Eric Metaxas / b. 1963 / New York, New York, USA / Speaker, Author, Radio Host, Podcaster
Note: The specific sources of the following quotations are unknown, but presumably derive from Metaxas’s very numerous writings, interviews, and podcasts.
Abortion
Ultrasound is instrumental in the fight against abortion precisely because it allows women to make an informed choice by shedding light in a place which, for most of its history, has been shrouded in secrecy.
America
America is fundamentally exceptional. No one in the history of the world had ever done anything to compare with what the Founders did, creating a fragile mechanism by which men and women could actually govern themselves.
If America is an idea, which it is—we’re not a nation of ethnic groups that say we’re Americans because we have American blood; we have the blood of every nation in our veins—and there’s something really beautiful about that, but it means that we are an idea and that we all have to buy into this idea.
I guess I’m concerned that vulgarity has now officially entered the mainstream of our culture, and I think people have to respectfully stand up and say, “No thanks.”
For proof that our culture has gone to the dogs, look no further than the bizarrely parental ways many Americans talk about our furry friends.
Often, we have only focused on what we’ve done wrong as a nation. Of course we should face our sins and our mistakes. But if we get stuck there and don’t focus on where we’ve come from and how we’ve overcome those sins and mistakes, we are truly to be pitied.
America is the only nation in the world based on an idea—freedom and self-government—so if we don’t understand that idea and what sacrifices were made to win that freedom and keep it for over two centuries, how can we possibly continue to keep it?
Being an American is something we need to learn and understand.
One of my favorite things about America is our breathtaking collection of national and state parks, many of which boast wonders the Psalmist would envy.
Angels
The Bible is filled with stories about angels, but many of us have had our view of angels confused by popular misconceptions about them, the principal of which is that angels do not actually exist anymore than fairies do, or wood nymphs or water sprites. But they do exist, and the Bible attests to their existence innumerable times.
Anger
As Christians, we sin with anger because we lack faith in God’s ability to provide for or protect us.
We all can do our part to address America’s anger mismanagement crisis. And for us Christians, it starts with a little more faith, hope, and love.
The Big Questions
I have no doubt, if people are really seeking the big questions, it will lead them to the Lord.
We’re commanded by God to worship God with our mind.
Biography
Perhaps the best thing about biographies is that they enable us to slip the strictures of time and provide a bracing corrective to our tendency to see everything in the dark glass of our own era, with all its blind spots, motes, beams, and distortions.
Children
You can’t fool children.
In some sense, there is no such thing as writing for children.
Christianity
Wilberforce, because of his faith, stood up for African slaves. Bonhoeffer, because of his faith, stood up for Jews. That’s Christianity to me.
Christians who enjoy and support art and culture, who make it a priority in their lives, and who reach out to those in the arts instead of reflexively pushing them away, can help bring the culture toward a renewed appreciation of goodness, truth, and beauty. And that is good for everyone.
If the main contribution that Christians make to culture is complaining about it, we’re doing something wrong.
A Christian worldview impacts every area of life. Including making your house a home.
Faith
Faith is not the absence of doubt, but the courage to believe in spite of it.
Fear of Death
Our longing for immortality is good! It was put there on purpose. We were meant—from the moment of our creation—to live forever.
Fellowship
All of us, believers and non-believers, desire some kind of fellowship and connection.
God designed humans to live in community.
Home is—or should be—a place for companionship, for rearing children and having friends and family over for meals while the dog begs for scraps under the table.
Forgiveness
Thankfully, forgiveness, and the healing it brings in its wake, has nothing to do with “deserve.”
The power of forgiveness transcends personal relationships.
Freedom of Religion
I think most people have no idea about what religious freedom means.
Religious liberty is the salt and light that has made us the great nation we are in a whole number of ways.
Religious liberty is misunderstood. It simply means that the Founders said that everyone in America should have the freedom to practice and exercise their religion. Not to believe it but to exercise our beliefs—to act on our beliefs. It’s not about believing privately in your head, privately in that building, or simply about freedom of worship.
Many in our increasingly secular culture want to chase Christians out of the public square altogether.
Freedom of Speech
To try to preemptively shut down debate with name-calling is profoundly un-American and will harm this country.
God
God doesn’t always give you what you want, but He always gives you what you need.
No one knows what the future holds, except the One Who holds the future!
Where did God come from? It’s certainly more complicated than trying to figure out where, say, Barry Manilow was born.
Most people really have no problem with the idea of a creator God. Their question is just what is this God like, how can I know about him, how can I know him.
People everywhere see the True, the Beautiful, and the Good and long to know their source. And, thank God, He has revealed Himself!
History
Each era has the fatal hubris to believe that it has once and for all climbed to the top of the mountain and can see everything as it is, from the highest and most objective vantage point possible.
Immigration
We’ve always been the most generous nation in the world when it comes to caring for those outside of our borders.
Language
Language is powerful. Words matter.
Life
Sometimes the things that go wrong in our lives lead us to the things that are right for us.
Don’t let fear stop you from pursuing your dreams. Have the courage to take that first step.
True happiness is found not in pursuing our own selfish desires, but in serving others and living a life of purpose.
When you have a biblical idea of men’s strength, you know that God only gives us anything good to be used for his purposes and mainly to serve others.
The familiar can feel good—especially with so much uncertainty when we turn on the news. But it doesn’t uplift us, challenge us, or inspire anew as truly original work can.
We all have different strengths, different gifts.
Created in the awesome image of God, men and women know that life has a meaning beyond “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
Marriage
Everyone needs to stop and breathe and look at how redefining marriage will have a hugely chilling effect on religious liberty in America.
The truth is many singles deeply desire and pray for marriage.
Men and Women
Every single cell in each person’s body tells us whether that person is a male or a female. There is no human being in history whose cells have some mixture of the two, nor anyone who has ever been able to change that cellular reality.
Young men, more than anything, need good role models in their lives.
Women are, I think, moved by the idea that self-sacrifice is noble and can be the source of great joy.
Men and women are complements to each other, physically and otherwise.
Metaxas on Metaxas
[Re: Metaxas’s biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer]:
Six-hundred-page biographies of German theologians aren’t known to fly off the shelves.
I think the fact that I use salty words in my Bonhoeffer book would tip you off that I’m no prude, exactly.
I thought a book on miracles might be a great idea, but just because it’s a great idea doesn’t mean I’m supposed to do it. But my editor persisted, and eventually I thought, “He’s right. I should write this book.”
As an undergrad, I was the editor of the Yale humor magazine, and since then, I’ve published humor in the New York Times and Atlantic, among other places.
Millennials
For at least a decade, Millennials have been stereotyped as lazy, entitled, and stuck on social media. While that may not be entirely fair, they are notoriously liberal, overwhelmingly supporting left-leaning candidates, and favoring policies like nationalized healthcare and same-sex “marriage.”
Miracles
The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.
If God miraculously created all that is, including you and me, then to say that we need miracles is an understatement. Our only response to that idea should be undying gratitude.
Whether one believes in miracles or the miraculous has mostly to do with the presuppositions one brings to the subject.
Miracles seem to attest to the presence of a loving and compassionate God, one who wants to help us, who wants to speak to us and encourage us.
Miracles are signs, and like all signs, they are never about themselves; they’re about whatever they are pointing toward. Miracles point to something beyond themselves. But to what? To God himself. That’s the point of miracles—to point us beyond our world to another world.
If you accept my thesis that the universe and this earth are the most outrageous miracles by an infinite margin, then you will understand that simply for us to exist requires a miracle.
Miracles are supposed to point us to Him, but we can get to God without miracles. It is God himself we should long for rather than for the miracles that point to him. To get caught up in wanting miracles is a bit like thinking the destination of a road trip is the highway you’re supposed to take.
Nature
Quite simply, our isolation from nature has become isolation from God’s Word. Cocooned in our manmade world of climate-controlled homes, cars, subways, and high-rises, we’re finding it easier to live as practical atheists.
We may have city lights and the glow of touch screens to obscure our view, but God’s world is still near at hand, even right here in New York City where I live.
Politics
Sometimes you have to hold your nose and vote for the person who is going to do the least damage or who is maybe going to pull you back from the brink.
It’s one thing to be innocent and another thing to be naive or willfully ignorant.
Part of my life’s thesis is that we live in a culture that has bought into the patently silly idea that there is a divide between the secular world and the faith world.
The freedoms we have enjoyed in America—and spread around the world—are incredibly fragile freedoms.
Restricting the religious impulses of Americans is precisely like killing free enterprise with too many regulations.
I think that there are deceptive forces out there that will try to lead us away from God, and we really do need to be careful.
Freedom requires virtue. Virtue requires faith. And faith, in turn, requires freedom. You can’t have coerced state-sanctioned religion. It has to be utterly free.
The only leader America should ever have is someone who understands that the people are the government.
You and I must demonstrate love to our gay neighbors, of course, remembering that we are ultimately engaged in spiritual warfare. But we should boldly stand up when our rights as citizens and the demands of our conscience are threatened.
Relativism
The logical conclusion of relativism is absurdity. Non-sense. A worldview that undermines its own premises.
Science
To be labeled a “science-denier” in 2017 often just means you’ve upset someone who insists on teaching strict, Darwinian orthodoxy in schools or who advocates particular climate legislation or who supports ethically fraught research on embryos.
There was a time when “science” meant the systematic pursuit of knowledge through experimentation and observation. But it’s rapidly becoming a synonym for progressive politics and materialist philosophy.
Scripture
Let me tell you something you already know: reading is critically important—especially for Christian believers. God, after all, reveals Himself to us in the written words of Scripture. Think about it: when we read the Word, we place ourselves in the very presence of God.
Even if you aren’t a believer, there are incredible stories in the “good book” that I guarantee you will keep you glued to the page. The Bible is no less a part of our cultural heritage than Shakespeare is—and by the way, Shakespeare’s plays are absolutely loaded with Biblical references.
Sin
Thinking about the sins of others give us a feeling of moral superiority. But thinking about our own sins is a humbling experience, which is generally much less fun.
Trump
Donald Trump’s rise is certainly a symptom of our fading virtue and faith, but ironically, he may well be our only hope for finding our way back to bolder expressions of them.
For many of us, this is very painful, pulling the lever for someone many think odious. But please consider this: A vote for Donald Trump is not necessarily a vote for Donald Trump himself. It is a vote for those who will be affected by the results of this election. Not to vote is to vote. God will not hold us guiltless.
I came to the conclusion over time that Trump is not the person I feared he was in the beginning when I was against him.
Here’s one thing the media and all of us should learn: Trump is not wrong nearly as much as everybody says he’s wrong.
Donald Trump is not some great man of virtue, but this much I’ll say for him: I think he loves America, and I don’t think he wants to line his own pockets.
When Trump says America first, it doesn’t mean cheering for America only. It means if you want to care for your neighbors, you have to make sure that you are yourself, first, healthy.
Wilberforce
No politician has ever used his faith to a greater result for all of humanity, and that is why, in his day, Wilberforce was a moral hero far more than a political one.
Work
God gave men and women work to do in the Garden before the Fall.
Work is not optional for those able to do work, and that’s most of us. There are to be no shirkers in the Lord’s kingdom.
Work allows us to take care of God’s creation and bring glory to Him as His stewards.
The World
Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?
The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing. Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces?
There’s already a world of evidence that life on Earth is unique and intelligently crafted.