All Quotes By Tag: Identity

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” … [My dark side says,] I am no good… I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

“Life isn’t always about finding yourself. More often than not, it’s about discovering who God created you to be.”

“Others can’t always define your true identity. They see what they ‘want’ to see but beyond your mess, God sees the beauty He created and still thinks it’s good!”

“We could say that the human race is a great coauthorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity.”

“Our identity rests in God’s relentless tenderness for us revealed in Jesus Christ.”

“While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.”

“You must know that you are worth much to me whether you accomplish anything or not. Even if you are rejected in the world’s eyes, you are valuable to me.”

“Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone…Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness.”

“Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures.”

“The trick. . .is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.”

“The more fucked up you are, the more I like you. As long as you’ve managed to hold onto your identity through all the shit, then it won’t matter how twisted you are. I will love you more for it.”

“Treat everyone you meet as if they were you.”

“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.”

“When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.”

“Be yourself. Don’t worry about what other people are thinking of you, because they’re probably feeling the same kind of scared, horrible feelings that everyone does.”