c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Quotes By Transcendologist Kurt Kawohl 1941 - If the medieval practices and the medieval beliefs of Christianity, Judaism and Islam that are based on superstitions were eliminated, then we could start building a rational and logical belief system that is based on truth and an understanding of spirituality. This is the value of truthfulness and rationality.The goals of ALL religions are the same; a deserved, appropriate, just finale. God is the rational Purity that does not require servitude, ritualistic prayers or a forced slavery in order for the soul to be a part of that Purity for eternity. God is spiritual, the progressive and accumulative spiritual intelligence of all the righteous souls who have passed into the spiritual realm. God does not and never has meddled in the tangible universe. It is of no importance during our physical life whether God exists or not if one so chooses. Whether or not one believes in a spirit or God really makes no difference to God. Righteous living will determine the continuance and destiny of our spirit/soul. Abraham, Moses, Noah, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, Bahá'u'lláh, Zoroaster, Ahmad, Nanak and many others of various faiths are believed to have achieved spiritual enlightenment by mastering the art of spiritual transcendence.  Everything in the universe follows the universal laws which separate the physical and the spiritual existence. Energy is power, vigor, liveliness, intensity. It is a measurable quantity, without reference to its nature or source. Energy, or life is a fundamental attribute and function of the universe. Our bodies build up and harness a minute amount of spiritual energy that is transferred into the spiritual dimension upon our death. Then this spiritual energy is limitless because it lacks resistance and this energy can assimilate as a unity or be separate and individual. It is this spiritual energy that is God. It is a composition of the spiritual intellect of the universe, of every soul that has passed from the physical universe into the spiritual universe. It can create a spiritual existence of beauty that is beyond the imagination…my spirit has experienced it.
— Kurt Kawohl
It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.- The Problem of Pain, p. 18
— C.S. Lewis
It is unjust, but only Christlike, to suffer persecution for doing what is right.
— Joyce Rachelle
Christ commands his people to love their enemies, because if not, that would rule out pretty much the entire world.
— Criss Jami
A father teaches his children that the battle is not determined by the enemy that stands around them, but by the God Who stands within them. And that lesson can only be driven home as they watch their father stand around them, while God stands within their father.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact.
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self.
— Abhijit Naskar
If we are a body, then we are on that is afflicted with an autoimmune disease.
— Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart
If we are a body, then we are one that is afflicted with an autoimmune disease.
— Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart
I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.
— Michio Kaku
We have created youth ministry that confuses extroversion with faithfulness. We have effectively communicated to young people that sincerely following Jesus is synonymous with being 'fired up' for Jesus, with being excited for Jesus, as if discipleship were synonymous with fostering an exuberant, perky, cheerful, hurray-for-Jesus disposition like what we might find in the glee club or at a pep rally.
— James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
My nation, as all nations, is becoming a land without peace, without thought, without mind, Madam Abbess. We are suffocating our spirits in commercial and material things. This is not envy," said Mr. Konishi earnestly. "I am a rich man, with much business, so I have succeeded in all these things, but I know that they are empty.
— Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
The human heartIs unknowable.But in my birthplaceThe flowers still smellThe same as always.
— Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
No need for Jesus and the Lord Buddha to fight
— Carol Hollinger, Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind
If I choose to take the pen from God and write the story of my life without Him, I better have plenty of erasers and a whole lot of white-out. Better yet, I should invest in a good shredder.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Followers of Christ are not called to be merely tolerant of others. We are called to love those who disagree with us. Abnormal communication - blessing those who curse us - establishes the relational level of our communication and demonstrates our concern for others.
— Tim Muehlhoff, Authentic Communication: Christian Speech Engaging Culture
Sooner or later I will be faced with the fact that the world is helpless to meet my needs. And at that point, I will be left with two conclusions; that life is cruel or God is real.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The beautiful thing about being a Christian is that you never have to allow all the garbage from the road behind you to get flung onto where you walk today." (Life Hacks, p.32
— Jon Morrison, Life Hacks: Nine Ideas That Will Change How You Do Everything
There’s not much that I can find in places where there is nothing to find. However, to avoid facing God I find myself spending a lot of time in those very places.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Oh, well,” yawned Vernon, “we all know that it’s you Christians who go in for whips and tortures and burnings alive. Poor degraded sensualists like myself believe in the motto ’Live and let live.
— Eleanor Scott, Randalls Round
Help me to keep my oilThat my lamp may not go off in the middle of the toilWhen all others have light in the nightHelp me to keep my oilThat I may keep vigil with all my mightAnd stay waiting for my King all the nightSaints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!Help me take enough oilSo I may walk through the night to give a good account of all my toilHelp me take enough oilSo my light shall keep brighten all day and all nightAnd when you come in the night, I may see you and you may see me!The night be long; the hour of Thy coming be unknown!Saints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!Make my lamp brighterWhen the night grows darkerSo my account of stewardship would smell betterTo attract a better reward from Thee my MasterFor I may not know when you shall appear in splendorThe night be long; the hour of Thy coming be unknown!Saints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!Help me to take extra oilThat I may not get lost when the night grows darkerAnd my lamp goes dimmerAnd when though my lamp grows dimmerFuel it for me oh my SaviorFor you alone a hold; for in you alone I trust!Saints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Help me to keep my oilThat my lamp may not go off in the middle of the toilWhen all others have light in the nightHelp me to keep my oilThat I may keep vigil with all my mightAnd stay waiting for my King all the nightSaints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!Help me take enough oilSo I may walk through the night to give a good account of all my toilHelp me take enough oilSo my light shall keep brighten all day and all nightAnd when you come in the night, I may see you and you may see me!The night be long; the hour of Thy coming be unknown!Saints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!Make my lamp brighterWhen the night grows darkerSo my account of stewardship would smell betterTo attract a better reward from Thee my MasterFor I may not know when you shall appear in splendorThe night be long; the hour of Thy coming be unknown!Saints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!Help me to take extra oilThat I may not get lost when the night grows darkerAnd my lamp goes dimmerAnd when though my lamp grows dimmerFuel it for me oh my SaviorFor you alone I hold; for in you alone I trust!Saints! An hour is coming for His coming!Behold He comes!Behold with a reward!Jesus is coming again!Christ is appearing soon!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
The Christians had an almost miraculous talent for turning wine into water.
— Ken MacLeod, The Star Fraction
God will help you in a way you will not know he did. at’s his trick.
— Ben Tolosa, Masterplan Your Success
satan is a christian creation and you can keep him, thank you!
— Douglas Preston, Crimson Shore
How many of us dare not use our time or money or talents as we would, because we realise they are the Lord's, not ours?
— Watchman Nee
Where cross-cultural engagement is concerned, token adjustments are no longer an option. To advance a credible message of God’s love for all people in an increasingly diverse society, we must move ourselves entirely as well as the churches we lead. We must adjust to a new reality.
— DeYmaz, Mark
Of all the great world religions, Christianity should value the body most. After all, it taught that God had in some sense taken a human body and used it to redeem the world; everything about the physical should have been sacred and sacramental. But that had not happened. instead, the churches had found it almost impossible to integrate the sexual with the divine and had developed a Platonic aversion to the body - particularly the bodies of women.
— Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
This invitation [to deny oneself] is less about depriving the self, and more about disowning, or renouncing a relationship with the part of ourself that is not what God created us to be.
— Marilyn Vancil, Self to Lose - Self to Find: A Biblical Approach to the 9 Enneagram Types
Saul wanted to destroy his best warrior, David, instead of helping David destroy his real enemies. Lesson: The very person you are fighting against may be your greatest asset.
— Robin M. Bertram
The crux of Bible-Onlyism is that the Word became ink and dwelt among us, and we have only read about His glory.
— Atom Tate
Repentance is a 180 degree turn, whereas Reformation is only a 90 degree turn.
— Atom Tate
No text, being human creation, is free from flaws – it is the human mind that should be conscientious enough to accept their good elements and discard the bad ones.
— Abhijit Naskar, The Krishna Cancer
But those who manage to genuinely place their hopes totally in God will never be disappointed. God will be with them continuously. They will then be able to bear witness to the miraculous way Providence works in their lives, yet without recognizing it. All of us have such experiences if we pay attention.
— Kyriacos C. Markides, Gifts of the Desert: The Forgotten Path of Christian Spirituality
Jacob, what's wrong with you? Why would you want to do this? What kind of husband . . . what kind of man are you?”“I don't know.” Jacob's voice was a whisper. “But before I pledged myself to Annie, I pledged myself to God.”“I hope you know what you're doing.” Montrose glanced back towards the kitchen. In their silence, they heard Annie's low sobs. “I hope it's worth it.
— Willowy Whisper, Only Children Chase Sawdust
2017 is the Year of Jubilee! Receive its blessings in your spirit! Forgive and be forgiven. Reconcile and be reconcilable. Revival is due!
— Steve Cioccolanti, The Divine Code From 1 to 2020: The Meaning of Numbers
Maybe what I need to be rescued from is the feeling that I don’t need to be rescued, for without a doubt this is the most difficult rescue of all.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Raw power without Godly obedience is a long walk off a short conscience.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Our prayers are something akin to delivering a list, verses surrendering a life. The former will always leave me creating the next list, while the latter will leave me creating a new life.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
With God, the word ‘impossible’ is itself impossible.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
To ascend the mountain, we must descend to our knees.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
We will always find ourselves in trouble when we get comfortable with things as they are.
— Francis Chan
Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They’ve lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years.
— Paul Bowles, The Spider's House
Montrose leaned forward. “Jacob, what's wrong with you? Why would you want to do this? What kind of husband . . . what kind of man are you?”“I don't know.” Jacob's voice was a whisper. “But before I pledged myself to Annie, I pledged myself to God.”“I hope you know what you're doing.” Montrose glanced back towards the kitchen. In their silence, they heard Annie's low sobs. “I hope it's worth it.
— Willowy Whisper, Only Children Chase Sawdust
. . . Nietzche himself had a Christian view of history, seeing the present moment always as some crisis, some fall from classical greatness, some corruption or evil to be saved from.
— Saul Bellow, Herzog
A spirit ushered by false teachings is like a body nourished by sweets. The adult, as opposed to the child, will come to understand reasons one cannot live a healthy existence on nothing but candy; so likewise, the Christian must come to understand that one cannot know and love the will of God under false doctrine.
— Criss Jami
During the reign of Domitian (81-96 A.D.), Christians in Asia Minor were severely oppressed. The book of Revelation was likely written at this time to encourage them not to apostatize and not even to compromise their faith. No doubt some believers felt that they could meet the demands of the state without denying their master. They could argue that calling Christ 'Lord' and calling Caesar 'Lord' were not in conflict, since the term Lord could mean Sir as well as God. And as far as the Roman government was concerned, what people believed in secret made no difference so long as they observed the outward ceremonies required by law.
— F. Calvin Parker
In one way or another, every mission that I have ever set out on to rescue myself is yet another mission that I end up needing to be rescued from. Hence, there is God.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Humanity might bless earth--if we work with and for creation, if we master our selfishness in service to all our neighbors, if we cultivate wildness as a kind of wealth.
— Willis Jenkins, The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity
But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity
—  it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true
If I were to sit down and count them, how many of my prayers were tainted by the seduction of greed? None, simply because nothing of that sort is a prayer.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Achieving great things through training, tenacity & time doesn't make someone vain. It lessens vanity! Therefore, I have one question: is @realDonaldTrump vain?
— Steve Cioccolanti
Toyohiko Kagawa, famed for his ministry to slum-dwellers, paid tribute to all three of Japan's major religious traditions. 'I am grateful for Shinto, for Buddhism, and for Confucianism,' he wrote. To Shinto he attributed his spirit of reverence; to Buddhism, his craving for transcendent values, including compassion and selflessness; to Confucianism, his efforts to follow the golden mean of humaneness and harmony in society. Kagawa saw Christ in the priestly robes of all these religions.
— F. Calvin Parker
To a Christian, the dastardly liberals are not so much villains as victims. It's not their fault they're possessed by demons. But if I felt a slight diminishing of hostility, I also saw any hope of mutual accommodation go up in a blast of sulfurous smoke...these days, much of what liberals really anguish about behind closed doors is how to find common ground with people of faith. And now I realized that for at least some people, common ground will never be possible because they don't object to specific ideas that can be reframed or adjusted. They object to Satan, whose bidding we are doing. They may not hate us - they may believe they love us - but they hate him, and they won't negotiate with him either. We want to persuade them, reason with them, listen to them, and accommodate them. They want to save us. It's not even the same playing field.
— Daniel Radosh, Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture
Tea followers were among the earliest converts to the Christian faith. Takayama Ukon, a daimyo turned ardent evangelist, was a disciple of Sen no Rikyu, the preeminent tea master of all time. After Christianity had been banned - Takayama was exiled to the Philippines - underground Christians cherished the tea ceremony as the only opportunity to assemble without arousing suspicion on the part of the authorities. It proved to be a fitting substitute for Holy Communion; even in its Zen context the rite symbolized the giving of oneself. For Christians liable to detection and torture because of their outlawed faith, it was a solemn reminder that Christ had willingly given his life for them. Some of the cups were boldly inscribed with a cross. So it is little wonder that some Japanese Christians have envisioned their Lord in the graceful robe of a Zen tea master.
— F. Calvin Parker
To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist, existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian, existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man "damned": but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that? - that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
It's helpful to remember that God doesn't belong to Christians, Jews, Muslims or anyone. We belong to God, not the other way around.
— Rev. Kellen Roggenbuck
I’ve heard so many people, particularly people of faith, say they could look past his wrongdoings. When they’re pressed further, the reply is always some variation of “He doesn’t mean what he says,” “It’s just to get a rise out of people,” or “It’s all for show.” When you turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and say nothing, you are in fact saying everything. You are telling others you approve of immorality and injustice. You are telling them you support the marginalization and vilification of those who are different from you. You are telling them that fear reigns supreme and that you will tolerate nefarious behavior. As President John F. Kennedy said in a speech: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.”- Amy Erickson
— Erin Passons, The Nasty Women Project: Voices from the Resistance
What a mess you’ve made of the simplest of subjects, Della.
— Kellyn Roth, Flowers
There is nothing as delicate, as stunning, and as vulnerable as the heart.
— Jacquelyn Nicole Davis, Trace The Grace: A Memoir
We don't need to pacify our issues, we need to crucify them.
— Jayce O'Neal
You don't fight America…You get America’s Democratic and Republican parties to fight each other... and destroy each other. Worst case scenario…the enemy can slip thru the back door while they are fight like third graders. ~~High Commander Mustafa
— James Morris Robinson, Accelerant - The Sixth Extinction
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
— C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
I was enraged by these heinous acts of barbarism - enraged that people who called themselves Muslims could launch an unprovoked attack on Christians or foreigners, enraged that through their vile acts these terrorists were perverting our faith, which tells us that Christians are among the "people of the Book", that we should show discernment when fighting for the cause of God and not fight those who have not harmed us, that murder and suicide are grievous sins.
— Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire
The Holy Spirit is in charge here.We should write it for all to see on the lintels of every doorway we build. But since that might seem like so many words, we will do better: we will write it in our lives. And in all the lives we can reach out to and touch and inspire with the living Spirit of God.
— David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade
The influence of the Sermon on the Mount is truly past reckoning. Any rational human being with a conscientious mind is bound to be influenced by its exuberant content regardless of religious background.
— Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
Real comfort is found when I understand that I am held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in my life is God's love, a love that no one can take away. When my identity is rooted in him, the storms of trouble will not blow me away. This is the comfort we offer people. We don't comfort them by saying things will work out. They may not. The people around them may change, but they may not. The Bible tells us again and again that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God's ever-faithful love.
— Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change
If you are truly able to walk in the shoes of Christ, the very label of religion called Christianity would disappear from the face of earth.
— Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
He (Jesus) gave up his life not because of the so-called sins of humanity, but because he was too adamant to give in to orthodox monstrosity.
— Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
From a medical standpoint, the third and the most probable explanation is that Jesus was indeed dead, and what his disciples experienced were mere hallucinations evoked by the grief over the loss of their beloved teacher. It is clinically known as “Post-Bereavement Hallucinations Experiences” or PBHE.
— Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
To attempt to know myself ‘apart’ from God is to choose to know nothing more than ‘a part’ of myself.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The trouble about God is that he is like a person who never acknowledges your letters and so in time you come to the conclusion either that he does not exist or that you have got his address wrong.
— C.S. Lewis
A disciple of Jesus Christ is a visible verbal follower of Jesus Christ at the expense of the ones and things that they hold dear. It's that serious.
— Kingsley Opuwari Manuel
Our Christianity has become superstitious.
— Sunday Adelaja
[God] sees before Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal. But He says "Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not. Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality." God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine makebelieve sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does.
— C.S. Lewis
The Church has carried out some of the most inhuman and above all un-Christian acts of human history, yet, it is still gloriously hailed by the majority of human population as to be synonymous with Jesus Christ.
— Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
Forget the face of God, and forget your own name is Beloved.
— Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life
There are as many kinds of anger as there are of the sunsets with which they ought to end
— George MacDonald, Mary Marston
God invites. We decline. And because of that single foolhardy decision we spend the rest of our lives ‘declining’.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The most powerful anti-Christian movement is the one that takes over and "radicalizes" the concern for victims in order to paganize it. The powers and principalities want to be “revolutionary” now, and they reproach Christianity for not defending victims with enough ardor. In Christian history they see nothing but persecutions, acts of oppression, inquisitions.This other totalitarianism presents itself as the liberator of humanity. In trying to usurp the place of Christ, the powers imitate him in the way a mimetic rival imitates his model in order to defeat him. They denounce the Christian concern for victims as hypocritical and a pale imitation of the authentic crusade against oppression and persecution for which they would carry the banner themselves. In the symbolic language of the New Testament, we would say that in our world Satan, trying to make a new start and gain new triumphs, borrows the language of victims....The Antichrist boasts of bringing to human beings the peace and tolerance that Christianity promised but has failed to deliver. Actually, what the radicalization of contemporary victimology produces is a return to all sorts of pagan practices: abortion, euthanasia, sexual undifferentiation, Roman circus games galore but without real victims, etc.Neo-paganism would like to turn the Ten Commandments and all of Judeo-Christian morality into some alleged intolerable violence, and indeed its primary objective is their complete abolition. Faithful observance of the moral law is perceived as complicity with the forces of persecution that are essentially religious...Neo-paganism locates happiness in the unlimited satisfaction of desires, which means the suppression of all prohibitions. This idea acquires a semblance of credibility in the limited domain of consumer goods, whose prodigious multiplication, thanks to technological progress, weakens certain mimetic rivalries. The weakening of mimetic rivalries confers an appearance of plausibility, but only that, on the stance that turns the moral law into an instrument of repression and persecution.
— René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
One of the greatest threats to the impossible is the easily possible.
— Jayce O'Neal
Sanctification of souls!
— Lailah Gifty Akita
God’s glory is seen in his grace.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
It is so easy to have problems with people when you are not God's will.
— Paul Gitwaza
Your solution lies not in finding favor before men but before God. Learn to seek Him for your problems and His favor will meet you.
— Paul Gitwaza
When you cant decipher the seasons, you are unable to know your destiny.
— Paul Gitwaza
Humility is not weakness but a quality of strength.
— Paul Gitwaza
Our problems sometimes show the degree of our relationship with God.
— Paul Gitwaza
The story of the Fall tells us in mythical language that "original sin" is not simply a stigma arbitrarily making good pleasures seem guilty, but a basic inauthenticity, a kind of predisposition to bad faith in our understanding of ourselves and of the world. It implies a determined willfulness in trying to make things be other than they are in order that we may be able to make them subserve, at any moment, to our individual desire for pleasure or for power. But since things do not obey our arbitrary impulsions, and since we cannot make the world correspond to and confirm the image of it dictated by our needs and illusions, our willfulness is inseparable from error and from suffering. Hence, Buddhism says, deluded life itself is in a state of Dukkha, and every movement of desire tends to bear ultimate fruit in pain rather than lasting joy, in hate rather than love, in destruction rather than creation. (Let us note in passing that when technological skill seems in fact to give man almost absolute power in manipulating the world, this fact is no way reverses his original condition of brokenness and error but only makes it all the more obvious. We who live in the age of the H-bomb and the extermination camp have reason to reflect on this, though such reflection is a bit unpopular.)
— Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite
Christ is our all. He is everything to the Christian. He fills all, is in all, and He is our life (Colossians 3:4, 11). It is in Him that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Colossians 2:3). He is the author and finisher of our salvation, the one who starts it, works it out, and completes it (Hebrews 12:2). This is as the Father wanted it. He places His people in the hands of the Son, having joined them to the Son in a super-natural union, so the Son, by His perfect life of obedience, and perfect act of self-sacrifice upon the cross, can bring about their full and complete salvation.
— James R. White, Drawn By The Father: A Study Of John 6:35 45
Many in our world today want us to believe that we can except Christ simply as a Savior from sin, but not the Lord of our lives. They teach essentially that a person can perform an act of believing on Christ once, and after this, they can fall away even into total unbelief and yet still supposedly be "saved". Christ does not call men in this way. Christ does not save men in this way. The true Christian is the one continually coming, always believing in Christ. Real Christian faith is an ongoing faith, not a one-time act. If one wishes to be eternally satiated, one meal is not enough. If we wish to feast on the bread of heaven, we must do so all our lives. We will never hunger or thirst if we are always coming and always believing in Christ. He's our sufficiency. Christ the bread from heaven. We must feed on all of Christ, not just the parts we happen to like. Christ is not the Savior of anyone unless He is their Lord as well.
— James R. White, Drawn By The Father: A Study Of John 6:35 45
The beating heart of Christ's planting of churches is found in corporate prayer. It is through corporate intercession that the leader and the team of shepherds find release from fears, misconceptions, prejudices, pride, and self-will. This release comes as Christ Himself visits them. He makes them one in heart and mind as they pray together. What are they seeking? For God to work in others, of course, but as a presupposition of His working they must be seeking a manifestation of Christ's presence in their own hearts and lives.
— C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller
Success starts with a Vision
— Deborah Elum, A Church with Spots and Wrinkles
That Christ has from the beginning been intending to point His hearers to Himself as the source of all spiritual life is plain from the language He uses. The hunger and thirst that He satisfies is not physical hunger or physical thirst. Instead, the one who "hungers after righteousness" is the one who finds satisfaction in Christ Jesus. There is no limit to the supply of spiritual food that can be provided by Christ the Lord. His is a never-ending store of satisfaction for all who hunger and thirst for truth and righteousness.
— James R. White, Drawn By The Father: A Study Of John 6:35 45
Greatness untethered from God results in calamity unrestrained by men.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
In this world there is very little harmony between the inner and the outer life. But, if we live according to the will of God, then the time will come when there will be perfect harmony between the inner and the outer life for ever. The outer will be exactly like the inner and the inner exactly like the outer. And by his grace we shall become perfect like our Father in Heaven.
— Sadhu Sundar Singh, With and Without Christ
The religion I am talking about here is plain everyday humanism. That’s exactly what the person named Jesus attempted to spread, but due to innate psychological reasons, his pupils ended up constructing yet another orthodox circle with its own distinct beliefs, ideals and fantasies.
— Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
To adore, one must be an inferior. But the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are equal; none is superior, none is inferior. The Son equal in all things to the Father may love the Father; He cannot adore Him.Desiring to give to His Father a divinely conceived form of love, the Word decreed to become man. Equal to the Father, He will become inferior to Him, not as God, but as man; and thus, He will be able to adore Him. In heaven, He cannot adore; on earth He can.... Even had Adam not sinned, the Word would still have become man. ... the motive for which the Word came upon earth was the adoration that He wished to give to His Father. The expiation of sin was but secondary in the divine plan....By coming upon earth, the Word loses none of His sovereign majesty. He becomes less than the Father, but He remains the Infinite. Less than the Father, He can adore Him; infinite, He can adore Him infinitely. Since the Word became man, there is on this little earth of ours one who is capable of giving to the infinite God an infinite adoration: the Word of God made flesh.
— Raoul Plus, How to Pray Well
Words can be honed to crafted perfection by the finest wordsmiths. Yet, if we trust solely in the expanse of them to explain this God of ours or articulate our experience of Him, we will have brutally destroyed the very things we are attempting to explain. And if I should do that, no words can describe how badly I wish I had no words.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I pray for sufficient wisdom to understand that wisdom apart from God is the stuff of opinion tainted by the rot of bias. And if I am somehow apt to confuse such rubbish with wisdom, I will think myself wise but find myself living in a landfill.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200.Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians.
— Chris Hedges, I Don't Believe in Atheists
Every journey has a beginning. The starting point of prayer is God. Like a father who waits to hear every detail of your life, He waits for you. You don’t need to get dressed up and go to church to reverently pray. The God of the universe invites you to come as you are. You can endure anything when you are at God’s side. He is the transformer. He turns sorrow to joy. He turns bitter to sweet.
— Sue Detweiler, Women Who Move Mountains: Praying with Confidence, Boldness, and Grace
Easter is God throwing everything at death so that I can give everything to life.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Maybe I don’t have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Of course God does outrageous things. But in reality, what insanity would prompt me to follow a God who did anything less?
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter says that every ending ever experienced by man is exquisitely crafted to find its own ending at the feet of a fresh beginning.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
There are an incalculable number of things within me that I frantically wish to be emptied of, and despite my most earnest efforts to remove them, they remain. And it is Easter that reminds me that God empties out tombs.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Although I rail against it, death is the dark demarcation beyond which I am at the mercy of my own end. To the contrary, an empty tomb says that my end is at the mercy of God’s beginning.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am pressed to admit that I don’t have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
God emptied out that first tomb so that He could turn around and empty out me.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
A god of the ‘possible’ is no God.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
So when the ruling ideology enjoins us to enjoy sex, not to feel guilty about it, since we are not bound by any prohibitions whose violations should make us feel guilty, the price we pay for this absence of guilt is anxiety.
— Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity
Easter is the final solution to the finality of death.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Mmm, bacon.
— Noel Jesse Heikkinen, Unchained: If Jesus Has Set Us Free, Why Don't We Feel Free?
What does hanging on a cross for twenty-four hours mean to a man who has no children,' I said, 'especially when he knows he's dying for a good cause -- indeed, that he's saving the whole world and then going straight into the best place in Heaven? What's that compared to the suffering I've had to put up with for months and years with the house full of children, when for many whole nights I've shrieked with pain unceasingly and without relief, and I'll soon be dead, and that without having anything to die for; and there'll be no heavenly Kingdom for me, for I know the children will go on crying when I'm dead, and swearing and quarrelling, and begging for milk they can't get.
— Halldór Laxness, Salka Valka
Some contemporary theology has been enamored with the heady idea of an imagined freedom that functions without any law or norm or rule of obligation. The technical name for this idea is antinomianism. This yen for freedoms other than Christ's freedom has compounded the problems in pastoral theology. Pastoral practice has at times been exceedingly ready to be guided by this antinomian tendency in theology that implies: if God loves you no matter what, then your own moral responses to God's absolute acceptance make little or no difference; God is going to love you anyway, so assert your individual interest, express yourself, do as you please, and above all do not repress any impulses. It is on the basis of this normless, egocentric relativism that much well-intended liberal pastoral practice has accommodated to naturalism, narcissism, and individualism. It has therefore steered consistently away from any notion of admonition, hoping to avoid 'guilt trips.' But ironically, guilt is more likely to be INCREASED by the lack of timely, caring admonition. For if there is no compassionate admonition, we tend to hide our guilt in ways that make it worse.
— Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry
My limitations abruptly define the frighteningly negligible extent of my existence, yet my soul utterly perishes if bound by those very same limits. And does this not somehow evidence both the reality of and need for God?
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Easter is the invulnerable tale of utter selflessness where at an inestimable cost God did for us what He did not need done for Himself. And that kind of ‘doing’ happens every day.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
God loves us toughly enough not to allow us to be happy with our sins. The recollection of sin rightly brings misery of conscience. How else could moral awareness be saved from sentimentality? The deepest human happiness, we learn, is grounded in holiness - God's holy love and our responsive attempts to reflect it fittingly.
— Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry
There is no cancer, no sickness, no sin, no reversal of fortunes, no curse, no heartache - nothing - that's greater than Jesus. Jesus heals. Jesus restores. Jesus brings life.
— Louie Giglio, The Comeback: It's Not Too Late and You're Never Too Far
If God has the answer to every question, maybe my appreciation for God should be shaped more by the number of questions and less by the wisdom of the answers.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody [behind the Moral Law]. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Today we have different idols. . . We have trusted in human reason, science, and technology to solve our problems and progress toward a better world and a prosperous life. Yet idolatry brings death.
— Craig G. Bartholomew, The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama
J.I. Packer writes, “It [knowing God] is the most practical project anyone can engage in. Knowing about God is crucially important for living our lives.” Packer continues, “Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through this life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you.
— J.I. Packer
The cross I made needs no man on its chest, for its eyes are where its heart is.
— Adam Kovacevic
Modern man, in so far as he is still Cartesian (he is of course going far beyond Descartes in many respects), is a subject for whom his own self-awareness as a thinking, observing, measuring and estimating "self" is absolutely primary. It is for him the one indubitable "reality," and all truth starts here. The more he is able to develop his consciousness as a subject over against objects, the more he can understand things in their relations to him and one another, the more he can manipulate these objects for his own interests, but also, at the same time, the more he tends to isolate himself in his own subjective prison, to become a detached observer cut off from everything else in a kind of impenetrable alienated and transparent bubble which contains all reality in the form of purely subjective experience. Modern consciousness then tends to create this solipsistic bubble of awareness - an ego-self imprisoned in its own consciousness, isolated and out of touch with other such selves in so far as they are all "things" rather than persons.
— Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite
It is this kind of consciousness, exacerbated to an extreme, which has made inevitable the so called "death of God." Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later "dies," because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realised it to be futile. Relaxing the effort, they have let go the "God-object" which their fathers and grandfathers still hoped to manipulate for their own ends. Their weariness has accounted for the element of resentment which made this a conscious "murder" of the deity. Liberated from the strain of willfully maintaining an object-God in existence, the Cartesian consciousness remains none the less imprisoned in itself. Hence the need to break out of itself and to meet "the other" in "encounter," "openness," "fellowship," "communion".
— Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite