Before doubt, I thought that faith was a matter of correct beliefs. My religious teachers taught me so: that if I didn’t hold the right beliefs, or at least say that I held them, I would be excommunicated from my community, and perhaps, after death, from God’s...
No worst thing ever done in the name of Christianity, no vilest corruption of the Church, can destroy the eternal fact that the core of it is in the heart of Jesus. Branches innumerable may have to be lopped off and cast into the fire, yet the word I AM THE VINE...
The most difficult part of personal growth is being willing to turn away from erroneous views from our past. Beliefs held for a long time tend to become sacred to us, even if they're wrong. It's naive to think that we gained a perfect, flawless understanding of truth....
Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change.
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
Henceforth, when we feel the hammers of life beating on our heads or on our hearts, we can know--we must know--that he is here with us, taking our blows. Every tear we shed becomes his tear. He may not yet wipe them away, but he makes them his. Would we rather have...
Many otherwise honest and intellectual people will construct a neat bypass around the claim of Jesus to be God. Being people of insight and imagination, they know perfectly well that once to accept such a claim as fact would mean a readjustment of their own purposes...
In essence, adaptive capacity is applied creativity. It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare--negative capability. This...
Facts, as such, never settled anything. They are working tools only. It is the implications that can be drawn from facts that count, and to evaluate these requires wisdom and judgment that are unrelated to the computer approach to life.
As the parable of the Ten Virgins was about the happiness of the bridegroom at his wedding, so this one is about the ebullience of the lord's joy at throwing his money around. It is the theme of the divine party again, the party that lurks beneath the surface of...