More bite-sized wisdom quotes for your delectation…
Real love accepts people as they are, with room for who they may become
– Susan Cottrell
God is love. Don’t consume anything that argues against this
– Barry Smith
The only reason infernalists no longer have to work hard to prove Hell from the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is that most Fundies already agree with the faulty interpretation that the parable speaks of Hell.
– Me
Live life in such a way that people in every religion thinks you’re going to their version of hell.
– Ron Doerksen
It seems like the legalistic people, the ultra conservatives, the people who believe in the wrapped and labeled boxes of religion, it seems like they believe God wrote everything down that was important, and then died. Well, I think God is a living spirit. All knowing, loving and all seeing. And I believe it is RIGHT to question, to learn, to understand. I don’t think we should be afraid of that. Are we trying to learn what’s true? Or are we trying to pretend we believe things we don’t even understand? Because we’re not going to fool God.
– Dayle
As with everything else in life, you need to learn to see past the perceived offence and find the underlying joke
– Me
“Eternity” is what happens when we choose love in the present
– Jeff Turner
The problem is not with the Bible or whatever, the problem is that humans just have an innate tendency to be really, really stupid
– Jeff Charest
“But there were millions of lives at stake!”
“Romulan lives”
“No. Lives!”
– Adm. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek – Picard, Ser 1 Ep. 1, “Remembrance”
Religion was [about] obeying. And really, religion was about obeying religion
– Wendy Francisco
Bottom line is this: If Love keeps no record of wrongs – and that’s what it says right there clear as day and in nice friendly Fundamentalist black and white in your Rulebook – if Love keeps no record of wrongs, what possible basis does god have for sending people to Hell?
– Me
Through the Law man is conscious of sins. Through Jesus Christ the new man is conscious of God. Allow Him to shift your reality.
– Wayne Shelton
Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right
– H. L. Mencken
This may be obvious but I think someone needs to hear this today: You don’t need to be accepted by the Church to be accepted by God.
– Me
I do not see prayer as a practice in which I alter God’s behavior by pleading, begging, or putting in confident requests (not that I do not make requests). Rather, I understand prayer to be a willing and purposeful exposure of oneself to an other-worldly love that, one hundred times out of ten, will regard us and our fellow humans with far more mercy and compassion than we do ourselves when left to our own devices.
To pray is to place one’s heart in the direct path of God’s tornadic love in order that it might contradict our evolved defaults, and awaken us to a love that we would otherwise remain ignorant of and unresponsive to
– Jeff Turner
She’ll probably change her tune. And I don’t want to be there when she plays it
– Anon
Yes, I use both toolkits (faith and reason) in my walk. That’s why I don’t walk with a limp
– Me
I love being wrong. It means I learned something new
– Bob Brow
There is more than one way to interpret Scripture verses. The purpose of Scripture is to lead you to truth Himself, it was never inspired to be the sole source of truth and authority.
– Don Keathley
Our failures elicit the applause of a God who is far more interested in our encouragement than our ability to keep the “rules.”
– Jeff Turner
In response to this:
“This one made me a bit sad: ‘When people go missing from the house of God, they’ve already gone missing from the presence of God’ ”
I said:
“This phrase is just to control those still there. It means, “We have the monopoly on God”. Put like that, it is easy to see how ridiculous it is
– Me
When you have that table prepared in the presence of your enemies – make sure you leave a seat for them. Leave a seat open!
– Derrick Day
‘Not caring’ [about what others think] is the first step on the road to being unaffected by others’ opinions. Like Jesus was. And please be assured that acceptance by God is completely independent of being accepted by churches and, by extension, those who populate them. Your relationship with God is your own; grow it in your own way, not according to the whims of others 🙂
– Me
[Deconstruction] … enabled me to see things more clearly, including Jesus, who was built, for the first time, as the actual foundation of the house, rather than hell. If hell is in there, it’s the foundation. You either have hell hold the house up, or Jesus, but not both
– Wendy Francisco
It’s all or nothing” is the one Christian principle that I’d like to get rid of more than anything! Why has it always been this way? Why do we have to either accept EVERYTHING they teach us, or keep nothing?
Martin Luther was the first person to successfully break out of this. He kept all the parts that rang true with him, and tossed out his list of 95 things that were wrong. He disagreed with the corrupt Christian leadership, but kept Christ.
We can too! 🙂
– Randy Renkenberger
“A mountain is tall but it also has dirt on it”. “A fish swims, but it is also wet.”
Saying God is love, but God is also a just God, is saying that love is inherently unjust. Hmm.
I think this is how I look at it: God is love, and his love includes all the advocacy for our humanity that we will ever need.
– Wendy Francisco
There is no balance in God. The idea that there needs to be is an entirely man-made concept.
– Me
When God tells Adam and Eve they may eat from any tree in the Garden, save the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it’s like saying: literally the whole world can be yours, or you can choose to live a life of judgment.
Choose wisely
– Jeff Turner