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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 2889a36 | But Saeed's father was thinking also of the future, even though he did not say this to Saeed, for he feared that if he said this to his son that his son might not go, and he knew above all else that his son must go, and what he did not say was that he had come to that point in a parent's life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one's child, contrary to all the instincts one had when one was younger, because holding on can.. | old old-age son | Mohsin Hamid | |
| 900fe8d | My father liked to wonder aloud whether the phoenix was re-created by the fire of its funeral pyre or transformed so that what emerged was a soulless shadow of its former being, identical in appearance but without the joy in life its predecessor had had. He wondered alternatively whether the fire might be purificatory, a redemptive, rejuvenating blaze that destroyed the withered shell of the old phoenix and allowed the creature's essence to.. | phoenix rebirth | Mohsin Hamid | |
| fcdf57c | People don't believe in consequences anymore. | effect | Mohsin Hamid | |
| 9d6d66c | Some things are too good. They make everything else worthless. | pleasures worth-quotes worthiness | Mohsin Hamid | |
| f8fe10f | Here is another strategy for the sentence completion exercise: Sure, Jesus talks about loving your enemies, but Jesus also talks about throwing sinners into hell to burn forever. Since eternal damnation is far worse than exterminating merely one ancient people for their land, the argument goes, don't get all worked up about the Canaanites. Crisis averted. No, it's not. | Peter Enns | ||
| 5cbdcbf | judging by how the Bible actually behaves--God did not design scripture to be a hushed afternoon in an oak-paneled library. Instead, God has invited us to participate in a wrestling match, a forum for us to be stretched and to grow. | Peter Enns | ||
| 714a74f | The earth drinks all that's left of you and asks for more. | Philip Levine | ||
| 6dd64a0 | If she were writing by candlelight she would now be in the dark, for a living flame would refuse to be fed by such pure exhaustion. Actually she is in the dark, for the | Philip Levine | ||
| ffff90d | If she were writing by candlelight she would now be in the dark, for a living flame would refuse to be fed by such pure exhaustion. | Philip Levine | ||
| c257cf0 | To be alone then, hearing only breeze, your own breath rising to answer with words you didn't know you knew the pale questions of the full moon, to know for the first time you are without a name or number. | Philip Levine | ||
| f63d66f | I will use the conventional Christian term "Old Testament" when talking about the sacred writings of the ancient Israelites--a. k.a. the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, an acronym for the three sections of the Jewish Bible, Torah (five books of Moses), Nevi'im (prophets), and Kethuvim (writings)." -- | Peter Enns | ||
| 5cd778d | Peter Enns is correct: "We do not honor the Lord nor do we uphold the gospel by playing make-believe."[164]" | Christian Smith | ||
| 5544628 | a common burden so many Christians have unwittingly carried, namely, that watching over us is God, an unstable parent, who is right off the bat harsh, vindictive, at best begrudgingly merciful, and mainly interested in whether we've read and understood the fine print; if not, God has no recourse but to punish us. | Peter Enns | ||
| 959113e | If God were a helicopter parent, our sacred book would be full of clear, consistent, unambiguous information to take in. In other words, it wouldn't look anything like it does. But if the Bible's main purpose is to form us, to grow us to maturity, to teach us the sacred responsibility of communing with the Spirit by walking the path of wisdom, it would leave plenty of room for pondering, debating, thinking, and the freedom to fail. And that.. | Peter Enns | ||
| a08e674 | Sticking to the Bible at every turn, like it's an owner's manual or book of instruction, as the way to know God misses what Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers show us again and again: the words on the page of the Bible don't drive the story, Jesus does. Jesus is bigger than the Bible. For | Peter Enns | ||
| 167c703 | The Adam story, then, is not simply about the past. It's about Israel's present brought into the past--even as far past as the beginning of the human drama itself. | Peter Enns | ||
| 05a3ae7 | To feel that our faith is threatened can easily turn to fear. But, judging from the long and varied history of thinking within Christianity, "being right" is elusive, and the Bible is never something we will actually master. The relentless and sinful human habit of creating God to look like ourselves, and thus distorting God, is also a constant problem. The choice we all need to make daily is whether we are willing to hold our narratives wi.. | Peter Enns | ||
| cec8969 | The broader we cast our net, the deeper we wind up owning our own thoughts. | Peter Enns | ||
| f88ec62 | You get the feeling from the Bible that being unsettled is almost a normal part of the process. Not that we should go looking for it-- it will find us soon enough-- but struggling in some way seems like something we should expect on our own spiritual journeys. True struggling in faith is a stretching experience, and without it, you don't mature in your faith. You either remain an infant or get cocky. Feeling dis-ease and challenged in faith.. | Peter Enns | ||
| 51623c8 | We can well imagine Jews feeling a bit out of their element--maybe intimidated and shamed by their own story, which began in slavery, ended in exile, and with absolutely zero contributions to philosophy or science. "Some 'chosen people'! What kind of God did you say you follow? Apparently one who lets bad things happen to you." | Peter Enns | ||
| cfc2251 | All attempts to put the past into words are interpretations of the past, not "straight history." There is no such thing. Anywhere. Including the Bible." | Peter Enns | ||
| 1d23975 | I think of Christians who, having been raised to read the Genesis creation story as literal science and history, leave for college, watch the History Channel, or log onto the internet, and find out that fossils and radiometric dating are in fact not hoaxes. That's how nice Christian college freshmen become atheists by Christmas break. If your faith can unravel that quickly, it's enough to make you question whether your faith is worth the ef.. | Peter Enns | ||
| 0e83740 | The Bible isn't a cookbook--deviate from the recipe and the souffle falls flat. It's not an owner's manual--with detailed and complicated step-by-step instructions for using your brand-new all-in-one photocopier/FAX machine/scanner/microwave/DVR/home security system. It's not a legal contract--make sure you read the fine print and follow every word or get ready to be cast into the dungeon. It's not a manual of assembly--leave out a few bolt.. | Peter Enns | ||
| 5d639c9 | In the spiritual life, the opposite of fear is not courage, but trust. | Peter Enns | ||
| f3a35b3 | The Bible looks the way it does because "God lets his children tell the story," so to speak." | Peter Enns | ||
| cd8346e | So much can be learned from other traditions. In the long history of the Christian church, so many different, even conflicting, points of view have been embraced as true and valuable. | Peter Enns | ||
| cb2fb09 | The need to explain Jesus as both surprise ending and deeply connected to Israel's story drove the Gospel writers to do some creative reading. Sticking to what the Bible says wasn't their goal. Talking about Jesus was. | Peter Enns | ||
| 0cab8d9 | There's an irony: the passionate defense of the Bible as a "history book" among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn't really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. In" | Peter Enns | ||
| 29a785e | a faith that remains open to the ever-moving Spirit and new possibilities, rather than chaining the Spirit to our past * a faith that welcomes opportunities to think critically and reflectively on how we think about God, the world, and our place in it, rather than resting at all costs on maintaining familiar certainties | Peter Enns | ||
| de7999c | Trust your experiences, your God moments. They don't work as intellectual arguments for God, but that's exactly the point: intellectual arguments aren't enough, and wanting them to be so sooner or later leads to disappointment. God speaks to us through our whole humanity, not just through part of it. God moments can't be proven to anyone else, but that doesn't make them second best. They are proof--of another kind. | Peter Enns | ||
| ea09f7a | Our experiences of God matter--those sacred moments that defy the very rational capabilities we are so keen to rely on. | Peter Enns | ||
| 3192d93 | Struggling with faith is normal. Journey and pilgrimage have become powerful words for me for describing the life of faith. I have come to expect periods of unsettledness, uncertainty, and fear to remind me that who I am, where I am, and what I think do not define reality. Facing and then truly being present with my experiences along the way help me remember that my experiences at any moment are not the entire journey--including those perio.. | Peter Enns | ||
| 8dcf721 | Doing the best as we can to figure out life, to discern how or if a certain proverb applies right here and now, is not an act of disloyalty toward God, rebellion against God's clear rulebook for life. It is, rather, our sacred responsibility as people of faith. | Peter Enns | ||
| bfcf6f4 | And as I write this, Romans 13:1 recently made the rounds on the American political scene to shield the administration from criticism for separating illegal immigrants from their children at the border--which is just one of many reasons why politicians should not be allowed near a Bible without adult supervision. | Peter Enns | ||
| 4dc607c | The Bible isn't a book that reflects one point of view. It is a collection of books that records a conversation--even a debate--over time. | Peter Enns | ||
| edf6a3b | The Bible shows us that obedience to God is not about cutting and pasting the Bible over our lives, but seeking the path of wisdom--holding the sacred book in one hand and ourselves, our communities of faith, and our world in the other in order to discern how the God of old is present here and now. | Peter Enns | ||
| c4e603a | The biblical writers were human like us, and nothing is gained by thinking otherwise. Someone might say, "Well, okay, sure they were human, obviously, but the biblical writers were also inspired, directed by God in what to write, and so not simply ordinary human writers." I get the point. To see the Bible as inspired by God is certainly the mainstream view in the history of Christianity (and Judaism), but what that means exactly and how it .. | Peter Enns | ||
| 26e30b2 | We have practically been conditioned to expect God to be our helicopter parent. And if for some reason we don't run to God to solve every little problem, from finding our car keys to deciding on color schemes for the nursery, we are told there is something deeply wrong with us spiritually. Phooey. | Peter Enns | ||
| c17a3c7 | Jesus, who is wisdom incarnate, gives us access to the Creator to reveal hidden things and invites us to seek out our sacred responsibility to perceive God's unscripted presence here and now. | Peter Enns | ||
| fcf8487 | I ponder these questions by taking seriously this ancient, ambiguous, and diverse Bible we have as well as honoring my humanity--my experiences, my reasoning, when and where I was born--and I try to get all these factors to talk to each other. That may ring a bell with some of you. I am echoing the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral. We are always processing God and faith not from a high place, but from the vantage point of our inescapable hu.. | Peter Enns | ||
| e0e8890 | None of these modern adaptations is "in the Bible," and yet even the most committed "rulebook Bible" readers out there wind up adapting what the Bible says, because we have to--if we want that ancient text to continue to speak to us today." | Peter Enns | ||
| 2baae14 | God doesn't change, but God--being God--is never fully captured by our perceptions. As people continue to live and breathe and experience life, how they see God changes too. | Peter Enns | ||
| d444c48 | Marriage is more than a piece of paper. It'a a mystery. In fact, there is a Misdrash that suggests that marriage is made in heaven between soul mates. | Sylvain Reynard | ||
| cb56bd6 | I surround myself with all eight throw pillows while hugging two. "What is so bad and uninteresting about me, Alex? Peter was the fifth break up- "-Sixth-" "-Sixth break up in the last two years. And I'm always the dumpee. Are my conversations that boring that no man wants to stay?" "Sandra, with this topic, yes. But usually, no." | humour life-and-living | Rose Brown |