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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| eac3753 | Religion can be a way to hide, numb, or even entertain ourselves like a spiritual Candy Crush, either through the comforting blandness and predictability of mainline Protestantism or through the temporary lifting of our spirits and hands in Evangelical worship. Of course, there are many ways of pretending shit ain't broke in ourselves and in the world, but escapist religion is a classic option, and churches have seemed to turn into places w.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 7463be3 | Sometimes I wonder if that is what faith is: risking an openness to something bigger than ourselves -- something from which we are made and yet without which we are not complete, our origin and our completion. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 8c123c9 | What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| ed92b5e | I don't think her image is everywhere because she is a reminder to be obedient, and I don't think it has to do with social revolution. Images of Mary remind us of God's favor. Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| f19110a | Trying to prove scientifically the historical accuracy of events in the Bible is to faith what having your spouse under twenty-four-hour video surveillance is to marital trust. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 9344838 | And then he went from Saul to Paul, from being the best at being a Jew to being the best at being a Christian. Only, at some point he realized that no one could really pull that off. That's when Paul finally understood grace. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 7f5e680 | But no matter how much we strive for purity in our minds, bodies, spirits, or ideologies, purity is not the same as holiness. It's just easier to define what is pure than what is holy, so we pretend they are interchangeable. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| f8847a0 | the resurrected Christ does such an unbearably loving and merciful thing. He does not rebuke Peter for failing him in his time of need. Instead he gives Peter breakfast, and then he gives Peter three chances to proclaim his love, one for each of his denials. "Do you love me, Peter?" | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| f05c51e | Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, was once fuming to her husband against the wrong kind of Christians, and he told her that "every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it."39" | William McDavid | ||
| 504fd18 | Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, was once fuming to her husband against the wrong kind of Christians, and he told her that "every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it." | William McDavid | ||
| 83c5bb0 | The crucifixion portrayed on our show was undertaken by the son of God, a trained professional. Do not try to crucify yourself at home. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 60b37f8 | Standing in a large Minnesotan church hall I tried to muster up the interest and stamina it takes to greet each person with the honor he or she deserves. This always feels like a battle between my misanthropic personality (I don't actually care about you) and my values (you are a beloved child of God who deserves to be heard) and it's exhausting. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| f1e57c3 | But at the time I didn't know that it would take more to escape black-and-white thinking than just no longer attending your parents' church. The church had provided me a sorting system, which was now ingrained. It had containers into which every person and idea and event was to be placed. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 7493ea0 | People don't talk enough about what the freedom of a Christian looks like. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 4276bc5 | It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off. Like a stream that has flowed long before us and will continue long after us. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| e509232 | the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with God and each other when we are uncool, lame, blind, poor, and crippled. And as uncomfortable as I am, as you are, to be seen in such a stark and uncompromising light, there is much relief | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 013df7f | While we as people of God are certainly called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, that whole "we're blessed to be a blessing" thing can still be kind of dangerous. It can be dangerous when we self-importantly place ourselves above the world, waiting to descend on those below so we can be the "blessing" they've been waiting for, like it or not. Plus, seeing myself as the blessing can pretty easily obscure the way in which I am actuall.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 8c6e180 | God forcing God's people to see themselves as God sees them, to do stuff they know they are incapable of doing, so that God might make use of them, and make them to be both humble recipients and generous givers of grace, so that they may be part of God's big project on earth, so that they themselves might find unexpected joy through surprising situations. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 82961a0 | Shit," I thought to myself, "I'm going to be late to New Testament class." | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 97b2a0e | The fact is, we are all, at once, bearers of the gospel and receivers of it. We meet the needs of others and have our needs met. And the strangeness of the good news is that, like those in Matthew 25 who sat before the throne and said Huh? When did we ever feed you, Lord?, we never know when we experience Jesus in all of this. All that we have is a promise, a promise that our needs are holy to God. A promise that Jesus is present in the mee.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 3f1922c | Everything else is temptation. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| c4b25d5 | when Jesus again and again says things like the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, and the poor are blessed, and the rich are cursed, and that prostitutes make great dinner guests, it makes me wonder if our need for pure black-and-white categories is not true religion but maybe actually a sin. Knowing what category to place hemlock in might help us know whether it's safe to drink, but knowing what category to place ourselves .. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 81fde71 | like. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| b4e241c | It's my practice to welcome new people to the church by making sure they know that House for All Sinners and Saints will, at some point, let them down. That I will say or do something stupid and disappoint them. And then I encourage them to decide before that happens if they will stick around after it happens. If they leave, I tell them, they will miss the way that God's grace comes in and fills in the cracks left behind by our brokenness. .. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 08f71f0 | wish I could show them how their loyalty to a doctrine or an interpretation of a few Bible verses has created harm in the bodies and spirits of the people in my care. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 4d238c7 | Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy.*4 They only create insiders and outsiders. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| f82ae4b | Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 8111039 | The testimony is followed by another montage of Team Impact feats of strength. "Ladies and Gentlemen," an amped up announcer voice a la Monster Truck Rally proclaims, "We are Team Impaaaaact. Standing on faith tonight let's give it up for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one, the only, the Risen Warrioooooor!" Are they talking about Jesus? Is he a cage fighter or the Lamb of God? If ever there was a cross-denying tribute to a theolo.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 0489e1e | there is a king in that text, but it's Herod: a scheming, frightened, insecure troglodyte who puts a hit out on a toddler. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 0b0b706 | Repentance, "thinking differently afterward," is what happens to me when the truth of who I am and the truth of who God is scatter the darkness of competing ideas." | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| e7b043f | I may feel used to the idea that if I live a certain kind of life, I can make myself worthy of God. But what if God's Word is so much more powerful than our ability to become worthy of God? I mean, not for nothing, but if God can create the universe by speaking it into existence, then I think God can make us into God's beloved by simply saying it is so. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| fec1540 | The disciples' mistake was also my mistake: They forgot that they have a God who created the universe out of "nothing," that can put flesh on dry bones "nothing," that can put life in a dusty womb "nothing." I mean, let's face it, "nothing" is God's favorite material to work with. Perhaps God looks upon that which we dismiss as nothing, insignificant, and worthless, and says "Ha! Now that I can do something with." | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| bf5d4ce | 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. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 3182dd6 | If religion has been the venue in which the power of sex is taken most seriously, could it also become the place in which a new conversation about it arises? One that is not afflicted with legalism and shaming, and yet also does not ignore the depravity of human beings in favor of some delusional idea that we are capable of perfect selflessness? | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 27e1dc7 | To connect to the holy is to access the deepest, juiciest part of our spirits. Perhaps this is why we set up so many boundaries, protections, and rules around both sex and religion. Both pursuits expose such a large surface area of the self, which can then be either hurt or healed. But when the boundaries, protections, and rules become more important than the sacred thing they are intended to protect, casualties ensue. But no matter how muc.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 7a3092b | My full immersion into the world of TBN and a Christianity that can seem like it's from another planet entirely, rather than strengthening my confidence in the sufficiency of my own tradition, has actually weakened it. I see the holes. I hope this shift continues for me because it feels like for so very long the various sects and denominations within the church (including my own) have spent so much energy defending their theological, doctri.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| ba48a7f | Augustine's shame reportedly took root when, as an adolescent, he got an erection while at a Roman bath. Embarrassing, yes. But Augustine was so consumed with shame of not being able to control his erections that he spent a decade writing a theological treatise. In the treatise, he set out to prove that the main condition of paradise before the fall was that Adam could control his erections with his own will. Then Eve messed everything up. .. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 0d6d447 | The Gospels are the canon within the canon. The Bible, as Martin Luther said, is the cradle that holds Christ. The point of gravity is the story of Jesus, the Gospel. The closer a text of the Bible is to that story or to the heart of that story's message, the more authority it has. The farther away it is, the less its authority. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 7dacb8a | Sex for Sara was at first incredibly painful, and for Tim incredibly frustrating. They both felt inadequate, angry, and confused, alternately blaming themselves and then each other. They had been told that if they followed the rules, they would have more satisfying and exciting sex than couples who'd had sex before marriage. The kind of sex that was better because it was pure. But when they got married, they found out that all of that was b.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 9eb98ef | Apparently, thousands of parents had been warned that their children would be exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women if we weren't uninvited. Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women, Christianity itself would not have had its unique nor its glorious history, but whatever. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| d301ae1 | I wrote once in a prayer, "Dear God, your work in the world is always done by sinners, or else it would never get done; help us to realize this and practice the grace and forgiveness you first gave us." But when I was talking about sinners in that case, it was just the broken beautiful people like myself and the others in my community, not my theological "other." | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 4aa1f6d | Trent had just spent an hour describing what he learned as a kid from his church: how the only way to please God, the same being who created him with a sexuality to begin with, was to not engage with his erotic nature whatsoever. As if the God of the Universe had programmed into creation a passive-aggressive test of our willpower. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| ea95bc3 | Too often, the diagram that religion draws up for explaining sex takes the snake's-eye view--it names only the physics of fear, threat, and control, but none of the magic. Likewise, media and advertising thrust the commodification of sex our way, and sex becomes either something to trade in or just another aspect of life in which we are judged and found lacking. But neither of these approaches is enough. Neither points to the whole truth. B.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber | ||
| 393c366 | What happens in the Kingdom of God parable I was given is that a landowner goes out and hires laborers in the morning and agrees to pay them the daily wage. But then every few hours he goes and finds more workers and brings them in. In the afternoon he goes again to the marketplace and sees folks standing around and is like, "Why aren't you working?" and they say, "because no one would hire us," and he sends them into his vineyard to work t.. | Nadia Bolz-Weber |