Peter Rollins > Quotes

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.”
― Peter Rollins

“There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.”
― Peter Rollins

“Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.”
― Peter Rollins

“Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“What if Jesus was not offering his followers an ethical system to follow, but rather was inviting them to enter into a life of love that transcends ethics, a life of liberty that dwells beyond religious laws? The difference between following an ethical system and being consumed by love can be seen in the way that ethical systems seek to provide a way to work out what needs to be done so that it can be carried out. In contrast, love is never constrained, it never sits back, it always seeks to do more than what is demanded of it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic And Other Impossible Tales

“What if the church should be less concerned with creating saints than creating a world where we do not need saints? A world where people like Mother Teresa and MLK would have nothing to do.”
― Peter Rollins, Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine

“Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world. Because the actual existing church has reduced the Crucifixion and Resurrection to religious affirmations held by a certain tribe, rather than expressions of a type of life, the event they testify to has been almost completely eclipsed.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed, it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the ‘truth’ with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us … that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it.”
― Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church

“The point then is to help break the false distinction between the idea that there are those who are whole and those who have a lack. For the true distinction is between those who hide their lack under the fiction of wholeness and those who are able to embrace it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The problem with so much religious communication is that it aims at changing our minds. The result is that we can hear the message of the preacher without necessarily heeding the message; we can listen to the “truth” and agree with it, yet not change in response to it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic And Other Impossible Tales

“Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“The evidence of “forgiveness of sin” is not found in a profession of belief, but in a life freed from self-destructive pursuits, scapegoating, and violence.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“In contrast, the a/theistic approach can be seen as a form of disbelieving what one believes, or rather, believing in God while remaining dubious concerning what one believes about God (a distinction that fundamentalism is unable to maintain).”
― Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church

“A faith that can only exist in the light of victory and certainty is one which really affirms the self while pretending to affirm Christ, for it only follows Jesus in the belief that Jesus has conquered death. Yet a faith that can look at the horror of the cross and still say ‘yes’ is one that says ‘no’ to the self in saying ‘yes’ to Christ.”
― Peter Rollins

“What we see taking place in the church today is the reduction of God to an idol.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“There is an old anecdote in which a mystic, an evangelical pastor and a fundamentalist preacher die on the same day and awake to find themselves by the pearly gates. Upon reaching the gates they are promptly greeted by Peter, who informs them that before entering heaven they must be interviewed by Jesus concerning the state of their doctrine. The first to be called forward is the mystic, who is quietly ushered into a room. Five hours later the mystic reappears with a smile, saying, ‘I thought I had got it all wrong.’ Then Peter signals to the evangelical pastor, who stands up and enters the room. After a full day has passed the pastor reappears with a frown and says to himself, ‘How could I have been so foolish!’ Finally Peter asks the fundamentalist to follow him. The fundamentalist picks up his well-worn Bible and walks into the room. A few days pass with no sign of the preacher, then finally the door swings open and Jesus himself appears, exclaiming, ‘How could I have got it all so wrong!”
― Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church

“When confronted with inner conflicts, we are tempted to obscure them by externalizing the antagonisms—something that is done through the hatred of others and/or the hatred of the self (a method in which the scapegoat mechanism is turned inward). The more difficult, courageous, and ethical path involves attempting to face and tarry with the antagonisms.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“In other words, the claim I believe in God is nothing but a lie if it is not manifest in our lives, because one only believes in God insofar as one loves.”
― Peter Rollins, Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine

“this is not about the mere extension of life along a horizontal plane, but about the deepening of life along a vertical plane. Mere longevity cannot render life meaningful any more than brevity has the power to make it meaningless.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“Instead of religious discourse being a type of drink designed to satisfy our thirst for answers, Jesus made his teaching salty, evoking thirst. Instead of offering a scientific explanation that would convince, or publicizing the miracles so as to compel his listeners, Jesus engaged in a poetic discourse that spoke to the heart of those who would listen. In a world where people believe they are not hungry, we must not offer food but rather an aroma that helps them desire the food that we cannot provide. We are a people who are born from a response to hints of the divine. Not only this, but we must embrace the idea that we are also called to be hints of the divine.”
― Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church

“This book is about a salvation that takes place within our unknowing and dissatisfaction,”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“A true Christian militant attacks systems of oppression and fights for a better world even though that new world might negatively affect their own position of power.”
― Peter Rollins, Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine

“In contrast we let go of existence, meaning, and the sublime as categories to describe the object “God.” Instead these become ways in which we engage with the world. Yet, as we affirm the world in love, we indirectly sense that in letting go of God we have, in fact, found ourselves at the very threshold of God.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking the Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“But the moment we experience the ground beneath our feet dissolving and feel the loss of all certainties is the moment we touch upon the experience of the Cross.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Truly embracing the fragility and tensions of life...brings with it the possibility of true joy.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“The excessive pleasure we imagine receiving from what we want most of all is fleeting at best.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Not only this, but churches are ideological in that they create their own constellation of beliefs and practices that tell their congregants how to think and behave. A denomination, for instance, will offer dogmas, doctrines, and rituals that to a greater or lesser extent let everyone know how to interact with the world.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The parable is given to us, but at the same time its full wealth of meaning will never be fully mined. It is not reducible to some clear, singular, scientific formula but rather gives rise to a multitude of commentaries. In opposition to this, many Christian communities view the stories and parables of the Bible as raw material to be translated into a single, understandable meaning rather than experienced as infinitely rich treasures that can speak to us in a plurality of ways.”
― Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church