We don't have to be "successful," only valuable. We don't have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.
Full text.
There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation.
True, we have to hate evil; else we're sentimental. But if we hate evil more than we love the good, we become damn good haters, and of those the world already has too many.
It is bad religion to deify doctrines and creeds. While indispensable to religious life, doctrines and creeds are only so as signposts. Love alone is the hitching post. Doctrines, let's not forget, supported slavery and apartheid; some still support keeping women in their places and gays and lesbians in limbo. Moreover, doctrines can divide while compassion can only unite. In other words, religious folk, all our lives, have both to recover tradition and to recover from it.
We must guard against being too individualistic and elitist in our understanding of spirituality. Some Christians talk endlessly about the importance of one's interior life and how to develop it more fully, forgetting that Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people -- the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced.
Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds.
It is not Scripture that creates hostility to homosexuality, but rather hostility to homosexuality that prompts certain Christians to retain a few passages from an otherwise discarded law code. The problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages, but rather how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.
The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than the flaws in the system. God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself on the blood of sinners. But God also knows that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.
WIST is my collection of quotations I find meaningful, moving, amusing (intended or not), well-phrased, and/or to which I just say I "Wish I'd Said That." But just because I quote it here doesn't mean I actually agree with it. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to
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