Ronald J. Sider > Quotes

“God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all—no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“It is a sinful abomination for one part of the world's Christians to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters ache and suffer for lack of minimal health care, minimal education, and even—in some cases—enough food to escape starvation.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, “Christian” minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!”
― Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“God thundered again and again through the prophets that worship in the context of mistreatment of the poor and disadvantaged is an outrage.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“We need to make some dramatic, concrete moves to escape the materialism that seeps into our minds via diabolically clever and incessant advertising. We have been brainwashed to believe that bigger houses, more prosperous businesses, and more sophisticated gadgets are the way to joy and fulfillment. As a result, we are caught in an absurd, materialistic spiral. The more we make, the more we think we need in order to live decently and respectably. Somehow we have to break this cycle because it makes us sin against our needy brothers and sisters and, therefore, against our Lord. And it also destroys us. Sharing with others is the way to real joy.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“What does it mean to see the Lord of the universe lying by the roadside starving and walk by on the other side? We cannot know. We can only pledge, in fear and trembling, not to kill him again.”
― Ronald Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?”
― Ron Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“White evangelicals will be known as the people who defended the guy who defended the neo-Nazis.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“Persons sin by participating in evil systems when they understand, at least to some degree, that the system displeases God but fail to act responsibly to change things.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

“Christians must be extremely vigilant against the ongoing temptations of idolatrous nationalism. Christians in the United States are especially prone to embrace this evil, but the temptation lurks in every nation.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“The widespread (heretical) idea in many evangelical circles that the only important reason Jesus came was to die for our sins is one of the most glaring examples of failure to embrace the full biblical Christ. Tragically, other Christians seem to affirm the (equally heretical) idea that it is only Jesus’s teaching (especially his call to love enemies) that is finally important. If we believe with the church through two millennia that the teacher from Nazareth is God incarnate, then we must embrace the full biblical Christ.”
― Ronald J. Sider, If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence

“So we work for better political and economic systems, knowing that sin precludes any earthly utopia now, but rejoicing in the assurance that the kingdom of shalom that the Messiah has already begun will one day prevail, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“If, as Christians, we continue to enable a pathological liar to remain president, we are going to see greater damage inflicted on the cause of Christ and our God-given authority as Christians to speak out against immorality and injustice.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“Sadly, the lack humility and expansive presence of pride in the words and deeds of Donald Trump make him unqualified to be president of the United States of America. He should not be given four more years to hold the highest political office in our land. Christians who ignore this not only undermine the present and future good of the nation, but also their witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“Christians must be ready to lose politically rather than engage in dishonesty or corruption.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“Great economic inequality inevitably produces injustice in a fallen world; therefore Christians must oppose it.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“Christians have too easily, and too often, fallen into the trap of supposing that the nonhuman creation has worth only as it serves human purposes. This, however, is not a biblical perspective.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“Does not a one-sided focus on the issues that happen to be favored by either the Left or the Right suggest that one's political agenda is shaped more by secular ideology than careful biblical, theological reflection?”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“Christians today should never claim that democracy is the Christian form of government, but we can and should claim that biblical principles fit better with democratic government than with existing alternatives. In addition, Christian virtues--honesty, tolerance, love for neighbor--strengthen democratic life. Therefore Christians should actively nurture democracy in their own countries and around the world.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“the first task of Christians is to live now the message and ethics of Jesus’s new messianic kingdom. When surrounding society says we should abandon Jesus’s teaching for the sake of short-term effectiveness, we must refuse—precisely because we know that the risen Jesus is now Lord of history and that his kingdom will finally prevail. If Jesus is truly Lord and Messiah, then in the long run his way will also be most effective.42”
― Ronald J. Sider, If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence

“In order to retain a commitment to Jesus’s new messianic community with its countercultural values, Christians must accept the fact that the faithful church will often—perhaps always—be a minority community in a broken world.”
― Ronald J. Sider, If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence

“As the church demonstrates new possibilities for community grounded in Jesus’s teaching, the church models a new reality that historically has profoundly shaped surrounding society.46 Perhaps it is not an overstatement to say that “only a continuing community dedicated to a deviant value system can change the world.”
― Ronald J. Sider, If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence

“Are national boundaries sacred? Are they ordained by God? do the citizens of a rich nation have the right to use their abundant resources just for themselves? Or to keep out immigrants from poor nations who seek greater economic opportunity?”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“Dr. Fauci told the president that even with aggressive action across the country, the American death toll could reach 200,000”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“The foundation that makes fascism possible is fear that is stoked into grievances that undermine institutions and norms holding society together.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“Trump doesn’t read.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity

“Sometimes, for a generation or more, injustice, war, totalitarianism, and social evil of all kinds may advance, rather than retreat. Even then, the assurance of Christ's final victory provides hope that sustains our persistent, faithful struggle for justice even when the political tide is sweeping in the other direction.”
― Ronald J. Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“For the first three centuries, every Christian writer who discussed killing said that all killing was prohibited--whether in war, capital punishment, or abortion. Whether or not the early church was correct in thinking that is what Jesus intended, it is perfectly clear that in the one case where Jesus was explicitly called upon to affirm the Old Testament's call for capital punishment, he refused.”
― Ron Sider, Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement

“According to Pulitzer Prize-winning truth-checkers Politifact, a firm which compares each candidate’s statements to evidence, Trump’s statements were verifiably false 76 percent of the time when he ran for office in 2016.”
― Ronald J. Sider, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity