1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
4526
4527
4528
4529
4530
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e7996dc | Has God created millions of people over tens of thousands of years who are going to spend eternity in anguish? Can God do this, or even allow this, and still claim to be a loving God? Does God punish people for thousands of years with infinite, eternal torment for things they did in their few finite years of life? | death god hell life religion | Rob Bell | |
| b173136 | God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do is subtly teach people that Jesus rescues us from God. | death god hell jesus religion sin | Rob Bell | |
| 6c1a17a | The Bible is a library of books reflecting how human beings have understood the divine. People at that time believed the gods were with them when they went to war and killed everyone in the village. What you're reading is someone's perspective that reflects the time and the place they lived in. It's not God's perspective-- it's theirs. And when they say it's God's perspective, what they're telling you is their perspective on God's perspecti.. | Rob Bell | ||
| f74c1b7 | Jesus didn't talk about a God who wants to burn this place down and take us somewhere else; he talked about the renewing of this place, the only home we've ever had. Central to the story of the Bible is the affirmation of trees and seas and rocks and air and soil and blood and sweat and skin and all the materiality and diversity and creativity that we know to be central to our life in this world. Jesus talked about a coming time when God wo.. | Rob Bell | ||
| 3d9ec82 | Groups have a center of gravity. Families, friends, churches, offices, and schools all have a dominant consciousness, a center of gravity, a party line. It's the often unspoken agreement that keeps things running smoothly based on what to believe, how to behave, what's acceptable, and what isn't. So when you charge in all excited about whatever it is you've learned, you are a disruption. And systems don't take kindly to disruptions, often e.. | Rob Bell | ||
| 6ceaef3 | Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like your life is passing you by. | Rob Bell | ||
| 0029ab5 | There is hell now, and there is hell later, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. | Rob Bell | ||
| aa6fde2 | What does it mean to never be separated from love? Is that how you live every day? In every thought, are you constantly reminded that love is the ground of your being? | Rob Bell | ||
| 1b18eec | We rob ourselves of immeasurable joy when we compare what we do know about ourselves with what we don't know about someone else. | Rob Bell | ||
| aa0438d | This story... blasts to pieces our biases and labels with a declaration that God is on everyone's side, extending grace and compassion to everyone, especially those we have most strongly decided are not on God's side. | Rob Bell | ||
| d3a9fb0 | Your ikigai is a work in progress because you are a work in progress. Knowing your ikigai, then, takes patience and insight, and courage, and honesty. | Rob Bell | ||
| 21e52ed | You explore the possibilities because you can't steer a parked car. | Rob Bell | ||
| 382b868 | Great marriages have an ease about them, a back-and-forth nonreactive, nondefensive, open, and ongoing flow in which you never stop talking and figuring it out together. | Rob Bell | ||
| 6180cf3 | Your marriage will only be as healthy as the least healthy one of you. | Rob Bell | ||
| 88688cb | Because the Jesus message is first and foremost an announcement of who you are. It's about your identity, about the new word that has been spoken about you, the love that has always been yours. If you start with instructions and commands, people might be mistaken into thinking that God loves us because of what we do or how religious or moral or good we are. That's not gospel. Gospel is the announcement of who God insists you are. You're a c.. | Rob Bell | ||
| f41ad82 | Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that's what he has the Father say. "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours." ... Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they'll be able to have a relationship with God... B.. | gospel heaven-and-hell monster-god universalism | Rob Bell | |
| 9b6093c | Like a mirror, God appears to be more and more a reflection of whoever it is that happens to be talking about God at the moment. | Rob Bell | ||
| a0afa99 | I don't read the Bible like a flat line. I don't see all of the passages in the Bible sitting equally side by side so that you can pick one and then counter it with another and go back and forth endlessly, endlessly leading you to the barbaric and violent and random nature of life--and God. I read it looking for what the story is doing, what's happening within it. What new perspective is emerging? What new idea is being presented? What sens.. | Rob Bell | ||
| 2decd03 | when wealth is your god, weapons are your sacrament, and your own children are your sacrifice-- | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| b12f957 | Speaking of African Americans, the horrors of the African slave trade are more connected to the enslavement unleashed by Columbus than most people realize.26 The Portuguese began enslaving and exporting the native peoples of Labrador beginning in 1501. Early in colonial history, the British paid some tribes to capture members of other tribes; the British then sold these captives as slaves. Charleston, South Carolina, was a center for export.. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 99aa4df | It turns out that the famous dictum, associated with Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov, can run both ways: yes, without God everything is theoretically permissible... but believers can find ways to use God to justify just about anything as well. | religion | Brian D. McLaren | |
| 746317c | There is a difference -- subtle but very significant -- between having faith in my faith (i.e., faith in my intellectual concepts about God -- another way of saying "leaning on my own understanding") and having faith in God. There is a corresponding difference between doubting my faith and doubting God." | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 3eb2295 | We often fail to deconstruct how proslavery theology still influences American Christianity. But simply put: Theological arguments upheld the institution of slavery long after every other argument failed. American Christian theology was born in a cauldron of proslavery ideology, and one of the spectacular failures of the Christian church today is its inability to name, interrogate, confront, repent, and dismantle the cauldron which has shap.. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 6fb6b52 | Comfort and power can become great enemies of true spirituality, which explains why we often say that the prophets come not only to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 7a0d7cd | These special holidays give rise to various liturgical calendars that suggest we should mark our days not only with the cycles of the moon and seasons, but also with occasions to tell our children the stories of our faith community's past so that this past will have a future, and so that our ancient way and its practices will be rediscovered and renewed every year. | easter lent liturgical-year | Brian D. McLaren | |
| 135de88 | Jesus called disciples so He could send them out as apostles. They were called together to learn so they could be sent out to teach and serve. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 4e92fa5 | When any sector of the church stops learning, God simply overflows the structures that are in the way and works outside them with those willing to learn. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 4037b50 | Trying to stop people from learning, sharing, and loving is a losing game because it means working against God and the plotline of God's universe. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| 9fed2c4 | Through study we welcome the light of God into our minds. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| dc37546 | I guess you could say that the Bible is a book that doesn't try to tell you what to think. Instead, it tries to teach you how to think. It stretches your thinking; it challenges you to think bigger and harder than you ever have. | Brian D. McLaren | ||
| e56b575 | Alla andra kvinnor "mixar och matchar" och "kompletterar sin basgarderob". Och jag? Min favvotrend ar att "mixa de renaste plaggen"." | fashion | Caitlin Moran | |
| 1d29854 | after all, it will be hard to oppress a generation who've been brought up on pop-stars with fire coming out of their tits. | Caitlin Moran | ||
| e1c97db | It was the 'Are the boys doing it?' basis on which I finally decided I was against women wearing burkas. Yes, the idea is that it protects your modesty, and ensures that people regard you as a human being, rather than just a sexual object (...) But who are you being protected from? Men. And who - so long as you play by the rules, and wear the correct clothes - is protecting you from the men? Men. And who is it that is regarding you as a sex.. | feminism misogyny modesty-mindsets objectification-of-women oppression oppressive-body-coverings patriarchy | Caitlin Moran | |
| a39475f | Shut up, Ed--the world below us has turned into a map. A real map! The woods look like the "Woodland: Deciduous" markings of Ordnance Survey. It is just as they drew it! Who knew! Who knew you could put the whole world on paper, after all! The artists were right! This is so reassuring!" | Caitlin Moran | ||
| 647ca5a | Anger is just fear, brought to the boil. And the thing about scared people is, whenever you ask them for advice, on whatever subject, they only ever have one thing to say to you: "Run." | Caitlin Moran | ||
| 131e07a | 1) Leopardskin is always a neutral. 2) You can get away with nearly anything if you wear the thing with black opaque tights and boots. 3) Contrary to popular opinion, a belt is often not a good friend to a lady. Indeed, in many circumstances, it acts merely as a visual aid to help the onlooker settle the question: "Which half is fatter - the bottom or the top?" 4) Bright red is a neutral. 5) Sellotape is NOT strong enough to mend a hole in .. | fashion shopping womanhood | Caitlin Moran | |
| 2140d61 | motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, willingness, and happiness as possible. | feminism women | Caitlin Moran | |
| 863fef1 | I'm neither "pro-women" nor "anti-men." I'm just "Thumbs up for the six billion." | Caitlin Moran | ||
| 61d0c30 | Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or -- most crucially of all, for a teenage girl -- simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right -- right, down into their clever, brilliant bones -- but lonely. | girls individualism individuality women | Caitlin Moran | |
| 5e6e91c | But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. | Caitlin Moran | ||
| 7470234 | Evenings never end - they just, without you noticing, turn into tomorrow. | Caitlin Moran | ||
| 98e2bfb | In any just world, I should have been able to kick the front room door open, like Lord Flashheart in Blackadder, and shout "OH YEAH. THAT HYMEN'S GONE. DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT," and then run round the room, getting high fives from my parents and siblings." | Caitlin Moran | ||
| b84c536 | What are you doing with your face?" Krissi asked, as I made myself a cheese sandwich in the kitchen. Having been away for two nights, I had a sudden, giddying perspective on just how much margarine seemed permanently smeared on our worktops. This whole room was a health risk. "What do you mean?" I asked--increasing the smugness as I sliced the cheese. "Your face--it's clearly telling me to slap it," Krissi said, staring at me. "It's communi.. | Caitlin Moran | ||
| e677c15 | Rock 'n' roll is a terrible babysitter, baby. | Caitlin Moran |