All Quotes By Tag: Will-of-god

“Qu’importe, mon Dieu, que je brûle toute l’éternité en enfer, si c’est ta volonté.”

“Now what is the will of God? That’s the big question. You can’t say the will of God is to disrespect your fellow man. You can’t say the will of God is to disrespect His creations, and you can’t say the will of God is to disrespect the planet that you live on. You can say you’re anything [any religion], but if your disrespect comes in any of those three categories, you’re not anything, you’re whack. I think the principles of religion start from there. Then you get into man’s interpretation and bookology.”

“One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it’s one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for ‘exile,’ or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the ‘proof,’ so for a time the professional interpreters of god’s will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein’s ‘offer’ of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.”

“Relinquishing selfish wants, one is free to allow others to travel their own paths under the will of God. (18)”

“When ours are interrupted, his are not. His plans are proceeding exactly as scheduled, moving us always (including those minutes or hours or years which seem most useless or wasted or unendurable).”

“The will of God is sweet tonight, altogether ‘good and acceptable and perfect.’ The considerate love of the Lord Jesus for us seems such a kind thing now. I know it has always been so, but somehow I didn’t see how wise it was when it didn’t seem kind… Remind me of this when I cannot regard His love as considerate some time.”

“One must love God first, and only then can one love one’s closest of kin and neighbors. We must not be idols to one another, for such is not the will of God.”

“There is no other way to determine the difference between the will of God and the crafts of satan… Jesus is the way, the truth and the life… The Holy Spirit of God is the Comforter…”

“Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering…. The love of God did not protect His own Son…. He will not necessarily protect us – not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.”