Faith Quotes by Charles Malik

The conflicts and contradictions and impossibilities which riddle the Middle East at this moment could, in God’s own day and in God’s own way, precisely on account of their intensity and depth, generate new creative potencies bursting forth into one of the greatest flowerings of the spirit. In the meantime, let us hold fast to the deepest we know, seeking ever the deeper still.

The conception of history as unitary and purposeful first dawned in the Middle East. And today the greatest service that history can perform in the Middle East, both as the making of history and the writing of history, is to help in restoring wholeness and integrity to its future and unity and continuity to its past.

There is no new thing under the Sun’ (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 and 3:15), except the new creature in Jesus Christ. Only the radical change of heart in Jesus Christ is new. Only grace and the Holy Ghost is new. Everything else is as old as the hills. All discovery is only the uncovering of what is already there. In repentance and grace there is new creation. All else is the spinning out of laws and norms spun out a million times before. Repetition, repetition of the same thing. No essential newness.

I am only interested in ultimate matters.  It is not easy in man’s confused and mixed motives to single out anything pure.  But if I accepted my present responsibilities, I can say in all truth that the dominant motive was the possibility of being of some service to my Lord and country.  There is no meaning to life apart from him and his service.

Our aim is that Lebanon enjoy the clear distinction of being the only country in the Middle East in which the problem of minorities has received its complete resolution.

The Christian society in Lebanon occupies a special position owing to the fact that it has been free and has enjoyed a continuous history down the centuries.  For this reason, the Lebanon we want to build up is anxious that the Christians in it remain in fact free, secure and masters of themselves and of their own values and destiny…

The tragedy of the world today is that the traditions which embody the deepest truth are not bothering clearly, sufficiently, responsibly, boldly to articulate themselves. 

In this age of marching materialism, it is difficult to champion the cause of the spirit and mind of man; it is difficult to impress on the international community that even after man is fully secure in his so-called ‘economic rights’ he may still be not-man. But unless man’s proper nature, unless his mind and spirit are brought out, set apart, protected and promoted, the struggle for human rights is a sham and a mockery. 

If it is to understand its own historic position in its true light, Communism must thoroughly understand the fact that it is standing face to face with, and rebelling against, the West—the Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Christian, humane traditions of the West—and not only the unhappy West of secularism, liberalism, capitalism, and imperialism.

The real struggle today is between those who believe in authentic, responsible, existential, and personal freedom and those who enjoy its protection in order to ‘use’ it for other ends.