As the characters in the story maintain a safe distance from Jesus, speculating among themselves about this new powerful teacher, readers of Mark are invited to follow Jesus into a whole new world, says New Testament scholar Brian Blount, into "Mark's world of Jesus...
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, yet wiser people are so full of doubts.
The greatest prison people live in is the fear of what other people think.
The word “scapegoating” originated from an ingenious ritual described in Leviticus 16. According to Jewish law, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal....
I look around and see so much fear, people getting more and more comfortable with their hate, more at ease being mean, more united in their division. And I think, NO. Not me. I will not get lost in this fearful world. I will not play with bullies. I will continue to...
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.
For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women, and men to be loved.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Nothing reaches people like being loved when they least deserve it; and nothing pushes people away like being judged when they don't. from Drop the Stones: When Love Reaches the Unlovable
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...