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6f13c46
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Why do you always make it sound like everything was better before I was born?" "It's not you, Mitchell. There was just more civility back then. We still had respect for authority, I guess. This is what happens when no one trusts the people in power."
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Brian K. Vaughan |
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de7c2b6
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how it had looked like Eden. He pondered what it was like for the Man and Woman to be in such communion with Elohim, their fellow creatures, and the world around them, full of splendor and glory. He wondered what it would be like to be in Elohim's presence and the presence of his divine council of ten thousands of holy ones surrounding his throne and worshipping in the Garden that was his temple.
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Brian Godawa |
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21042e9
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the other gods had discovered the universal economic law from time immemorial: whatever you tax you get less of, and whatever you subsidize you get more of. By heavily overtaxing wealth, she could decrease the amount of private wealth and therefore lessen its power. By subsidizing poverty with government welfare she would increase poverty and thus dependency upon the state. Human nature was such an easy thing to exploit when you understood ..
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Brian Godawa |
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d3d2469
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Enoch asked Adam about the name he had uttered earlier, Yahweh Elohim. Adam apologized, "It slips out too often. It is the covenant name of Elohim. It is reserved for only the most sacred of relationships. It expresses his essence as the foundation of existence itself. The divine council of heavenly host uses it." He paused for a moment. "We used it in the Garden, but now with the Edenic exile..." his voice cracked for a moment. "It is a na..
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Brian Godawa |
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dac280e
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Her biggest influence in persuading Noah was in prayer. When Noah was blinded by his own stubbornness, she would ask Elohim to soften his heart. Elohim had a way of opening Noah's eyes better than anyone else could. She did not believe that Elohim had abandoned them. She was sure he was planning something very significant to make his point. It would take something big to transform Noah to accomplish his calling. Elohim was like that.
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Brian Godawa |
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be65646
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Sir Thomas Beecham once said this at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall when I was there as a boy. He said 'I'm often asked why operas survive generation after generation--La Boheme and things like that. And I always reply. 'They survive because they consist of bloody good tunes'.
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Brian Epstein |
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c2b6449
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A very loud group of bronies advances down the hall.
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Brian Katcher |
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4f86096
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There was a noise out back and Megan stalked to the end of the hall to look out the window. The door to the shed was just closing. Finn. He was just as bad as his brother. Finn had stranded her that morning too and he hadn't said a word to her about Spanish class, even though he never would have passed that pop quiz they had taken without her help. Megan turned and stormed down the hallway. Maybe she was too scared to say anything to Evan, ..
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Kate Brian |
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32a347a
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Why is it that the choice among churches always seems to be the choice between intelligence on ice and ignorance on fire? --as quoted by Diana Butler Bass1
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Brian D. McLaren |
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0fa42c0
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Never accept and be content with unanalyzed assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the people, about the church or Christianity. Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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5d6efad
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Even though Pope Urban VIII reversed the pronouncements of his predecessors by declaring slavery unacceptable in the mid-seventeenth century, the vast majority of Protestant Christians in America considered slavery and white supremacy to be absolutely consistent with "biblical" Christianity. It would take American Protestants over a hundred years to make slavery history. Even then, they would find ways to cleverly camouflage the old Doctrin..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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7801c74
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I've come to see that just as the Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify white Christian supremacy and the exploitation of nonwhites and non-Christians, the "doctrine of dominion" (Genesis 1:28) is still being used to justify human supremacy and the exploitation of the earth and all its creatures. Aided and abetted by harmful doctrines about the future (especially "left behind" dispensationalist eschatology), industrial-era Christians ha..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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64207df
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In case after case in the past, there is a kind of Bible-quoting intoxication under the influence of which we religious people lose the ability to distinguish between what God says and what we say God says.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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170562c
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The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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46bbd8c
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There's one thing worse than a failed old religion: a naive and arrogant new one.
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religion
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Brian D. McLaren |
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275ad81
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In religion as in parenthood, uncritical loyalty to our ancestors may implicate us in an injustice against our descendants: imprisoning them in the errors of our ancestors.
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religion
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Brian D. McLaren |
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eea8531
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Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy--Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human--are deeply embedded not just in Christian history but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous viruses often lie hidden, malware that must be identified an..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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60ada73
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Jesus faithfully and courageously represented the nonviolent and loving heart of God. Jesus and his way of nonviolent, self-giving love, the text suggests, will earn the trust of all humanity. We will ultimately migrate, in other words, toward the way of Jesus.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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01c3031
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Such a possibility raises a question: if one dares to let one's traditional and inherited "Christian" understanding of God be converted under the influence of Jesus, can one still be considered a Christian? Or, conversely, if one refuses to let one's traditional understanding be converted under the influence of Jesus, can one still be considered a Christian? Be that as it may, growing numbers of us are coming to realize this simple truth: f..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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e01b929
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To everyone, Jesus issues an invitation to abandon the story they will lose themselves in, and instead, to enter the story they will find themselves in.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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18ac57f
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Sometimes, we become so familiar with the primal sacred story of the Bible that we need some fresh takes on it, telling us the same thing in different ways, or giving us some new vantage points to see what was always there, things we'd missed before.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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10344a1
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Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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d2c5e9b
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As I said before, evolution doesn't bother me. If you tell me that God created the earth "by hand" in six days some thousands of years ago, I am impressed. If you tell me instead that God set a whole cosmos in motion some billions of years ago, a cosmos perfectly calibrated within the narrowest of margins to produce at least one planet where life would be developed through cause-effect chains that were designed into it by a purposeful Desig..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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a02e1ea
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In the story of the Good Samaritan,] everybody knows the robber is bad--but doesn't Jesus also imply an indictment on the priest and Levite? . . . The priest and Levite are over here. They are 'righteous' in a superficial way. They don't rob anybody. They're not like that lousy criminal who is over here, on the bad end of the line. Do you see it? That's the line we modern Christians try to live on the right end of it . . . The Samaritan tra..
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goodness
righteous
righteousness
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Brian D. McLaren |
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60ef4fe
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To be truly good means more than not robbing people . . . To be truly good means more than being righteously religious . . . To be truly good means being a good neighbor. . . . And to be a good neighbor means recognizing that there are ultimately no strangers. . . . Everybody is my neighbor! . . . Everybody is my brother! . . . There are no isolated monads wounded on the other side of the street! . . . We're all connected.
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good-samaritan
goodness
neighbor
righteousness
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Brian D. McLaren |
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d341921
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Because if anything is clear in the aftermath of the Reformation, it has to be this: we human beings can interpret the Bible to say and mean an awful lot of different things. We can very easily confuse "The Bible says" with "I say the Bible says," which we can then equate with "God says."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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839dd5c
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Can you imagine Jesus saying, "Believe that I am the only way. Why? Because I said so, that's why! And if you don't believe, then you're going straight to hell!" But isn't that how we present him through our slogans?"
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Brian D. McLaren |
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dea5827
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What is the most significant conversation you have every day?" People would respond piously, "Your conversation with God, of course." "No," Lewis would reply. "It's the conversation you have with yourself before you speak to God, because in that conversation with yourself, you decide whether you are going to be honest and authentic with God, or whether you are going to meet God with a false face, a mask, an act, a pretense."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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006922a
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what today throws at you will force you to become better or bitter for tomorrow; it will push you toward breakdown or breakthrough...
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Brian D. McLaren |
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12bc31a
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Who do we think we are -- we small creatures with three-pound brains, a few limited senses, and life spans barely long enough to get to know our neighborhood, much less the planet, and much less the galaxy, and much less the universe, and much less still its creator! Who do we think we are to be able to define or even describe the creator of DNA, galaxies, dust mites, blue whales, the carbon cycle, light, and a billion other realities we ha..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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56cec22
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Spiritual practices are ways of becoming awake and staying awake to God.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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f794a2a
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In other words, when the community of faith gathers, its purpose is to equip its members for a life of love and good deeds when the community scatters.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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3e4a20c
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If I could seriously ponder ending my life, then I can do anything. I can change anything in my life. So instead of ending my life altogether, I'll end my life as I've been living it and start a new kind of life. I can now see a third alternative to the status quo and suicide.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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9e9cca7
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When would-be reformers arise, they are rejected as heretics, turncoats, troublemakers, disturbers of the peace, traitors, and enemies.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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e64afd5
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Spiritual] Practices are not for know-it-alls. Practices are for those who feel the need for change, growth, development, learning. Practices are for disciples.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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78e7af4
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The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way?
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Brian D. McLaren |
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75a381e
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He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou... ("Footnote to All Prayers") Lewis proceeds to acknowledge that when he says the Name of God, his best thoughts are mere fancies and symbols, which he knows "cannot be the thing thou art." Then with postmodern sensitivity, Lewis ponders the inadequacy of human language and perspective: And all men are idolators, crying unheard To a deaf idol, if Th..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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0778115
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Stanford ecologist Deborah Gordon and computer scientist Balaji Prabhakar discovered that ants appear to have developed flow control algorithms millions of years before humans did.
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Brian Christian |
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4aad4cf
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In the classic book How Will You Measure Your Life?, co-authors Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon frame the issue in starker terms, pointing out that it is easier to stay true to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold steady 98 percent of the time. According to the authors, your personal moral line is powerful because you do not cross it. But once you do, no matter your justifications, you are more..
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Brian de Haaff |
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5ba93d2
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The Price You Pay" by Kelley Armstrong, copyright (c) 2014 by Kelley Armstrong."
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Brian James Freeman |
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ca34562
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'I must not fear,' " she intoned, her eyes closed. " 'Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.' " It"
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Brian Herbert |
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3b7607f
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Despite an appearance of infallibility, computer projections are not prescient. --TICIA CENVA, former leader of the Sorceresses of Rossak
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Brian Herbert |
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1d4eaa3
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haring
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Brian Herbert |
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ebdcae2
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All life is a series of seemingly insignificant tasks and decisions, culminating in the definition of an individual and her purpose in life.
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Brian Herbert |