Criss Jami Quotes

If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it.

~ Criss Jami

Senses of humor define people, as factions, deeper rooted than religious or political opinions. When carrying out everyday tasks, opinions are rather easy to set aside, but those whom a person shares a sense of humor with are his closest friends. They are always there to make the biggest influence.

~ Criss Jami

To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.

~ Criss Jami

These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.

~ Criss Jami

Christ is our Friend; He is also the Righteous King. God is our Father; He is also the Sovereign Lord. Christianity can be said to be both a religion and a relationship. You may often hear the cliché that it is not a religion, but a relationship only - which, I believe, is a bit too vague a statement - 'religion' has long had different meanings and implications depending on who you ask or where you are coming from. Honestly, it is sometimes the case that Christians like to think they are too cool and free and up-close and personal with God to be like other religions. Perhaps that could be argued, that could be the case, as it is written thus: 'You are no longer a slave to sin, but God's child.' So we might very well assert that Christianity is not at all some stale philosophy centered around legalistic guilt and empty rule-keeping, as the modernists so commonly define religion; although by other definitions we might as well be boasting that it is 'The Religion' simply by claiming that it is too real and too special to be deemed 'just another religion'.

~ Criss Jami

As for the belief that humanity is mostly good, Secular humanism, when in that alignment, always presumes the existence of a higher power, or some god-like influence on man. Because it then becomes the belief that people are generally good and should be protected from the wiles of religion, as though this dark, vague and ignorant force once fell from the heavens, latched onto the purer hearts and minds of men and women, and, in all its forms, controlled and polluted the whole of human history. He says, 'When we defeat religion, humanity will be free.' But, if he were duly consistent, if he were really at all as secular as he claims, he might as well admit to what is actually an underlying brand of nihilistic cynicism: 'When we defeat humans, humanity will be free.

~ Criss Jami

I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.

~ Criss Jami

When most of the greatest individuals in history were misunderstood and you've spent so much of your own adult life misunderstood, you can't help but believe that the majority of people know very little worth knowing.

~ Criss Jami

The Christian does not avoid sin to achieve salvation, but rather salvation brings him to a desire not to sin. The closer that one's spirit is synchronized with the holy knowledge of God, the more he comprehends how and why sin is destructive to himself and others in each and every circumstance. The dwindling desire for sin is a premature gift of Heaven - where there will be no sin, where all will, too, possess that full and complete wisdom; all will have perfect reasons not to sin. In this way, free will might still exist, but the shared wisdom of God will simply outwit all desires, impulses, and needs to sin.

~ Criss Jami

The talk of sin is of course to many a big turn-off; to others, an even bigger myth - because in reality, sin is like the spiritual equivalent of a microscopic parasite, or a virus, or better yet even, an infectious disease. And just as one might never know of, until visiting a competent doctor, the tiny pathogens progressively eroding one's body, so we might never know that in sin we are eroding our being and losing direction until hearing the Word of God rightfully applied. Therefore I ask, which of the doctors would then be the more competent: the one who finds the problem and gives the solution, or the one who willfully ignores the problem (or rather finds the problem when it is much too late)? Seldom does anyone write off the knowledge of medicine for the physical body as primitive practice, so neither must the knowledge of the Word of God for one's spiritual well-being remain written off as primitive practice - quite the opposite really. As it is written thus: 'Lean not on your own understanding.

~ Criss Jami

It's a huge disservice to classify all minds as either closed or open. I find the best minds are closed by openable windows.

~ Criss Jami

The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent.

~ Criss Jami

Know the word of God not in order that by doing so you might be saved; know it rather so that unlike the many you are not easily deceived. You may find that, evidently, a great many of the so-called novel ideas of the present were made without a clue that 'God', if you will, already laid profound discourse on or against them ages ago: no man has gone against God in such a way that God, from the beginning, did not already expect him to. Then, insofar as this, you will remain clear in that it is not at all that the Christian should be against newness; quite the opposite really - for a major point of Christianity is about one constantly being made new in Christ - it is only that many people are not actually bringing true newness to the table, and this is precisely because they do not first apply (or let alone even know) the wisdom of old.

~ Criss Jami

So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.

~ Criss Jami

Pride is pride not because it hates being wrong, but because it loves being wrong: To hate being wrong is to change your opinion when you are proven wrong; whereas pride, even when proven wrong, decides to go on being wrong.

~ Criss Jami

For a great many skeptics are put to waste. But this is meant in the sense that which they vainly focus their energy on ridiculing a certain tiny denomination of Biblical fundamentalism, a denomination seated just one chair away from unbelief; they, the skeptics, cannot believe because they are the most literal of fundamentalists: of those that which must interpret Scripture only by means of a sort of obsolete and dead script of intellectual incompetence. By all means, this is supposed to happen - Scripture states of itself that all thought and interpretation is folly without the Holy Spirit - but on the other hand, it seems, ironically, that if one thinks that the Bible is, in its true essence, an outdated text, he doesn't know much about the world around him nor those who live in it. Either that, or he doesn't know much about what it says in relation to the world around him nor to those who live in it. It's as though he, too, is dead to the world and it to him. He has no spirit: he can only possibly understand Scripture as deceased rather than the modern world's very living narrative.

~ Criss Jami

To respect a mystery is to make way for the answer.

~ Criss Jami

Some of the most polished ideas are discovered through healthy, honest debate, so if you don't argue with yourself every once in a while, other people will gladly point out if, in any sense, you missed a spot.

~ Criss Jami

If your doctrine changed for the better yet your character changed for the worse, you changed for the worse.

~ Criss Jami

We must not allow our pride to be the motivation behind our apologetics; rather, philoverity, the love of truth must be the full and complete motivation. For pride corrupts truth.

~ Criss Jami

All knowledge meets an end at the question '...Why?

~ Criss Jami

Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.

~ Criss Jami

Pure wisdom is the 'fruit of life' banal platitudes are the 'bane of existence'.

~ Criss Jami

How easy it is for so many of us today to be undoubtedly full of information yet fully deprived of accurate information.

~ Criss Jami

Because you're always learning, the chief lesson remains: you still know nothing.

~ Criss Jami

The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing.

~ Criss Jami

When emerging from humble beginnings, those around you tend to underestimate your authenticity because they knew you before you were 'somebody'.

~ Criss Jami

As Aristotle said, 'Excellence is a habit.' I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he's ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.

~ Criss Jami

Soar with wit. Conquer with dignity. Handle with care.

~ Criss Jami

Constantly stopping to explain oneself may expand into a frustrating burden for the rare individual, so ceasing to do so is like finally dropping the weights and sprinting towards his goals. Those who insincerely misunderstand, who intentionally distort the motives of a pure-intentioned individual, then, no longer have the opportunity to block his path; instead, they are the ones left to stand on the sidelines shouting frustratedly in the wind of his trail.

~ Criss Jami

It's neither judgment nor judgment according to the status quo that we have a problem with, but rather judgment according to God's Word that we have a problem with. We sharply dress ourselves, go out into the world, shape ourselves, our personalities according to the world's standards and preferences, allow ourselves to be made dull by the world and its desires in order to appear successful and happy and attractive in the eyes of the world. We love the world's judgment but we hate God's judgment. Absurdly enough, the one that really matters, the one out of the purest of loves rather than a mere contract in hopes of mutual gain, is the one which we so adamantly try to shut ourselves off from.

~ Criss Jami

Credentials are like potential energy, the compliments of a name on paper, in documents, word of mouth, but faith is like kinetic energy, the motion and the force that which is witnessed. Hence in the end it is the faith rather than the credentials that really takes you places.

~ Criss Jami

I'd rather strive for the kind of interview where instead of me asking to introduce myself to society, society asks me to introduce myself to society.

~ Criss Jami

There's sometimes a tugging feeling you get to push further when you aren't being challenged enough or when things get too comfortable.

~ Criss Jami

Every man has a specific skill, whether it is discovered or not, that more readily and naturally comes to him than it would to another, and his own should be sought and polished. He excels best in his niche - originality loses its authenticity in one's efforts to obtain originality.

~ Criss Jami

The ultimate story of success: When a nobody, who has never once in his entire life known the feeling of being remembered or respected, suddenly snaps and becomes a world dictator. On one hand it sounds just, but on the other, it illustrates the reason why a prosperity message has and needs its limitations.

~ Criss Jami

One may not always know his purpose until his only option is to monopolize in what he truly excels at. He grows weary of hearing the answer 'no' time and time again, so he turns to and cultivates, monopolizes in his one talent which others cannot possibly subdue. Then, beyond the crowds of criticism and rejection, the right people recognize his talent - among them he finds his stage.

~ Criss Jami

Gloating is a superficial glowing, floating is an idle flowing, and bloatedness is the paralysis of blowing up; because silent movement results in loud victories.

~ Criss Jami

Have nuts and be nuts.

~ Criss Jami

It is easier for one to take risks and to chase his dreams with a mindset that he has nothing to lose. In this lies the immense passion, the great advantage of avoiding a materialistic, pleasure-filled way of life.

~ Criss Jami