Peter J. Gomes > Quotes

“The question should not be "What would Jesus do?" but rather, more dangerously, "What would Jesus have me do?" The onus is not on Jesus but on us, for Jesus did not come to ask semidivine human beings to do impossible things. He came to ask human beings to live up to their full humanity; he wants us to live in the full implication of our human gifts, and that is far more demanding.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“It is interesting to me to note that those who most frequently call for fair play are those who are advantaged by the play as it currently is, and that only when that position of privilege is endangered are they likely to benefit from the change required to "play by the rules." What if the "rules" are inherently unfair or simply wrong, or a greater good is to be accomplished by changing them? When the gospel says, "The last will be first, and the first will be last," despite the fact it is counterintuitive to our cultural presuppositions, it is invariably good news to those who are last, and at least problematic news to those who see themselves as first.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“Mystery is not an argument for the existence of God; mystery is an experience of the existence of God.”
― Peter J. Gomes

“My course is a survey of how readings of the same constant text have varied over the centuries, from the formation of the canon to our present time, dependent on context and subtext. A community in exile will read differently than a community in apparent full possession of all it surveys, with those who have nothing welcoming the promised overturning of the standing order, and those who have much of this world's goods not longing for the end of the age. Depending, then, upon how one reads and interprets, either the Bible is a textbook for the status quo, of quiescent pieties and promises, or it is a recipe for social change and transformation. There are churches dedicated to each point of view, each claiming its share of the good news; but what is good news for some is often bad news for somebody else.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“To some, the temporal triumph of the Christian community in the world is a sign of God's favor and the essential righteousness of the Christian position. The irony of the matter, though, is that whenever the Christian community gains worldly power, it nearly always looses its capacity to be the critic of the power and influence it so readily brokers.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“Perhaps the most dangerous verse in all the Bible is the second verse of Romans 12, where Saint Paul endorses Christian nonconformity. When he writes, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,” he is telling his readers not to do that which comes naturally to them. An invitation to nonconformity is a dangerous thing, and thoughtful nonconformity, for that is what Paul is requiring, is all the more dangerous because nonconformity is an intention and not an inadvertence. In a culture in which conformity is valued, nonconformity is likely to get one into trouble.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?

“than not, that we read scripture not only in the light of our own culture but as a means of defining and defending that very culture over and against which scripture by its very nature is meant to stand. In other words, scripture is invariably used to support the status”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“The parables, however, and indeed, the miracles and the healings, are all teaching devices, exercises in interpreting the larger principles”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“In reality, the world have played too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“We trust the text not because it is “true” in the sense of fact, but because in its infinite variety it points to the truth and communicates truth because it comes from the truth which”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“Says Freud: We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do that without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally, from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other. Morality,”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“The question should not be 'What would Jesus do?' but rather, and more dangerously, 'What would Jesus have me do?'...As Mark Twain is said to have remarked, 'It is not what I don't understand in the Bible that troubles me; it is what is perfectly clear that does.”
― Peter J. Gomes

“when we understand that the Bible comes to us as a trust both from God and from the people of God. It is the record of holy encounters between people and God, encounters that have been reckoned to be decisive and compelling, and that have been preserved from generation”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“language of the Bible is meant always to point us to a truth beyond the text, a meaning that transcends the particular and imperfectly understood context of the original writers, and our own prejudices and parochialisms that we bring to the text. Literalism is not part of the solution to this”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“The Bible is not God, nor is it a substitute for God, and to treat it as if it were God or a surrogate of God is to treat it in the very way that it itself condemns over and over again.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“scripture that Jesus was intending to convey. The Sermon on”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“The Ethiopian replied, “How can I, unless someone guides”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“the uprising of the sons of Canaan fueled by a long-standing”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“How can one interpret a Bible “full of alien genealogies, barbaric practices, strange prophecies, and eccentric epistles”? While we”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“Thou shalt do no murder,” and the distinction between murder and killing is not a small one. Murder, in the Hebrew language and culture, refers to the premeditated taking of a life outside the womb; killing had to do with the ritual”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“What was concealed in the Old is revealed in the New.” The New Testament itself is”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“The Bible is silent about abortion, but the religious zeal of the protestors at abortion clinics is based upon what they believe to be the plain and clear meaning of Exodus 20:13, where in many English translations the familiar commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill.”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“When I [see] Christmas lights being strung . . . and Santa Clauses in the store windows, I [know] Thanksgiving [is] not far away.”
― Peter J. Gomes

“Interpretation is the fuel that drives understanding. The making of meaning is what”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“This relationship among author, text, and reader is known in the literary trade as”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“They believe the “Bible to be God’s written revelation to his people,” and that “it records in human words what God desires.” Their”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart

“Genesis 9:18–27. This is the account of the debauchery of Noah, and the indiscreet discovery of his naked drunkenness by his son Ham. Ham told his brothers of their father’s condition, but they, averting their eyes from the humiliating sight, did not see what Ham had seen, and were therefore spared the curse that Noah”
― Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart