Christianity
- Authentic Christianity never destroys what is good. It makes it grow, transfigures it, and enriches itself from it.--Claire Huchet Bishop
- But being Christian isn't primarily about having a correct theology by getting our beliefs right. It is about a deepening relationship with God as known especially in Jesus.--Marcus Borg (Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most)
- But so many Christians are like deaf people at a concert. They study the programme carefully, believe every statement make in it, speak respectfully of the quality of the music, but only really hear a phrase now and again. So they have no notion at all of the mighty symphony which fills the universe, to which our lives are destined to make their tiny contribution, and which is the self-expression of the Eternal God.--Evelyn Underhill (The Spiritual Life)
- The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.--G. K. Chesterton
- Christian justice means consistently and actively working to see that individuals and groups—especially vulnerable population on the margins—are given what they are owed. It will be especially skeptical of practices which promote violence, consumerism, and autonomy.--Charles Camosy (For Love of Animals: Christian Ethics, Consistent Action)
- The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to the God who is already here.--Marcus J. Borg (The God We Never Knew)
- Christianity helps us face the music even when we don't like the tune.--Phillips Brooks
- Christianity provides for believers belonging, purpose, meaning and hope. ... Crucially though, Christianity is not a shared identity that should allow you to retreat into tribalism. These positive benefits should instead be used to serve, not attack, those outside the group.--Elizabeth Oldfield ("Thought for the Day," October 11, 2016)
- Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear ... Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather [its] conscience.--Martin Luther King, Jr. (Strength to Love)
- Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the oceans dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.--F. M. Lehman ("The Love of God" [hymn])
- The desire to rule is the mother of all heresies.--John Chrysostom
- Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked, "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."--Peter Larson (Prism Jan/Feb 2001)
- The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these others, men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after men.--Thomas Arnold
- Do not seek God
in outer space--
Your heart is the only place
in which to meet Him
face to face.--Angelus Silesius
- Does being born into a Christian family make one a Christian? No! God has no grandchildren.--Corrie ten Boom (Each New Day)
- Eriugena and other Celtic teachers speak of Christ as our memory, as the one who leads us to our deepest identity, as the one who remembers the song of our beginnings….--John Philip Newell (Christ of the Celts: the Healing of Creation)
- Every institution places its ultimate weight on preserving its own life. That is why the Church emphasizes loving God over loving one's neighbor.... The push for justice on the other hand might be at the center of the Gospel but it also attacks the balance of power in the society. Since the rich always exploit the poor, to give the poor power, dignity and humanity makes them less pliable, less cooperative.--Bishop John Shelby Spong (" Bishop Spong Q&A on loving thy neighbor," 7/20/2005)
- Exploring Jesus' concern for the poor and excluded reminds us of the close connections among wealth, health and social acceptability. Chronic illness, disability and poverty typically go hand-in-hand. Also, human wholeness is not easily divided into separate categories, as if economic, psychological and physical wellness operate in isolation from each other. Acts of healing and empowerment always carry political, religious and social significance.--Matthew L. Skinner ("Mark 1:40-45: The Inconvenient Truth About Taking Care of the Poor")
- For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!--Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)
- The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.--William Blake ("To the Deists" Jerusalem)
- The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him.--Rabbi Harold Kushner
- God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different.--Rabbi Harold Kushner
- God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.-~John Shelby Spong
- God is not nearly as concerned with our getting what we want as He is with our getting him.--George Myers
- God loves us already and has from our very beginning. The Christian life is not about believing or doing what we need to believe or do so that we can be saved. Rather, it's about seeing what is already true – that God loves us already – and then beginning to live in this relationship. It is about becoming conscious of and intentional about a deepening relationship with God.--Marcus Borg
- God loves us the way we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way.--Leighton Ford
- God within us is communicating with God above us, and we know that this communication is pure and powerful.--Judson Cornwall (Praying the Scriptures)
- How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife?--Sue Monk Kidd (When the Heart Waits)
- Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience - not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.--C. S. Lewis
- I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be.--John Shelby Spong (Why Christianity Must Change or Die)
- I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.--Bishop Desmond Tutu (interview, Worldview, Dec. 1984)
- I doubt if there is in the world a single problem, whether social, political, or economic, which would not find ready solution if men and nations would rule their lives according to the plain teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.--Franklin D. Roosevelt (in The Age of Roosevelt, by Schlesinger)
- I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.--George Eliot (Middlemarch)
- I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much.--Mother Teresa
- I ... look at Jesus and see a humanity open to all that God is--open to life, open to love and open to being.--John Shelby Spong (Jesus for the Non Religious)
- I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.--Albert Camus
- If you begin to live life looking for the God that is all around you, every moment becomes a prayer.--Frank Bianco
- If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church; it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis.--Steven Brown
- If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.--Stephen Colbert
- In the final analysis, the good news of the reign of God is not first that the well taken care of will be even more well taken care of in the next life. The good news of the reign of God is that God's reign is present wherever the homeless are sheltered, wherever the hungry are fed, wherever the rich give away their money and power in defense of the poor, wherever the forgotten ones gather to be remembered and embraced, to be told that as long as we follow God, not one of God's children will be left to die alone and unloved.--Derek Penwell (The Mainliner’s Survival Guide to the Post-Denominational World)
- Instead of viewing God as one who helps me accomplish my purposes, it is now my joy to help God accomplish the divine purpose - seeking the best for others and seeking the growth of the beloved, which is to say everyone.--Philip Gulley (The Evolution of Faith: How God is Creating a Better Christianity)
- It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and a need for a hike in the minimum wage. But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.--Barbara Ehrelich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America)
- I’ve read the last page of the Bible. It’s all going to turn out all right.--Billy Graham
- Just as we prayerfully ponder the words of the Bible in Christian practice, and as other traditions study their sacred texts, so we are invited to listen to the life of creation as an ongoing, living utterance of God.--John Philip Newell (Christ of the Celts)
- Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All thing pass;
God never changes
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.--Saint Teresa of Avila (Prayer)
- Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.--George Macdonald
- Many people profess Christianity. Very few live it--almost none. And when you live it people may think you're crazy. It has been truthfully said that the world is equally shocked by one who repudiates Christianity as by one who practices it.--Peace Pilgrim
- May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. Amen.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. Amen.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection,starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy. Amen.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen.
And the Blessing of God, who Creates, Redeems and Sanctifies, be upon you and all you love an pray for this day, and forever more. Amen.--A Franciscan Blessing
- The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.--Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)
- No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.--William R. Inge (Manchester Guardian, Feb. 27, 1954)
- No one can claim to be called Christian who gives money for the building of warships and arsenals.--Belva Lockwood
- Perhaps the greatest contribution that those of us who come from a Christian tradition can make is to throw out the old just-war theory, embrace the nonviolence of Jesus, refuse to kill one another, and truly follow his commandment to "love our enemies."--Mairead Corrigan Maguire ("Gandhi and the Ancient Wisdom of Nonviolence" in Peace is the Way, ed. by Wink)
- Prayer that works is prayer that makes a difference, contemplation that turns into action, on behalf of peace and justice in a troubled and unjust world system. Prayer is energy, the energy of love and transformative power. It is given to us to use for the good of all creation. In prayer God gives us the fuel of life, and asks us to live it.--Margaret Silf
- The purpose of Christianity is not to avoid difficulty, but to produce a character adequate to meet it when it comes. It does not make life easy; rather it tries to make us great enough for life.--James L. Christensen
- Real religion ... is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world. (James 1:27 The Message)
- The story of Holy Week as Mark and the other gospels tell it enables us to hear the passion of Jesus-what he was passionate about-that led to his execution. His passion was the kingdom of God, what life would be like on earth if God were king, and the rulers, domination systems, and empires of this world were not. It is the world that the prophets dreamed of-a world of distributive justice in which everybody has enough and systems are fair. And it is not simply a political dream. It is God's dream, a dream that can only be realized by being grounded ever more deeply in the reality of god, whose heart is justice. Jesus's passion got him killed. But God has vindicated Jesus. This is the political meaning of Good Friday and Easter.--Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan (The Last Week)
- There are some people who, if they lost their ability to speak, we would never be able to guess they were Christian. ... Their words are the only indication we have of their beliefs. Then, of course, there are people who seldom speak about their faith, who feel no obligation to tell the rest of us what they believe, and they don't have to, because their lives speak for them.--Philip Gulley ("Believing and Belonging")
- Those of us who take the teaching of Jesus as our norm need to reject not only atomic bombs, but also weapons and violence as a means of forcing one’s will on others.--Atsuyoshi Fujiwara ("A Love That Disarms," Sojourners, August 2015)
- Those who use scripture to belittle, marginalize or discriminate against other people are NOT entitled to do so. ... "Agreeing to disagree" is not the helpful or peaceful thing to do in a situation where oppression is the problem. The helpful and peaceful thing to do is to call oppression what it is: Bigotry. Socially violent. Absolutely and totally wrong.--Crystal St. Marie Lewis ("Let’s Not 'Agree to Disagree'")
- Though it hardly seems possible now, we cling to the hope that God's City will be established in the gift of the new heavens and the new earth. Our work is to live by the customs of the new City before it has fully come to be. In this way, the church draws the world to God. We hold forth not a condemning, but a welcoming word. All nations are invited to come to this City. And the quality of our interactions as a community will be a stronger witness than our words. The vibrancy of our worship will be a beacon of light that draws people home from the long darkness they have endured.--Gerrit Scott Dawson (Called by a New Name)
- True Christianity is love in action.--David O. McKay
- We are immersed in relationships and if we desire to follow the path of Jesus, we have to develop the capacity to see God in ourselves and others - all others, at all times.--Unknown (Good Words)
- We cannot love God unless we love each other. We know him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet, and life is a banquet too - even with a crust - where there is companionship. We have all known loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.--Dorothy Day
- We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.--Abraham Lincoln (1863)
- We receive His peace when we ask Him for it. We keep His peace by extending it to others. Those are the keys and there are no others.--Marianne Williamson
- Why go to a church to worship God? A church is man made. God never said, "And let there be aluminum siding." Climbing a tree to talk to God sounds like a better idea since only God can make a tree. And if that tree's on a golf course, all the better.--Tim Allen
- A wise person truly said, "It ought to be as impossible to forget that there is a Christian in the house as it is to forget that there is a ten-year-old boy in it."--Roger J. Squire (Church Management)
- With a strong affirmation of our goodness and a gentle understanding of our weakness, God is loving us--you and me--this moment, just as we are and not as we should be.--Brennan Manning (Ruthless Trust)
- Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.--Mother Theresa
- The world is equally shocked at hearing Christianity critized and seeing it practiced.--D. Elton Trueblood
- You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.--Anne Lamott
- You can tell the real Christians by their acts. They are the ones serving, the ones loving, the ones sharing whatever they have. They are withholding judgment, offering compassion, being that light they want to see in the world. They are the hands and the feet of God on earth, vessels of holiness, chalices of generosity. The next time someone calls himself a Christian, look for these qualities for the living proof.--Jan Phillips ("Republicans and the Christian Vote")
- You must live with people to know their problems, and live with God in order to solve them.--P.T. Forsyth
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