Just as Jesus performed what in his culture was the work of a slave, so we in our cultures must regard no task too menial or degrading to undertake.
Only if we share Christ's death on earth will we share his life in heaven.
There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by immitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct.
Faith has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with belief.
Much of our effort to do things for the Lord is really the resurgence of our desire to dominate and make things happen in our own strength.
The High Septon was the true king of Westeros, in all but name.
In God’s providence we have four gospels! For Jesus Christ is too great and glorious a person to be captured by one author or one perspective.
Souls are won for Christ by tears and sweat and pain, especially in prayer and in sacrificial personal friendship.
A belief is your brain’s self-maintenance mechanism.
Religion can always be put to sleep. Faith can't.
Die Abergläubigsten sind ja stets die in religiösen Dingen Glaubenslosen.
For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the Very Rest.
The man who honors all the gods honors none at all.
The righteous will claim sole domain on judgement. The righteous are the first to make hands into fists, the first to shout down dissenters, the first to bully others into compliance.
Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?
Living in the kingdom of God is a matter of living with God's action in our lives.
Are you, then, the god of white people, and if we who are brown worship You, do we receive your blessings as white men do? I pray that You be not white, that You be without color and that You be in all men because goodness cannot be encased only in white.
The essence of discipleship is union with Christ, which means identification with him in both his sufferings and his glory.
The initial function of spirituality emerged from questioning the human condition and also from deep experiences of wonder. The word religion itself, initially meaning to “reconnect,” seems to have come from direct experiences of something larger than just a set of fixed ideas. It marked a return to something essential that we just failed to recognize in the myopia of our everyday lives. How curious that we turn experiences of awe into dogmas and stagnant ideas. That we have come to associate faith with fundamentalism, blindness, and even terrorism gives us something important to look at.
Religion is an ancient method of governing.
