Nietzsche. It is the willingness to spare no pains in the search for truth. It is the willingness. . . .to work into the late hours of the night or to start in the earliest hours of the day; to pick up a new project as soon as we have finished an older one; to grow weary and exhausted in our quest for truth; to have...our eyes watery from too much reading, and our bodies bent over from long, weary hours at the study desk.
No Evangelical whose reading habits are a disgrace to the seriousness of the Christian ministry, or who spends more time before a television set than he does in serious reading in his study has the right to damn Nietzsche from the pulpit to some gruesome place in the Inferno.--Bernard Ramm, The Devil, Seven Wormwoods, and God (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1977), 61-62.
Very good and challenging quote.
ReplyDeleteAnd to consider it was from 1977 . . . how much more convicting it is for us today!
I am reminded of a district-wide pastoral survey from a couple of years ago in which two or three active PASTORS could list NO books read. (One person listed only 'The Sporting News' for his yearly report.)
May God have mercy on us and send revival to those who long and search amongst a lost generation.
-Michael Thompson
I read this article by Edward Wimberley today and was reminded of this particular post.
ReplyDeleteHere is the URL I linked above.
http://www.naplesnews.com/blogs/veritas-libertas-edward-wimberley/2009/oct/31/responsibilities/