Phillip Michael Garner > Quotes

“Ignoring the poor is to show contempt for both God and humanity.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“Poetry is spirit unleashed upon words, words written to ignite the imagination and lift the soul. Poetry is God’s purest form of communication; because of this truth, God made all his grandest prophets to be poets. A love for the poetic is indicative of a soul leaning towards God. Theological poetry is both wonder and a call to merciful justice.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“The world doesn't work without forgiveness.
Forgiveness is divine and creates newness of life.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“Human beings were not created to rule over one another; we are not fit to rule over one another.”
― Phillip Michael Garner, Everyday Thoughts: A Collection of Devotional Readings for Thinking Christians

“The judgement of death upon humanity was brought into existence by God; it is his severest judgement. Over the course of salvation history, death becomes God's enemy. Death in effect is the voice of God demanding we change. Death is not restrained to respond justly on individual human beings. Death permeates reality and is coupled with human sin and violence. Death speaks and says we are not fit to live as we are, but we must change and be changed. Death also reveals the connectedness of humanity with the cosmos in which we live.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“My aversion to the use of the word 'absolute' is directly related to the tendency of religion to utilize the word for quelling conversation, for controlling dogma, for limiting the human capacity to communicate God in word and deed.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“Sin’s voice is the inward speech of human intellect that desires to explore regions beyond the structures of reality set in place by God.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“Religion without concern for the present is useless; all who seek God in a broken world should avoid it.

Religion is activism set afire by faith through love for God and neighbor. Good religion opposes humanity’s self-destructive nature and longs to conquer our inherent violence.

Religion’s goal for its adherents is to loose them on society as burning lights who expose all that harms and corrupts so that we all share in the bounty of God’s creation. Religion is always a political force through its call to goodness.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“Racism is a parasite on the soul that infects it with intolerable violence. Racism is a disqualifying position for anyone claiming to be a Christian.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“There is meaning to life because God cares deeply about how we live, because God is watching.”
― Phillip Michael Garner, Everyday Thoughts: A Collection of Devotional Readings for Thinking Christians

“Hate is a power that hollows out reality of all that God intended. It empties the world of love, redemption, reconciliation, and opens the abyss of nothingness. It builds an irrefutable case against its object. It is a friend to those that exalt themselves above others. It is an uncreative force that deceives all participants. It is a pollutant that corrupts good intentions. Hate is an exclusionary act that dehumanizes its object. Hate is a parasite on the marrow of humanity.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“One aspect of love is the constant offering of a new beginning through the practice of forgiveness; the kind of forgiveness that writes a new story from a broken past.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“God is culpable for our existence; meaning things are the way they are because God played a significant role in producing and maintaining the outcome. God's culpability for existence is displayed on a cross. God is culpable and guilty of being merciful of longing for humanity to become more than we have yet imagined.”
― Phillip Michael Garner

“Today, Christianity need people that read scripture like Jesus, like the prophets, people who are not afraid to challenge existing structures of thought with life infusing readings of scripture.”
― Phillip Michael Garner, Theological Adventures: Nonviolent Nonsacramental and Relational Theology--Interspersed with Personal Stories

“The chasm between God and humanity will be bridged by God's self.”
― Phillip Michael Garner, Everyday Thoughts: A Collection of Devotional Readings for Thinking Christians