Quotes Tagged "christianity"

The verbal tool of exploring mystery together is not confrontation or preaching but dialogue. We subject ourselves to the same questions we pose to others, and as we traverse them together, we may arrive at surprising conclusions we could never have reached when simply trying to defeat one another's logic. Our questions are open ended, granting the other person the freedom to respond or not to respond. The questions stick with us, even haunt us, long after we ask them, and we await insight together. The process is more important than an immediate decision.

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.

Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them.

When we refer to 'the biblical approach to economics' or the biblical response to politics' or 'biblical womanhood,' we're using the Bible as a weapon disguised as an adjective.

Invariably, I will be referred to Gleason Archer's massive Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound explanations for every conceivable puzzle found within the Bible - from whether God approved of Rahab's lie, to where Cain got his wife. (Note to well-meaning apologists: it's not always the best idea to present a skeptic with a five-hundred-page book listing hundreds of apparent contradictions in Scripture when the skeptic didn't even know that half of them existed before you recommended it.)

And for the sake of humility--a characteristic crucial to sacred questioning we might do well to confess that we're capable at any moment of such bad religion ourselves.

One of my confreres sketched an explanation that attracted me: since the process of digestion is under the control of the brain, its cessation gave repose to the brain, allowed it a vacation.

The Lord does not require us to wear a [cassock] — He wants us to be good and kind.

Maybe we didn’t have an impact… like our work was wasted…” I shove my plastic lunch tray away in discouragement. Sunshine looks directly at me. “Anything with God makes a difference! Don’t give up. This is going to take time.” “We don’t have time! We have until 3:00!” “We can only do the best we can,” Sunshine assures me. “The rest is up to Him.

[The Jews did not kill Me.] First, no one could have taken My life if I had not willingly laid it down. Also, this is a fraudulent charge that is repeatedly reinvented. They alone did not kill Me--Romans, Greeks, people from everywhere in the world were gathered in Jerusalem on that day and participated in the events that took place. All of humanity must bear the blame for what happened.

[Hitler wasn't] the first one to claim that God was on [his] side. But claiming it and keeping with His character are two different things. Jesus walked with the weak of this world--the sick, the lame, the blind. [Hitler] called them weaklings, the refuse of society, and said they had to be done away with. [God] talked of humility; [Hitler] talked of pride. [God] talked of submission; [Hitler] talked of conquering. [God] talked of love; [Hitler] talked of hate. [God] even allowed those who opposed Him to speak; [Hitler] silenced even those who just wanted to ask questions. [God] allowed those who despised Him the freedom to make their choice. For [Hitler], the only freedom possible was to implement [his] plan for world domination.

He who is not attracted by worldly things cherishes stillness. He who loves nothing merely human loves all men. And he who takes no offence at anyone either on account of their faults, or on account of his own suspicious thoughts, has knowledge of God and of things divine.

In this three -volume book I have provided as truthfully as I can a comprehensive theological critique as represented by the book title “In the Beginning: Hijacking of the Religion of God” revealing beyond the shadow of a doubt that we “People of the Book” have wronged our God beyond measure. But now as individual human beings standing before Him, one-on-One in His service, and knowing that “no soul shall bear the burden of another”, and that God is Just, Merciful, and Loving, we must never forget that “WITH EVERY DAYBREAK THERE IS A NEW BEGINNING WITH God.

[On the Human Soul] While the Bible offers a clear distinction that the soul is separate from the body and discusses the idea of eternal life in a general context, it may come as a surprise that the Bible does not specifically indicate that the human soul is immortal. The postulation that we have an immortal soul is an extrapolation or ‘a reading between the lines ’ made by the Church Fathers. Even though the Bible itself cannot affirm the eternal soul, this has been the prevailing thought for billions of people.

When we look at the frailties of the human mind and the apparent disinterest by the multitude to do the very hard work of consistently thinking deeply to actively and carefully construct well-hewn models of reality, it is only a small wonder why major leaps in societal progress remain elusive. Rather, we are afflicted with our biases that lead naturally to the development and enduring sustainment of irrational beliefs. It is partly due to the profusion of differing irrational beliefs that it is so difficult to find common ground to confront major social issues which include how God’s existence and nature might be best represented.

When it comes to our embedded beliefs, our relative intolerance to ambiguous and contrary information leads us in many instances to ignore or less thoroughly process incoming data for its actual truth value. It is for this reason that society at large is so prone to religiosity because taking a skeptical stance is the difficult path; it is the path of greatest cognitive load. The cognitive load is high because we have to conscientiously work to continually question the information we receive and often re-program our subconscious for a subject matter that is both complex and abstract. More simply stated, it is cognitively easy for people to attribute perplexing phenomena to an abstract, all-powerful deity than it is to engage in a rigorous examination to discern potential explanatory data.

One of the things that I find especially worrisome is the propensity for people to perceive reality as dyadic, comprised of two oppositional elements. Some prominent examples are our assignment of good–evil, right–wrong, just–unjust, heaven–hell, conservative–liberal, rich–poor, us–them. I also refer to this as compartmental minimalism because of our tendency to force our understanding of reality into as few categories as possible. Essentially, by perceiving reality in this way, we intentionally and unintentionally, reduce the cognitive load. We do not want the hassle of too many details or abstractions; however, this convenience comes at a cost that goes unacknowledged. We essentially build a false reality bit-by-bit.

To challenge the verity of one’s own beliefs is to be courageous. To separate the truth from falsity is to be wise. To take action against the headwinds of the status quo is to be a pioneer. The troika of courage, wisdom, and a pioneering spirit [elevates our enlightenment to the construct and elegance of true reality].

Because the brain does not possess robust ‘fault detectors’, the brain will just as easily encode irrational thoughts and beliefs just as it will rational ones.

We also have to be particularly wary of imaginative thought processes for we can very easily create things and ideas in our minds that are outright impossible or highly improbable to be manifested in the world-universe which we then deceive ourselves into thinking that they are either certain or probable likelihoods. We often take several different pieces of information or instilled beliefs and loosely wed them together to bestow some greater meaning which falsely represents reality.