Daniel Darling > Quotes

“Much of today’s decline of Christian influence can be traced, not to secularism, but to the failure of significant sections of the church in the era of slavery and segregation. The salt of our witness lost its savor on the altar of racism. Still today, if we speak up about marriage or religious liberty but not about race, why should we think anyone should listen? If we are courageous concerning justice for those who are made in the image of God and live in the womb, but silent about justice for those who have been and still are systemically stripped of the dignity that is theirs as image-bearers as they live in our societies, then we should not be surprised to be charged with double standards.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution

“This confession is really the only legitimate response to an encounter with Jesus. If it is true that Jesus rose from the dead, that the scars He bore on Calvary are still the scars He bears today, then we have no other option than to look at Jesus as “our Lord and our God.” Thomas’s story shows us the paradox of Christianity: it is both faith and facts, believing and seeing. Our faith is grounded in a mountain of historical facts that Luke describes in Acts as “many convincing proofs” (Acts 1:3), some of which another former skeptic, the Apostle Paul, lays out in 1 Corinthians 15. Scholars through the ages have come away unable to explain away, without intellectual dishonesty, Jesus and the movement He created. This book’s purpose is not to offer the overwhelming evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, but I highly recommend you read books like Strobel’s The Case for Faith or N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Easter: The Villains, Heroes, Cowards, and Crooks Who Witnessed History's Biggest Miracle

“God is calling all of us not just to see that people have dignity, but to act accordingly. Not just to know, but to do.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Racism focuses on the “otherness” more than on the “man.” It is elevating “my people” above “the other people.” It is the sin of individual pride writ across a larger canvas. It ascribes greater value to one group of image-bearers than another; it divides up groups of image-bearers according to the way they look or the history they have experienced or the culture they have created, as though these things are more fundamental to who we are and who “they” are than being made in God’s image. Racism is often driven by a fear of the “other,” but is rooted in an evil that usurps God as Creator and denies the humanity of our neighbors.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution

“when Christians are seized by the biblical vision of human dignity, it has a dramatic impact on the rest of society.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“To be fully human is to enjoy bearing God’s image, in the joy of relationship with him.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“all the Christmas feels. Maybe you are lonely and discouraged. Perhaps you’ve been rejected. But know this: if you are in Christ, God leveraged the entire universe to shout to you His message of love and drew you to Himself.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Gen. 3:14-15)”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“The Christmas story reminds us that God moves in and among those whom society most often leaves behind, that the thread of redemption woven throughout Scripture winds its way through a lot of small towns and seemingly little lives.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“This wasn’t a big deal among most of the world, but it was a big deal in heaven.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“In other words, there is no basis for human dignity without a connection to God. Without taking account of the divine, we are left with a view of a human’s dignity based on that individual’s merit or excellence, based on some societally-agreed or government-imposed yardstick; and if the last century teaches us anything, it is that this shifting metric is dangerous.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Christmas is a powerful reminder that what is important in heaven is often unimportant on earth.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“Our humility grows in the soil of the truth that we are not God. You are not the center of your own universe, the master of your own fate. You are not the arbiter of right and wrong. You cannot find sufficient reason for your existence or fulfillment in your existence from within.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Then, as now, there is a temptation to use prosperity as a measuring stick of devotion, as if God is a cosmic scorekeeper, dispensing favors based on faith...In a broken world, very bad things often happen to very good people. Job was faithful. Zechariah and Elizabeth were faithful. And yet God allowed them to suffer for their good and His glory.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“You and I are made in the image of God. Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, is the image of God.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“The presence of these men from the East—outsiders, Gentiles—is a confirmation of God’s promise to send a Messiah who would not only be the King of the Jews, but a Messiah for the nations. Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom not just for insiders, but for outsiders. In fact, many insiders—those who were closest to Jesus—were most resistant to His message. And so it often is today. Those who are most “churched” are often those who are so blinded by self-righteousness they cannot see—we cannot see—the gospel.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“The good news for Christmas caroler and Christmas cranks (and everyone in between) is that Jesus came to bring joy to ordinary people like you and me.”
― Daniel Darling, The Characters of Christmas: The Unlikely People Caught Up in the Story of Jesus

“We know that until Christ returns to fully restore and renew all things, we will never see Christian unity in its fullest richest expression. We will never see complete and total justice. But we can work for it, even as we fall short of it, because we know that one day we will experience it.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“In trying to become God, we actually become less than human.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Through Jesus, you now have freedom to be the unique creation God designed you to be. You don’t have to rely on anyone’s opinion of you to find your worth. You are free to pursue Christ with abandon, to throw off the shackles of legalism and let God’s glory shine through you.”
― Daniel Darling, The Original Jesus: Trading the Myths We Create for the Savior Who Is

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King Jr.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“This image-restoring calling comes with, and requires, a new family: the church. No one can restore the image alone—only a people can do that, mirroring the original creation of human beings as male and female, the divine communion foreshadowed in the words ‘let us make,’ and the revelation of God as three in one. Whatever our family of origin, the church becomes our ‘first family,’ bound together in the creative love of the one from whom every family takes its name (Ephesians 3 v 15). And the church is especially for those who, in the twists and turns of a broken world, have lost their human family—widows, orphans, refugees, strangers. They above all are our brothers and sisters, our companions in discovering our new identity in Christ. Our image-restoring calling cannot happen without the church—without each other.” [17]”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“A gospel-saturated human dignity movement unites two seemingly disparate strands of the Christian life. It reminds us that personal salvation without neighbor love is an incomplete gospel, and it reminds us that social justice without individual transformation is powerless.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Imagine, for a moment, if God’s people began to lead a new, quiet revolution whose foundation was a simple premise: every human being—no matter who they are, no matter where they are, no matter what they have done or have had done to them—possesses dignity, because every human being is created in the image of God. By God’s grace, our churches would change, and our communities would change.”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Twenty percent of Americans don’t think people of the other political party are fully human. In some ways this is horrifying, but in another way it’s clarifying. That’s actually what we are doing when we reduce our digital neighbors to caricatures online. That’s what we are doing when we post mean things and hateful memes on the internet about our most despised politicians.”
― Daniel Darling, A Way with Words: Using Our Online Conversations for Good

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity.” Francis Schaeffer”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Every faithful act of service, every honest labor to make the world a better place, which seemed to have been forever lost and forgotten in the rubble of history, will be seen on that day [at the final resurrection] to have contributed to the perfect fellowship of God’s kingdom.” Amy Sherman”
― Daniel Darling, The Dignity Revolution: Reclaiming God's Rich Vision for Humanity

“Prayer frees us from FOMO, the busybody life. It is liberating when we realize that the burden of all-knowing is one we were never meant to bear, one we can resist and let go as we rest in the joy of knowing God and being known by him.8 The serpent’s lie doesn’t lead us toward joy but toward a restless life of wanting, but never finding, control. God, in Christ, offers us a deep rest. We don’t have to worry about missing a conversation or a conflict. We can lay down the futile attempt to be the most informed person in the room. Because the quick thrill of being in the know is a cheap substitute for the peace of knowing the One who created us and rescues us from our fruitless pursuits and is leading us toward a place where our longings to know and be known will be fully realized.”
― Daniel Darling, A Way with Words: Using Our Online Conversations for Good