lukegk

Hello! If you're looking at this bio, you either have a legitimate reason to be here and just want to know more about me, want to add me as a friend. or are simply stalking (I get it lol). I'm Luke, a 16 year-old chess player, writer, reader, student, board gamer, nerd, amateur historian, and Christian enjoying Chess.com. I also enjoy playing sports, although I'm at best slightly better than average. 

I also enjoy reading and have many favorite authors, among whom are G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Isaac Asimov, Moliere, Homer, Dorothy Sayers, Victor Hugo, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many others who I've probably forgotten. I enjoy reading almost any genre of literature. Among my favorite books are the Lord of the Rings, Les Miserables, Martin Chuzzlewit, David Copperfield, The Odyssey, The Merchant of Venice, almost all of Chesterton's works, The Chronicles of Narnia, Asimov's Foundation trilogy, Phantastes, Henry V, Henry VIII, Mere Christianity (and honestly, all of Lewis's books), the mysteries of Sayers and Conan Doyle, and many more books. I'd be happy to give you book recommendations if you're ever interested.

I have 7 siblings, with whom I live near Boston, Massachusetts, as part of a  nondenominational conservative Christian church. 

I have many interests, including physics, biology, history, aviation, World War II, current events, theology, philosophy, engineering, and also history. I'm fiercely disputatious at times, and would love to debate with you about theology or some other topic of your choice.

Quotes

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" - Thomas Jefferson

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C.S. Lewis

"Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill

"He is no fool who gives that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

"Never before in the course of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." - Winston Churchill, speaking of the pilots who fought the Battle of Britain

"Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so." - John Donne

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" - William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more: Or close the wall up with our English dead!" - William Shakespeare (Henry V)

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." - C.S. Lewis

"Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter." - Homer, book 22 of the Iliad

"And I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground." - Winston Churchill, speaking in 1940 after a disastrous beginning to the Second World War

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C.S. Lewis

"A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gate is less formidable, for he is known, and carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves freely among those within the gate, his sly whispers rustling through the alleys, heard in the halls of government itself." - Cicero

"Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought p easy, let t slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves." - D.H. Lawrence

"Let me give you my vision: a man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master." - Margaret Thatcher

"I am just going outside, and may be some time." - Captain Lawrence Oates, sacrificing his life in the hope that, by no longer slowing down the rest of the expedition, Robert Scott and his men would make it to freedom. His memorial reads "Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L.E.G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willing to his death in a blizzard to try to save his comrades, beset by hardship."

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important." - C.S. Lewis

"Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it."
- Pericles (on the Bomber Command memorial in London)

"Give me liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all other liberties." - John Milton

"There is plenty of time to win this game, and to thrash the Spaniards too." - Sir Francis Drake, on being interrupted in a game of bowls with news that the Spanish Armada was approaching

"Thou will find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last." - Marcus Aurelius

"Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing." - G.K. Chesterton

"Beware the peddlers of rights. They wish to turn you into someone who is simultaneously privileged and 'victimised': whiny, narcissistic, noisy, demanding, chronically unhappy, and of little se to themselves or other people. Instead...sort yourselves out. Shoulder your responsibilities. Make yourself useful to others. Find the heaviest burden you can bear, and bear it stoically, forthrightly, and admirably." - Jordan Peterson

"Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
'To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the Ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods."
- Thomas Macaulay (Lays of Ancient Rome)

"How far that little candle throws his beams --
So shines a good deed in a naughty world." - William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once." - William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

What I believe

I subscribe to the tenets of traditional Christian orthodoxy, as expressed below in the Apostles' Creed.

The Apostles' Creed 
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

I believe that we are to follow the teachings of Jesus without altering their meaning or misinterpreting them, taking commands such as 'Love your enemies' literally. Thus, I am fundamentally opposed to the Christian using violence as a tool - while the Bible does not forbid the state to use it, we are to be in the world but not of it, not holding political office.

Well, there you have it. That's all you're going to learn about me for the moment. 

Now get along with you, you've learned what you get to know for now XD

Guten tag!