existence on Depression

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

Take the great American writer Ernest Hemingway, for example. Born in 1899, he was the epitome of the twentieth-century man. At age 25, he sipped champagne in Paris, and later had well-publicized game...

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. (For Contrast).

The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim su...

In an article entitled, What the New Atheists Don’t See , the British author Theodore Dalrymple shares his honest struggles with atheism. The subtitle of his article is fascinating, “To regret re...

Perhaps you began to question God's love or His wisdom. Maybe you were afraid to say that He was wrong, but you sort of said, "God, you deceived me in letting me believe that this was the rig...

O God, if there is a God, have mercy on my soul, if there is a soul.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

Pastor: Satan and the powers of darkness seek to divide and destroy. And all too often God’s people either run from the battle in fear and defeat, or pick up the wrong weapons in the fight, relying ...

One of the universal experiences of life is questioning whether God really exists or if we are ultimately, alone in the universe. The great British theologian (this isn’t meant to be taken seriously) ...

“If there is no God, never was a God, why do we miss him so much?” asked one agnostic European Jew as he looked back on the horrors of the twentieth century.

Maybe this sounds silly, but go outside and look up. You cannot see yourself. All you see is a vast expanse of possibilities. Look down. You will see yourself and little else. This is true in life. Lo...

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

In 1882—seven years before his descent into madness—Friedrich Nietzsche published a parable called The Madman . In the parable, a madman comes into a village on a bright, sunny morning holding al...

Even though it’s now associated with him, Nietzsche didn’t coin the phrase God is dead. As the son of a Lutheran pastor, he would have heard that line in a Lutheran Holy Saturday hymn. And although...

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices,...

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest...

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered ...

Recently I was watching a children’s television show on YouTube with my kids, when the host asked, “What is the meaning of Life?” His response was typical: “I don’t know,” but what he said next made m...

It is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God.

It was true, I had always realized it—I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential ...

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of wh...

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the dreaded Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. He wrote of his experiences in the book The Night. In that book he relates the harrowing story of two Jewish men and a Jewi...

Many have heard of the polymath and famous atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), whose career as a public intellectual touched on a variety of disciplines, including philosophy (he is considered one o...

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as wat...

Once, there was a devout woman who prayed every day in her small apartment, expressing her faith loudly and fervently. Her neighbor, an atheist, often overheard her prayers, which drove her nuts. When...

Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.

Faith is seeing the invisible, but not the nonexistent.

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.