Category Archives: quotes
Religion as a life sentence
I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who’d just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a … Continue reading
Filed under quotes, theology and literature
Why you shouldn’t read this…
A great quote in the Anabaptist Assocation mailing from Mark Hurst today: “[The Internet] creates a permanent puberty of the mind. We get locked in so much information, and the inability to sort that information meaningfully limits our capacity to … Continue reading
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Sectarianism and the Trail of Blood
There was a time in my life when I sought the continuity of truth in ‘the trail of blood,’ the communities who defined themselves against the established church. As I began to study the history of the church, I became … Continue reading
Filed under Anabaptism, church history, my spiritual journey, quotes
Quotes from Stanley Hauerwas
I read Hauerwas’s autobiography, Hannah’s Child (Eerdmans 2010), a couple of months ago. It’s an interesting portrait of what life is like being a theologian (the politics and career of it), a memoir of a troubled marriage and scattered with … Continue reading
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Tuning into God
If we want to die well, to die into God, so to speak, we need to start working on our relationship with God (and with others) while we are young and healthy, rather than waiting until death is knocking at … Continue reading
Filed under quotes, spirituality
Quotes from Disturbing Divine Behavio(u)r
Eric Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior, Fortress Press 2009. Is God really in the business of summarily executing those who are “wicked” and “displeasing” in God’s sight? If so, how does this fit with the ugly realities of the modern world? … Continue reading
Filed under Old Testament, quotes
The general blessedness of his life
I want to live with the grace and thankfulness of the Reverend Boughton in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home: The house embodied for him the general blessedness of his life, which was manifest, really indisputable. And which he never failed to … Continue reading
Filed under my spiritual journey, quotes, theology and literature
If anybody do go to heaven, they will
There’s a delightful scene in Thomas Hardy’s nineteenth century novel, Far from the madding crowd, the funniest one in the entire novel, where some of the farm workers sitting in the pub get to discussing religion, just as Joseph Poorgrass … Continue reading
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quote about angst
George Maloney writes in Inward Stillness p. 131: Man’s instinct does not tell him, as animal’s instinct does, what he must do. Because he has to cut himself off from the roots of his past by throwing away traditions, he … Continue reading
Filed under quotes, spirituality
Quote: pastors as shopkeepers
The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with a shopkeeper’s concerns – how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from the competitors … Continue reading
Filed under church growth, quotes, theologians and other Christian writers
