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8da37df Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. inspirational love redemption sadness art Clive Barker
a06b84a "Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. (from "Loving Your Enemies")" -- destruction enemies hate love redemption Martin Luther King Jr.
1d554f1 A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward. justice morality redemption George R.R. Martin
6b6f604 Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands. love pain redemption scars suffering bell hooks
2b9a24f The situation was extraordinary. How someone like Evangeline Jenner could have wrought such a change in St. Vincent, the most worldly of men, was difficult to understand. However, Westcliff had learned that the mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together. love redemption soulmates Lisa Kleypas
e720716 We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile. god redemption J.R.R. Tolkien
a041cd9 "Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. atheism atheist atheist-argument belief christianity-is-immoral christopher-hitchens compulsory crime dawkins debate dictatorship divine-dictatorship eternal-father eternal-punishment ethics evidence fear great-atheist-argument guilt health hitchens hitchslap homo-sapiens human-sacrifice immoral-christianity indifference intellect love love-your-neighbor morality myth reason redemption responsibility richard-dawkins supreme-being totalitarianism truth wishful-thinking Christopher Hitchens
1f3b738 I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. forgiveness immorality redemption religion responsibility scapegoating sin Christopher Hitchens
546ba10 Maybe the one had to be lost for the others to be found? redemption sin sinners Donna Tartt
30c0f22 If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all. choice consequences freedom redemption responsibility society Tom Robbins
546c324 Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions. music redemption sin Brennan Manning
26fe387 Beauty is transformed over time, and not without destruction. death-to-life destruction redemption sanctification transformation Terry Tempest Williams
3e8280c Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. [...] If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. god redemption Fyodor Dostoyevsky
8dd59a1 Your job today is to pass gas. You do that and we can start feeding you liquids. No fart, no food. honor love redemption Khaled Hosseini
68f6a75 "That's arrogance, Harry. " he said, gently. "On a level so deep, you don't even realize it exists. And do you know why it's there?" "No?" I asked. He smiled again. "Because you have set a higher standard for yourself. You think that, because you have more power than others, you have to do more with it." "To whom much is given, much is required," I said, without looking up. He barked out a short laugh. "For someone who repeatedly tells me he has no faith, you have a surprising capacity to quote scripture. And that's just my point." I eyed him. "What?" "You wouldn't be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn't care." "So?" "Monsters don't care," Michael said. "The damned don't care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring." damned monsters redemption Jim Butcher
2bf2a3b Most rich people have a gangster in their ancestry somewhere. redemption Ken Follett
e130206 Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever. life nadsat redemption reform suicidal-thoughts Anthony Burgess
f368a87 "You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time." "Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?" "No..." I wedged in. "That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?" "No. Ceri -" I took a step forward. "My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one." blackness damnation demon-magic hell redemption soul Kim Harrison
3bd5729 Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances. purify redemption regret ritual themes Susan Cain
8927f3d There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can. hell redemption Colson Whitehead
815f19f We are all trophies of God's grace, some more dramatically than others; Jesus came for the sick and not the well, for the sinner and not the righteous. He came to redeem and transform, to make all things new. May you go forth more committed than ever to nourish the souls who you touch, those tender lives who have sustained the enormous assaults of the universe. (pp.88) grace redemption Philip Yancey
ce1c303 She has committed great sins, but they've been forgiven, and that's why she loves so deeply. faith forgiveness god hope love mary-magdalene prostitution redemption religion second-chances Philip Pullman
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. ancestry antisemitism atheism christendom christianity christians civilisation exile fascism honour intermarriages islam israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jerusalem jewish-question law-of-return leo-strauss mosaic-law muslims nuremberg-laws redemption religious-conversions victor-klemperer Christopher Hitchens
2433e4d I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure. redemption temptation-alcohol Malcolm Lowry
5d5ed95 It's always easier to avoid temptation than to resist it. cross fornication immorality lust porn price purity redemption sex Randy Alcorn
f3724ce A Christian sees all men as made in the image of God. All are sinners too, which means that the image is marred, but it is a divine image nonetheless, capable of redemption and therefore to be held in honor. honor redemption Elisabeth Elliot
e871917 Jesus' miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God. inspirational miracles redemption Randy Alcorn
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. bible-study blessings christianity elizabeth-george praise redemption Elizabeth George
e8d4585 The more He loved those for whom He was the ransom, the more His anguish would increase, as it is the faults of friends rather than enemies which most disturb hearts! redemption salvation sin the-cross Fulton J. Sheen
4010dfb God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few. redemption salvation Saul Bellow
5b1a2fe He has the mistaken notion that a concern with grace is a concern with exalted human behavior, that it is a pretentious concern. It is, however, simply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. It is a concern with a realization that breeds charity and with the charity that breeds action. Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence. grace human-nature redemption writing Flannery O'Connor
f7f1887 The deaf who deny they are deaf will never hear; the sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem. redemption salvation sin the-cross Fulton J. Sheen
9f5879a It was not enough that the Son of God should come down from the heavens and appear as the Son of Man, for then He would have been only a great teacher and a great example, but not a Redeemer. It was more important for Him to fulfill the purpose of the coming, to redeem man from sin while in the likeness of human flesh. Teachers change men by their lives; Our Blessed Lord would change men by His death. The poison of hate, sensuality, and envy which is in the hearts of men could not be healed simply by wise exhortations and social reforms. The wages of sin is death, and therefore it was to be by death that sin would be atoned for. redemption salvation sin the-cross Fulton J. Sheen
4af1d32 I will take you home, his lord had said. Home. He held to that word, as a man holds to a rope in a raging sea. hope redemption Elizabeth A. Lynn
1693353 You've only just discovered you have a heart. Let it beat a little. heart redemption Juliet Marillier
e84ebed The only difference between life and death is that the living still have time, but the time to say that one word, to make that one gesture, is running out for them. What gesture, what word, I don't know, a man dies from not having said it, from not having made it, this is what he dies of, not from sickness, and that is why, when dead, he finds it so difficult to accept death. (Jose Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, p 122) death failure life redemption salvation words José Saramago
05e152f "This life wasn't all there was; there was more, much more, and when people spoke of death as "passing" they were exactly right, because the spirit passed on to that other level of existence. Knowing that was the most comforting thing she could imagine." inspirational redemption Linda Howard
baaaa72 That had day changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another. death grief kindness redemption sacrifice Lois Lowry
9c72548 But making the ugly hurt part human again is not an exercise for the well-meaning social worker in us. This is the most dangerous work you can do. It is like bomb disposal but you are the bomb. That's the problem--the awful thing is you. healing life recovery redemption self-help Jeanette Winterson
56047cc A lot of experiences that we have in the world are torn, broken, hard experiences, and in broken, difficult, lonesome experiences you earn a quality of light that is very precious. I often think of it as quarried light. pain redemption suffering John O'Donohue
927621b From love's absolutism to love's absolution? No: I don't believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it's far too neat, a movie-maker's bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves. closure death julian-barnes love platitudes realism redemption sad the-only-story Julian Barnes
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