All Quotes By Tag: God

“What do you believe in?” asked David.“I believe in those whom I love and trust. All else is foolishness. This god isas empty as his church. His followers choose to attribute all of their goodfortune to him, but when he ignores their pleas or leaves them to suffer, theysay only that he is beyond their understanding and abandon themselves to hiswill. What kind of god is that?”

“After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of His wisdom, power and goodness as evidenced by His handiwork.”

“I have encountered something of unsurpassable value—something I have found to be utterly dependable and infinitely resourceful. In Buddhism, we call it the Dharma, but it could just as easily be called the Tao or God or the Source of All Things or Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong.”

“At the heart of the incarnation is the stunning claim that Jesus is what God is like. “No one has ever seen God,” declared John in his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known”. The New American Standard Bible says, “The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him”. So to whatever extent God owes us an explanation for the Bible’s war stories, Jesus is that explanation. And Christ the King won his kingdom without war.”

“I’m in no rush to patch up these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don’t want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don’t think he wants me to either. There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that leave you with an open wound. I’m still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn’t let go of me yet.”

“This understanding of themselves as a people who wrestle with God and emerge from that wrestling with both a limp and a blessing informs how Jews engage with Scripture, and it ought to inform how Christians engage Scripture too, for we share a common family of origin, the same spiritual DNA. The biblical scholars I love to read don’t go to the holy text looking for ammunition with which to win an argument or trite truisms with which to escape the day’s sorrows, they go looking for a blessing, a better way of engaging life and the world, and they don’t expect to escape that search unscathed.”

“The origin stories of Scripture remind us we belong to a very large and very old family that has been walking with God from the beginning. Even when we falter and fall, this God is in it for the long haul. We will not be abandoned.”

“The nature of salvation is peace, or reconciliation – peace with God, peace with others, peace within.”

“Once a friend asked me if God appeared in front of you and asked what you want? Think he (god) can make it happen anything, anything humans can’t even image off. Let me know what you will ask?First, you must know my belief. Second, by this time now you must know me; that I won’t ask anything to anyone. To answer your hypothetical question, I won’t ask him (God) anything. Instead, I would love to say from the bottom of my heart, Fuck You.”

“It’s important to remember that Israel’s story is a story of being in the process of getting to know God, all before Jesus presents himself as the ultimate revelation of God. It is not unlike other relationships where we need time to fully understand and appreciate the true self and identity of the other person in the relationship. The story involves moments when Israel truly sees God, and moments when they profoundly misunderstand God–both of which are normal parts of any relationship.”

“When we see God through a fear-based lens, we end up with an inaccurate view of ourselves.”

“A fear-based faith distorts a lot of things, but what it distorts the most is the reflection we see in the mirror. Fear has a way of reflecting ugliness and distorted realities–lies with the appearance of truth–and gives us the false impression that fear tells the truth while concealing the reality that fear is a liar. It may be a good liar because it mixes fact with fiction, but it’s a liar nonetheless. The reflections of fear must never be trusted, no matter how many nuggets of truth may be mixed in those ugly waters.”

“Karl Marx and others have charged that religion is “the opiate of the masses.” That is, it is a sedative that makes people passive toward injustice, because there will be “pie in the sky bye and bye.” That may be true of some religions that teach people that this material world is unimportant or illusory. Christianity, however, teaches that God hates the suffering and oppression of this material world so much, he was willing to get involved in it and to fight against it. Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It’s more like the smelling salts.”

“And yet, why do you think Jesus Christ came into this world through a pregnant, unwed teenage girl in a patriarchal shame-and-honor culture? God didn’t have to do it that way. But I think it was his way of saying, “I don’t do things the way the world expects, but in the opposite way altogether. My power is made perfect in weakness. My Savior-Prince will be born not into a cradle in a royal palace but into a feed trough in a stable –not to powerful and famous people but to disgraced peasants. And that is all part of the pattern.”

“There’s nothing that keeps its youth, so far as I know, but a tree and truth.”