K > K's Quotes

“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”
― C.G. Jung

“When the Church tries to embody the rule of God in the forms of earthly power it may achieve that power, but it is no longer a sign of the kingdom.”
― Lesslie Newbigin

“A person who wields power cannot see truth; that is the privilege of the powerless.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed. ”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship

“But if the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship

“Unconditional parental love is the indespensible nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love - in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost...The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love.”
― Gordon Neufeld

“...Jesus did not advocate nonviolence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a just means of opposing the enemy in such a way as to hold open the possibility of the enemy's becoming just as well. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies' transformation, and to respond to ill-treatment with a love that not only is godly but also, I am convinced, can only be found in God.”
― Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way

“The 'peace' the gospel brings is never the absence of conflict, but an ineffable divine reassurance within the heart of conflict; a peace that surpasses understanding.”
― Walter Wink

“Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact.”
― Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination

“If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders.”
― Andrew Harvey

“Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine, runs a joy with silken twine.”
― William Blake

“With Kit, Age Seven, at the Beach


We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.

Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.

Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.

"How far could you swim, Daddy, in such a storm?"
"As far as was needed," I said,
and as I talked, I swam.”
― William Stafford

“The resurrection is not only God’s vindication of his Son; it is the vindication of all Jesus taught. Easter Sunday is nothing less than the triumph of the peaceable kingdom of Christ. Easter changes everything. Easter is the hope of the world, the dawn of a new age, the rising of the New Jerusalem on the horizon of humanity’s burned-out landscape. Easter is God saying once again, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“The majority is almost always wrong. The crowd is untruth. Scapegoating is demonic.”
― Brian Zahnd

“The appropriate response to this gospel proclamation is to rethink everything in the light of the risen and ascended Christ and live accordingly. We rethink our lives (which is what it means to repent) not so we can escape a doomed planet, but in order to participate in God’s design to redeem the human person and renovate human society in Christ. Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project!”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“We forget that when we see Christ dead upon the cross, we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. We forget all of this because the disturbing truth is this—it’s hard to believe in Jesus.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“Fundamentalism is to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Here in the second beatitude, Jesus is making an important announcement to those who, instead of finding a means of avoiding personal pain and shared sorrow, have allowed themselves to be sculpted by pain and sorrow. Jesus seems to be saying that it is those who have given up being comfortably numb through shallow contentment and have instead engaged in the real work of grief—for there is much in this world to grieve over—who are the ones who will encounter the deep comfort of the kingdom of God.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“The cross is shock therapy for a world addicted to solving its problems through violence. The cross shocks us into the devastating realization that our system of violence murdered God!”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“Jesus founded his kingdom in solidarity with brutalized victims. This is the gospel, but it’s hard for us to believe in a Jesus who would rather die than kill his enemies. It’s harder yet to believe in a Jesus who calls us to take up our own cross, follow him, and be willing to die rather than kill our enemies.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“Because we are uncomfortable with sorrow, we passively enforce a kind of mandated happiness in our churches. Instead of weeping with those who weep, we want everybody to just cheer up. And we want them to cheer up for our sake. . . because we are so terribly uncomfortable with their sorrow. What we should do instead is join them in their sorrow and assist them in the work of grief. When human beings suffer tragedy and profound loss, there is a certain amount of grieving that is required. But in the deep mystery of human inner-connectivity, the work of grieving does not have to be done alone.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“It’s so hard for us to let go of the sword and take the hand of the crucified one.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“If the crucifixion of Christ can be made beautiful, then there is hope that all the ugliness of the human condition can be redeemed by its beauty.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“We should never forget that Jesus was executed in the name of “freedom and justice” - whether it was the Roman version or the Jewish version. But the cross shames the ancient deception that freedom and justice can be attained by killing. The crowd believes this pernicious lie, but Christ never does. The Passover crowd shouted, “Hosanna!” (“ Save now!”) until it realized that Jesus wouldn’t save them by killing their enemies; then it shouted, “Crucify him!” Jesus refused to be a messiah after the model of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Judah Maccabeus, William Wallace, or George Washington - and the crowd despises him for it. The crowd loves their violent heroes. The crowd is predisposed to believe in the idea that “freedom and justice” can be achieved by violence.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“After 1945 we lost our blind faith in the inevitability of human progress. A threshold was crossed, and something important changed when humanity gained possession of what previously only God possessed: the capacity for complete annihilation. In yielding to the temptation to harness the fundamental physics of the universe for the purpose of building city-destroying bombs, have we again heard the serpent whisper, “You will be like God”?”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“It’s not the task of the church to change the world by legislative force. It’s the task of the church to be the world changed by Christ. This is revolutionary in a way that conventional politics never can be.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed … The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“Satan never tempted Jesus with evil; Satan tempted Jesus with good. Satan enticed Jesus to go ahead and do good and to bring it about by the most direct way possible.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“Jesus is not so much telling us to mourn as he is making an announcement to those who do mourn. Sorrow is a necessary consequence of loving others and being fully engaged with humanity. If our plan is to go through life minimizing pain and avoiding as much sorrow as possible, we will do so as a shallow people, and Jesus has nothing to announce to us in the second beatitude—he simply leaves us in our prosaic self-contentment. It is through the work of grief that we carve depth into our souls and create space to be filled with comfort from another.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“Jesus is not a heavenly conductor handing out tickets to heaven. Jesus is the carpenter who repairs, renovates, and restores God’s good world.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace