I grew up in the Methodist church and taught Sunday school, and one of my favorite passages of scripture is, 'in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' Matthew 25:40.
When I read the statements of Christ, there seems to be this urgency and intensity. I guess that's what I get out of it when I read the tone of the Scriptures, which is very different from the tone of our culture.
We must unceasingly ask for [perseverance] by making use of the means which God has taught us for obtaining it: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, frequenting the sacraments, association with good companions, and hearing and reading Holy Scripture.
Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed...
The reason I'm attracted to the light of Scripture is because there's another side of me that is dark. The reason I am interested in men of peace is because I'm not like them and would like to be. I'm not someone in real life who turns the other chee...
It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of ...
Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.
In a world where everyone wants to claim permanent victimhood to a plethora of disorders and maladies, Jesus Christ and the scriptures stand out in stark contrast, in a firm duet of perfect justice and perfect mercy. And so we live in grace given by ...
Many things there be in the scripture, which have a carnal fulfilling, even there where they be spoken or done; and yet have another spiritual signification, to be fulfilled long after in Christ and his kingdom, and yet never known till the thing be ...
Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is "like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.
Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority, then we would be more open to slavery, to the subjugation of women, to wider use...
Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.
We ought not to READ the scriptures, but listen to them, for our Beloved is present and speaks to us through them. (vs. it being like a love letter sent to us from afar).
Vegans have a way of circling every conversation back to food, much like born-again Christians have a way of returning every conversation to the scripture.
Your attitude toward Scripture can reveal your attitude toward the Savior. When your passion for God's Word runs high, your passion for God does as well.
Any serious reading of the Bible means personal involvement in it, not symbol mental agreement with abstract propositions. And involvement is dangerous, because it leaves one open to unforeseen conclusions.
A prophet is one who sees what is happening and being done in the present that they can tell us what will happen to us if we do not change now, immediately, turning from our present course.
Whenever we use our religion, as individuals, or as groups within the church, to act in tandem with political and economic groups that arrest the voice of truth or destroy others, then we are Judas.
The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.
If it had been a great necessity, if it had been contingents of an army meeting to overwhelm the enemy by stealth, it might not have worked out so neatly. But fate it would seem is a perfect strategist and will work miracles of timing to assist our d...
I am old enough to know that time passing is just a trick, a convenience. Everything is always there, still unfolding, still happening. The past, the present, and the future, in the noggin eternally, like brushes, combs and ribbons in a handbag.
