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4e98adf Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. christianity jesus religion god heart rest restlessness peace desire longing Augustine of Hippo
7a9fa2f The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. christianity religion god yahweh organized-religion Richard Dawkins
b8822d6 To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you. christianity faith obedience C.S. Lewis
fca8b81 I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in! heaven christianity inspirational narnia C.S. Lewis
4c54acf What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. christianity spirituality god philosophy inspirational christian-living catholicism gift Hans Urs von Balthasar
2531315 It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished. lovers marriage relationships christianity spirituality religion god happiness philosophy relationship-with-god unhappy-marriage church expectations Fulton J. Sheen
eb4a9f5 We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. christianity faith religion inspirational Martin Luther
d153b23 Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you. clothe ill christianity jesus care motivational life love inspirational feed unwanted hungry welcome golden-rule christmas service naked christ forgive enemies guilty Steve Maraboli
dfde52f Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither. christianity religion C.S. Lewis
eebf9f3 Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther). christianity love inspirational luther cross christ enemies Dietrich Bonhoeffer
bcc9601 Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked. criticism christianity spirituality philosophy judgement Fulton J. Sheen
a07adb8 The world's bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can't wait to die. christianity positive-thinking pessimism Ted Dekker
ead8deb Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. christianity intelligence church Neal Stephenson
f33e599 The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. 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. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same. christianity hope C.S. Lewis
671f660 Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called , or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament--the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana--is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. reading writing christianity inspiration religion ancient-greeks cana entheos judaea marriage-at-cana mullahs omar-khayyam symposia iran hellenism passover passover-seder oxford new-testament boredom brotherhood plato miracles atheism food wine Christopher Hitchens
be26123 We may speak about a place where there are no tears, no death, no fear, no night; but those are just the benefits of heaven. The beauty of heaven is seeing God. heaven christianity christian-living christian-life Max Lucado
731294f I am fallen, flawed and imperfect. Yet drenched in the grace and mercy that is found in Jesus Christ, there is strength christianity jesus strength inspirational Adam Young
ac05bdb For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break! christianity jesus christian christ Kurt Vonnegut
c4c3b46 Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don't agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ christianity C.S. Lewis
87f77ed If God is for us, who can be against us? reassurance christianity religion Anonymous
3143e0d Until you have suffered much in your heart, you cannot learn humility. eastern-orthodoxy suffering christianity spirituality inspirational humility Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
b284813 The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good. christianity inspirational C.S. Lewis
a9ba67a "Far better it is for you to say: "I am a sinner," than to say: "I have no need of religion." The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God." christianity religion god sinners catholicism Fulton J. Sheen
7049494 The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man's head because she turns his heart. man marriage woman relationships christianity spirituality heart love philosophy inspirational woman-s-charm jesus-shock woman-s-character woman-s-strength catholicism theology Peter Kreeft
c395750 "There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside." christianity judaism scripture Anne Lamott
db72469 I held my heart back from positively accepting anything, since I was afraid of another fall, and in this condition of suspense I was being all the more killed. christianity religion inspirational christ St. Augustine of Hippo
9ce3504 "Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes." heroes christianity spirituality philosophy culture-critique jesus-shock culture theology Peter Kreeft
b30bf1f We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love. christianity jesus spirituality god love philosophy inspirational excess-love saved-souls the-cross jesus-shock salvation cross saved theology christ sin Peter Kreeft
90f8cfc Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock. christianity Christopher Hitchens
b0784bf "God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. christianity religion god catholicism John Henry Newman
7c2ee03 By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it. christianity spirituality bible humor philosophy apple-computer-inc forbidden-fruit garden-of-eden macintosh original-sin jesus-shock old-testament laptop apple steve-jobs mac catholicism theology genesis sarcasm peter kreeft
af5cced I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees. nature christianity god trinity Anne Lamott
048f774 It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we've been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single - which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation. christianity femininity men-and-women Elisabeth Elliot
8a62b1d Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache. christianity god philosophy satan jesus-christ Fulton J. Sheen
788e604 Jesus tends to his people individually. He personally sees to our needs. We all receive Jesus' touch. We experience his care. christianity jesus christian-living jesus-christ Max Lucado
4d5ccc8 This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love. christianity spirituality god love philosophy secret-of-life self-giving jesus-shock catholicism Peter Kreeft
e534c70 Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed. christianity spirituality religion god perfected-man jesus-christ Fulton J. Sheen
9292bec Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. christianity G.K. Chesterton
1bdc5e5 I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long. If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be ? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah. myth christianity jesus religion marx moses einstein prophets freud christians muslims muhammad messiah theism atheism islam humans antisemitism jews Christopher Hitchens
deca7f0 Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths. unhappiness christianity morality religion happiness imoral catholicism church discipline Fulton J. Sheen
fd8db8a If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does. christianity death religion god humor hitchens gods atheism atheist Christopher Hitchens
864b73b Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great and powerful one. christianity love unconditional-love A.J. Jacobs
f371dc2 "On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being." nature christianity spirituality nature-writing buddhism mysticism Mary Rose O'Reilley
bb57dc7 Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where--as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen--even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings. I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest--if they were lucky--or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, , on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history. war history christianity ancestry antisemitism arabs armageddon arthur-balfour bedouin bolshevism britain colonialism crimea crimean-war democracy diplomacy ethnic-cleansing fanaticism france free-speech house-arrest israel jerusalem jews leftism london palestine palestinians persecution raimonda-tawil ramallah religious-extremism russia territory world-war-i zealotry philip-roth secularism oppression torture Christopher Hitchens
a2193b5 The maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you. And that is a fact. So if you need to brag, brag about that. christianity faith god boast boasting god-s-love christian Max Lucado
3674b05 Love gives you eyes. christianity spirituality love philosophy inspirational jesus-shock theology eyes Peter Kreeft
49c536d The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting. christianity spirituality philosophy jesus-shock catholicism theology pleasure Peter Kreeft
8fc915c "Matthew 10:34 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." christianity faith theology Anonymous
e501cc3 You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction. good-and-evil christianity jesus jesus-christ laws Leo Tolstoy
c80573e "Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!" marriage christianity spirituality religion happiness philosophy family-planning joy-of-marriage unhappy-marriage pro-life childbirth expectation Fulton J. Sheen
c98c0d7 As a convinced atheist, I ought to agree with Voltaire that Judaism is not just one more religion, but in its way the root of religious evil. Without the stern, joyless rabbis and their 613 dour prohibitions, we might have avoided the whole nightmare of the Old Testament, and the brutal, crude wrenching of that into prophecy-derived Christianity, and the later plagiarism and mutation of Judaism and Christianity into the various rival forms of Islam. Much of the time, I do concur with Voltaire, but not without acknowledging that Judaism is dialectical. There is, after all, a specifically Jewish version of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with a specifically Jewish name--the --for itself. The term derives from the word for 'mind' or 'intellect,' and it is naturally associated with ethics rather than rituals, life rather than prohibitions, and assimilation over 'exile' or 'return.' It's everlastingly linked to the name of the great German teacher Moses Mendelssohn, one of those conspicuous Jewish hunchbacks who so upset and embarrassed Isaiah Berlin. (The other way to upset or embarrass Berlin, I found, was to mention that he himself was a cousin of Menachem Schneerson, the 'messianic' Lubavitcher .) However, even pre-enlightenment Judaism forces its adherents to study and think, it reluctantly teaches them what others think, and it may even teach them to think also. enlightenment christianity religion education life assimilation chabad-messianism dialectics haskalah isaiah-berlin menachem-mendel-schneerson messianism moses-mendelssohn prohibitions rebbes rituals rabbis exile monotheism judaism old-testament germans free-thought return study ethics plagiarism prophecy atheism voltaire islam intellect antisemitism thought evil Christopher Hitchens
d95373a Two or three angels Came near to the earth. They saw a fat church. Little black streams of people Came and went in continually. And the angels were puzzled To know why the people went thus, And why they stayed so long within. christianity religion god chapel sabbath catholicism sunday church angels Stephen Crane
c912b40 Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts. heaven christianity spirituality god philosophy inspirational jesus-shock catholicism theology hearts Peter Kreeft
e33d581 If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction. christianity jesus spirituality philosophy christlessness christology jesus-shock jesus-christ theology christ fundamentalism Peter Kreeft
5f2824f Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better. christianity Marcus J. Borg
9d49af8 The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is. kindness christianity treasure god life purpose christ John Piper
2967688 Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury. It's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven. money poverty wealth heaven christianity god provision stewardship sharing riches luxury help kingdom Randy Alcorn
bd87d06 The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler. christianity spirituality philosophy self-perfection self-surrender egocentrism Fulton J. Sheen
345669d Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors--the living--could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs--those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact--had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you your life? suicide war christianity friends sacrifice death religion christian-martyrs conscription kamikaze memorials poppies self-abnegation suicide-attack martyrs masochism orwell november comrades soldiers theocracy ugliness causes martyrdom self-importance patriotism principles fanaticism childhood torture Christopher Hitchens
f3e78e6 Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia. violence christianity spirituality philosophy jesus-shock sloth catholicism theology Peter Kreeft
8718c3b Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked. heaven christianity jesus spirituality philosophy meeting-jesus jesus-shock shock jesus-christ theology christ hell peter kreeft
401c1aa Our God is abundant in love and steadfast in mercy. He saves us, not because we trust in a symbol, but because we trust in a Savior. christianity religon Max Lucado
e954e23 Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us. christianity spirituality god protestantism sacraments jesus-shock theology Peter Kreeft
e804f42 It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind. christianity religion jesse-jackson united-states-constitution separation-of-church-and-state jerry-falwell pluralism religious-right united-states Christopher Hitchens
bc88a1a When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? christianity sacrifice religion god W. Somerset Maugham
3dfe93a Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers? christianity god son-of-god mass catholicism jesus-christ christian jews Sam Harris
d20462f "A young woman asked the great preacher Charles Spurgeon if it was possible to reconcile God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. "Young woman," said he. "You don't reconcile friends" responsibility christianity Elisabeth Elliot
a089c12 It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst! christianity faith belief russia Fyodor Dostoyevsky
40034f7 "Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons." christianity spirituality god philosophy ontological-oxymoron jesus-shock ontology oxymoron theology Peter Kreeft
6e3d889 "Pilate's skeptical sneer "What is truth?" was addressed to Truth Himself, standing there right in front of his face. The world's stupidest question was three words; God's profoundest answer was one Word." christianity jesus god philosophy truth pontius-pilate jesus-shock jesus-christ theology christ Peter Kreeft
3b4246c So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know. heaven christianity death bible hell Marcus J. Borg
d429c40 "At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity? Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is 'only a theory'? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?). evolution christianity jesus politics religion 2003 ayn-rand christian-fundamentalism christian-right us-elections-2000 william-jennings-bryan world-trade-center american-jews leo-strauss 2001 sectarianism pat-robertson jerry-falwell biblical-literalism creationism september-11-attacks democratic-party-united-states republican-party-united-states united-states atheism fundamentalism jews Christopher Hitchens
a81821a What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist's subject be religious to be Christian? I don't think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful christianity beauty god truth christian-art R.C. Sproul
40e35f8 People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla [...], I went to [...] check in with : the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. ( as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people 'disappeared' all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one's former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [....] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that 'terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that's why she's detained.' I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn't understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. 'We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.' Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general-- --had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. [...] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied-- : 'roundly' denied--holding Jacobo Timerman 'as either a journalist or a Jew.' While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: [...] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as 'evidence' by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there's the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of... we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it's one, two, three... go! christianity marx death-squads jacobo-timerman einstein freud jorge-rafael-videla Christopher Hitchens
db935bb The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son. christianity jesus spirituality god philosophy son-of-god jesus-shock sonlight catholicism jesus-christ sun sunlight theology christ Peter Kreeft
0ecf402 It is just as crazy to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else. christianity jesus spirituality god philosophy inspirational crazy-in-love crazy-love jesus-shock jesus-christ theology christ crazy Peter Kreeft
ee3822f Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all. christianity faith god philosophy sacraments jesus-shock grace god-s-grace theology Peter Kreeft
110af0c He says no in order that He may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes. All His ways with us are merciful. His meaning is always love. christianity Elisabeth Elliot
e2df4db It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively. christianity spirituality god love philosophy absolutism reasonable jesus-shock catholicism relativism theology Peter Kreeft
2145d3f In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement. christianity religion edward-said rushdie humility london palestine Christopher Hitchens
6a2b7e3 Only God may be adored, because only God is unlimited goodness, truth, and beauty, and thus only God deserves unlimited love. christianity goodness beauty spirituality god love philosophy truth inspirational unlimited-beauty unlimited-goodness unlimited-love unlimited-truth jesus-shock catholicism theology Peter Kreeft
793c75a Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11). bonus raise standard-of-living christianity god corinthians increase excess stewardship giving income sharing scripture Randy Alcorn
531c100 Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen. christianity politics end-time sarah-palin second-coming-of-christ united-states fundamentalism Christopher Hitchens
7540218 It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable. christianity spirituality god philosophy reasonable jesus-shock theology crazy Peter Kreeft
0951adc He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service--the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back to life so that the faithful could devour Him and become of Him, the smell of incense and the mystical chanting. magic christianity jesus religion language mysticism ritual Dan Simmons
d4e40b5 He saw on the paper a picture of a man, white-skinned, who hung upon a crosspiece of wood. The man was without clothes except for a bit about his loins, and to all appearences he was dead, since his head drooped upon his shoulder and his eyes were closed above his bearded lips. Wang Lung looked at the pictured man in horror and with increasing interest. christianity crucifix perspective Pearl S. Buck
4bdaf3d "You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion." christianity morality compassion religion relavitism punishment immorality justice guilt Christopher Hitchens
81308e6 O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies. suicide earth poem poetry christianity death the-virgin-suicides rebirth funeral Jeffrey Eugenides
cabce9e As a house can be only be built satisfactorily and durably when there is a foundation, and a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on, so carnal love is only legitimate, reasonable, and lasting when it is based on the respect and love of one human being for another. sex marriage christianity love christian-marriage Leo Tolstoy
8c218bd Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. christianity god philosophy deist presence-of-god jesus-shock theist deism catholicism theology theism Peter Kreeft
7c6e7d3 He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic. christianity spirituality Irving Stone
744c618 Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity. christianity saint-augustine charity scripture Karen Armstrong
72dc250 The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God's love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God's Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life. christianity jesus pastoral-ministry clergy god-s-love ministry Henri J.M. Nouwen
bca78db How could any Lord have made this world?... there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for this world to commit... No happiness lasted. christianity god skepticism lord Virginia Woolf
344d837 The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life--until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty. christianity philosophy francis-of-assisi lady-poverty saint-francis st-francis-of-assisi troubadour jesus-shock catholicism theology christ Peter Kreeft
003e291 God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with. christianity faith spirituality god philosophy truth jesus-shock theology Peter Kreeft
33d1edb If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the defiance of Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It was emphatically he who really was fighting for a God of Love against a God of colourless and remote cosmic control; the God of the stoics and the agnostics. It was emphatically he who was fighting for the Holy Child against the grey deity of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was fighting for that very balance of beautiful interdependence and intimacy, in the very Trinity of the Divine Nature, that draws our hearts to the Trinity of the Holy Family. His dogma, if the phrase be not misunderstood, turns even God into a Holy Family. christianity god love god-is-love pagans the-trinity heretics G.K. Chesterton
3479ff2 The malice of a true Christian attempting to destroy an opponent is something unique in the world. No other religion ever considered it necessary to destroy others because they did not share the same beliefs. At worst, another man's belief might inspire amusement or contempt--the Egyptians and their animal gods, for instance. Yet those who worshipped the Bull did not try to murder those who worshipped the Snake, or to convert them by force from Snake to Bull. No evil ever entered the world quite so vividly or on such a vast scale as Christianity did. worship christianity evils-of-hatred holy-war priscus heresy hypocrisy Gore Vidal
03dcee8 Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic. Worse, this Semitic deity was reputed to be jealous (what was there to be jealous of if there were no other gods?), vindictive, and altogether foul-tempered. If you didn't serve the nasty fellow, the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down. jealousy christianity religion romans vindication gods Tom Robbins
905dbb4 "You want to know what's wrong with the world?" Dad paused. "It's this alienation that permeates every aspect of humanity." christianity humanity philosophy world-views objectivism ayn-rand Mark David Henderson
9ee8f6a Jesus said his disciples would be known for their love, not for their placards of protest and angry letters to the editor. christianity jesus love discipleship Brian Zahnd
d56a178 But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God's love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world -- and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road. prayer christianity jesus faith religion god love sacramental sign-of-the-cross holy-trinity trinity catholic god-s-love catholicism cross jesus-christ christian creator christ Brian Doyle
f6b31fb That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. christianity prologue Flannery O'Connor
728be5f "Evil...doesn't mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to "the Christian majority's" private liking." christianity evil Richard Dawkins
05ed719 to look at a work of art and then to make a judgement as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. christianity christian Madeleine L'Engle
4cd0a13 Leave!' Hazel Motes cried. 'Go ahead and leave! The truth don't matter to you. Listen,' he said, pointing his finger at the rest of them, 'the truth don't matter to you. If Jesus had redeemed you, what difference would it make to you? You wouldn't do nothing about it. Your faces wouldn't move, neither this way nor that, and if it was three crosses there and Him hung on the middle one, that wouldn't mean no more to you and me than the other two. Listen here. What you need is something to take the place of Jesus, something that would speak plain. The Church Without Christ don't have a Jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! It needs one that's all man, without blood to waste, and it needs one that don't look like any other man so you'll look at him. Give me such a jesus, you people. Give me such a new jesus and you'll see how far the Church Without Christ can go! christianity hypocrisy Flannery O'Connor
d9ccef5 There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don't much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world--or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world--I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk. christianity christendom intermarriages jewish-question law-of-return leo-strauss mosaic-law nuremberg-laws victor-klemperer exile religious-conversions civilisation christians israeli-palestinian-conflict muslims atheism fascism honour islam redemption ancestry antisemitism israel jerusalem Christopher Hitchens
e21abbf "In answer to modern requests for signs and wonders, Our Lord might say, 'You repeat Satan's temptation, whenever you admire the wonders of science, and forget that I am the Author of the Universe and its science. Your scientists are the proofreaders, but not the authors of the Book of Nature; they can see and examine My handiwork, but they cannot create one atom themselves. You would tempt Me to prove Myself omnipotent by meaningless tests...You tempt Me after you have willfully destroyed your own cities with bombs by shrieking out, "Why does God not stop this war?" You tempt Me, saying that I have no power, unless I show it at your beck and call. This, if you remember, is exactly how Satan tempted Me in the desert. I have never had many followers on the lofty heights of Divine truth, I know; for instance, I have hardly had the intelligentsia. I refuse to perform stunts to win them, for they would not really be won that way. It is only when I am seen on the Cross that I really draw men to Myself; it is by sacrifice, and not by marvels, that I must make My appeal. I must win followers not with test tubes, but with My blood; not with material power, but with love; not with celestial fireworks, but with the right use of reason and free will." temptation christianity jesus satan miracles Fulton J. Sheen
f486b09 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 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 or 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. jealousy war suffering christianity jesus religion bible grandmothers biblical-covenant divine-retribution edith-stein false-modesty hellenism hiwi-al-balkhi masochism passover passover-seder rabbis rationalisation six-day-war theodicy western-wall will-of-god exile gentiles judaism martyrdom arrogance holocaust punishment atheism self-respect children jerusalem secularism wine survivors Christopher Hitchens
59ff8dd Arab nationalism in its traditional form was the way in which secular Arab Christians like Edward had found and kept a place for themselves, while simultaneously avoiding the charge of being too 'Western.' It was very noticeable among the Palestinians that the most demonstrably 'extreme' nationalists--and Marxists--were often from Christian backgrounds. George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh used to be celebrated examples of this phenomenon, long before anyone had heard of the cadres of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. There was an element of overcompensation involved, or so I came to suspect. christianity arab-nationalism george-habash hamas islamic-jihad marxists nationalists nayef-hawatmeh overcompensation secularists christians edward-said nationalism arabs palestinians Christopher Hitchens
d4e6d0e Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity. war christianity faith religion Stephen Greenblatt
dedc406 The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and ethnic dictatorship in the Balkans took precedence. This, by the way, was partly a battle to save Muslims from Catholic and Christian Orthodox killers. That impressed me. The neo-cons also took the view, quite early on, that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was impossible as well as undesirable. They were dead right about that. They had furthermore been thinking about the menace of ism when most people were half-asleep. And then I have to say that I was rather struck by the way that the and its associated voices took the decision to get rid of Trent Lott earlier this year, thus removing an embarrassment as well as a disgrace from the political scene. And their arguments were on points of principle, not 'perception.' I liked their ruthlessness here, and their seriousness, at a time when much of the liberal Left is not even seriously wrong, but frivolously wrong, and babbles without any sense of responsibility. (I mean, have you their sub-Brechtian stuff on Halliburton....?) And revolution from above, in some states and cases, is--as I wrote in my book --often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all. war christianity politics religion balkans bertolt-brecht halliburton persecution-of-muslims the-weekly-standard trent-lott bosnia bosnian-war kosovo kosovo-war slobodan-milosevic bill-clinton jihad saddam-hussein ethnicity neoconservatism dictatorship catholicism liberalism islam revolution leftism persecution Christopher Hitchens
12f7fbd Money holds terrible power when it is loved money christianity Elisabeth Elliot
faf1c90 No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze. christianity jesus bible catholic christian-philosophy jesus-shock kreeft eucharist jesus-christ church resurrection Peter Kreeft
bf17eb2 Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one--that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life. christianity religion life nourishment nurturing needs soul Alain de Botton
4feb2b4 Of course, Mary Magdalene would have very little tolerance for the Christian platitudes and vapid optimism that seem to swirl around these kinds of tragic events. Those platitudes are tempting, but they're nothing but luxuries for people who've never had demons (or at least have never admitted to them). But equally, she would reject nihilism, or the idea that there is no real meaning in life or death - ideas present in so much of postmodernity. Those ideas, too, are luxuries, but they are for those who have never been freed from demons. loss christianity jesus faith mary-magdalene platitudes demons grieving Nadia Bolz-Weber
f4d4e9a My former bishop Allan Bjorberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn't yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening. Mary Magdalene didn't necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think when she encountered the risen Jesus. But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that she was present and attentive to him. christianity jesus faith mary-magdalene Nadia Bolz-Weber
87914a8 But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it. lovers christianity love chesterton unworthy catholicism christian humility desire G.K. Chesterton
f90a27d Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn. upside-down christianity change life eternity Randy Alcorn
10ebc6e "I have had a lot to put up with," she said, looking meaningfully at me. "I know the Bible tells us to turn the other cheek but there are only so many cheeks in a day." christianity what-would-jesus-do Jeanette Winterson
7a32f33 Did he who made the lamb make thee? christianity religion god william-blake innocence William Blake
b1ae361 Just as the church needs members with different skills, our world must have various forms of labor, interdependent and thus valuable. A world full of ministers would be without churches, bread for the Lord's Supper, and printed Bibles to read. christianity ministers economics theology R.C. Sproul Jr.
863a43b But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian. christianity religion life-of-pi Yann Martel
e18265d To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give. models christianity learning modelling example stewardship giving encouragement community materialism humility kingdom stories Randy Alcorn
b2a443d I've never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors....Jesus could have hung out in the high-end religious scene of his day, but instead he scoffed at all that, choosing instead to laugh at the powerful, befriend whores, kiss sinners, and eat with all the wrong people. He spent his time with people for whom life was not easy. And there, amid those who were suffering, he was the embodiment of perfect love. christianity jesus faith love inspriational christian Nadia Bolz-Weber
c7b19ea There are so many things we do not appreciate in our life until we recognize God's love for us in them. christianity love christian-living Stormie Omartian
aad3c96 Many of us suffer because we think that if people don't really love us, then we will have to live forever without love. But it's not true. The greatest sense of love, which is available for us at all times, is God's love. love-quotes christianity inspirational-quotes god god-s-love-for-us inspirational-love christian-living Stormie Omartian
d58d592 Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect. christianity great-awakening revivalism pastors evangelism ministry evangelicalism church Richard Hofstadter
23aec80 If we repay evil with good, then how do we repay the good? christianity Henryk Sienkiewicz
acc4966 The design of redemption is to exhibit the grace of God in such a manner as to fill all hearts with wonder and all lips with praise. christianity blessings bible-study elizabeth-george praise redemption Elizabeth George
13d7464 How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near. christianity religion god Marcus J. Borg
9ff867c "The dreadful joy Thy Son has sent Is heavier than any care; christianity jesus the-cross forgiveness G.K. Chesterton
b16f4c9 From the outset, Protestantism rejected the critical medieval distinction between the 'sacred' and 'secular' orders. While this position can easily be interpreted as a claim for the desacralization of the sacred, it can equally well be understood as a claim for the sacralization of the secular. As early as 1520, Luther had laid the fundamental conceptual foundations for created sacred space within the secular. His doctrine of the 'priesthood of all believers' asserted that there is no genuine difference of status between the 'spiritual' and the 'temporal' order. All Christians are called to be priests - and can exercise that calling within the everyday world. The idea of 'calling' was fundamentally redefined: no longer was it about being called to serve God by leaving the world; it was now about serving God in the world. christianity work martin-luther priesthood-of-all-believers protestantism sacred vocation secular Alister E. McGrath
55fff88 Yielding to God's will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace. christianity faith missions John M. Perkins
d29743e "Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat. Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there. christianity religion science philosophy metaphysics hinduism theology islam Anonymous
6c5a4ad It is precisely this refusal of the Cartesian paradigm that characterizes Radical Orthodoxy, which seeks to reanimate the account of knowledge offered by Augustine and Aquinas. On this ancient-medieval-properly-postmodern model, we rightly give up pretensions to absolute knowledge or certainty, but we do not thereby give up on knowledge altogether. Rather, we can properly confess that we know God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, but such knowledge rests on the gift of (particular, special) revelation, is not universally objective or demonstrable, and remains a matter of interpretation and perspective (with a significant appreciation for the role of the Spirit's regeneration and illumination as a condition for knowledge). We confess knowledge without certainty, truth without objectivity. christianity jesus god radical-orthodoxy religious-knowledge objectivity revelation knowledge James K.A. Smith
b408bb7 In Nietzsche's usage, the word 'Christianity' does not even refer primarily to the religion; using it like a code word, he is thinking more of a particular religio-metaphysically influenced disposition, an ascetically (in the penitent and self-denying sense) defined attitude to the world, an unfortunate form of life deferral, focus on the hereafter and quarrel with secular facts christianity asceticism friedrich-nietzsche nietzsche Peter Sloterdijk
965dd1e "The unbiblical idea of "spirituality" is that the truly "spiritual" man is the person who is sort of "non-physical," who doesn't get involved in "earthly" things, who doesn't work very much or think very hard, and who spends most of his time meditating about how he'd rather be in heaven. As long as he's on earth, though, he has one main duty in life: Get stepped on for Jesus. The "spiritual" man, in this view, is a wimp. A Loser. But at least he's a Good Loser." christianity theology David Chilton
5493000 He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, 'How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?' If the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it! In every other religion under the sun, in every Eastern religion from Buddhism to Confucianism, there must always be some purification before one can commune with God. But Our Blessed Lord brought a religion where the admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him. 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill. christianity jesus spirituality religion the-church sin Fulton J. Sheen
cc3b529 "Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really christianity religion king-james-bible literary Christopher Hitchens
98ce987 "Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be "scriptural." I could select Sartre's "Existentialism and Humanism" off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his "word" at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits." christianity religion atheist Michael Vito Tosto
659b9b6 Good soldiers know that if they don't recognize who their enemy is, they are destined to lose the war. That is also true for those of us who battle in God's army. Even though Jesus put the enemy under His feet and won the victory for us, we still must move into that victory. There are still battles to be fought in prayer. prayer christianity christian-living jesus-christ Stormie Omartian
3d40c69 The rising influence of lay piety is particularly marked upon the Mariological controversies of the late medieval period. Two rival positions developed: the maculist position, which held that Mary was subject to original sin, in common with every other human being; and the immaculist position, which held that contrary view that Mary was in some way preserved from original sin, and was thus to be considered sinless. The maculist position was regarded as firmly established within the High Scholasticism of the thirteenth century. The veneration of the Virgin within popular piety, however, proved to have an enormously creative power that initially challenged, and subsequently triumphed over, the academic objections raised against it by university theologians. christianity immaculate-conception lay-religion mariology virgin-mary original-sin middle-ages mary theology Alister E. McGrath
bfb5bdb In short, an astonishingly broad spectrum of theologies of justification existed in the later medieval period, encompassing practically every option that had not been specifically condemned as heretical by the Council of Carthage. In the absence of any definitive magisterial pronouncement concerning which of these options (or even what range of options) could be considered authentically catholic, it was left to each theologian to reach his own decision in this matter. A self-perpetuating doctrinal pluralism was thus an inevitability. christianity reformation justification theology Alister E. McGrath
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