Wilberforce

One of my heroes is William Wilberforce. Motivated by his faith in Christ, he fought tenaciously for in the British Parliament for most of his adult life to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. Because of his commitment to Christ, and a few other Christians who wouldn't compromise, the slave trade in Great Britain ended decades before it ended in the U.S., and without a bloody war to make it happen. The recent movie Amazing Grace is an excellent depiction of Wilberforce's life and accomplishments.

I didn't know until recently he wrote a book called Real Christianity, which has recently been updated in modern language by Bob Beltz. I picked up a copy and it is excellent. It's also amazingly relevant to contemporary American Christianity, even though it was written about the British society of two-hundred years ago.

Here are some quotes from the first few chapters. I couldn't help but share:

"If you love someone who is ruining his or her life because of faulty thinking and you don't do anything about it because you are afraid of what others might think, it would seem that rather than being loving, you are in fact being heartless." (pg. 17)

"Faith is a subject of such importance that we should not ignore it because of the distractions or the hectic pace of our lives. Life as we know it, with all its ups and downs, will soon be over. We all will give an accounting to God of how we have lived." (pg. 18)

"Some might say that one's faith is a private matter and should not be spoken of so publicly. They might assert this in public, but what do they really think in their hearts? The fact is, those who say such things usually don't even have a concern for faith in the privacy of their interior lives." (pg. 21)

"What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians. It would be interesting to see the response of men and women who have set their behavior based on the latter when they were confronted with the standard set by God in the former." (pg. 22)

"When we examine the amazing capabilities humans possess and then compare it to what we have done with them, we have a hard time explaining the contrast." (pg. 32-33)