Alan > Alan's Quotes

“Orthodoxy is marked by sobriety, not by emotional enthusiasm. It is also marked by a quite “ordinary” persistence in living the humble, consistent life of Christ, not by seeking out extraordinary experiences, especially supernatural ones.”
― Andrew Stephen Damick, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“Dogmas may fly out at the window but congregations do not come in at the door.”
― Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, The Belief of Catholics

“A rush age cannot be a reflective age.”
― Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics

“You must believe, sooner or later, in a Mind which brought mind into existence out of matter, unless you are going to sit down before the hopeless metaphysical contradiction of saying that matter somehow managed to develop itself into mind.”
― Ronald A. Knox, In Soft Garments: A Collection of Oxford Conferences

“Learning the value of silence is learning to listen to, instead of screaming at, reality”
― Monks of New Skete

“Since all people are in the image of God, all deserve to be treated with the dignity the image affords.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“The Bible is not a book of rules. The Bible reveals the God whom we serve, and we serve him gladly.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“Our world does not reduce God by distributing his power to other deities. Rather, we reduce God by making him a figurehead. We too often portray him as standing back from a world that runs on its own. We banish him to the hidden corners of our lives while we amble through life, pursuing our own ambitious goals driven by narcissism, hedonism, and materialism and refusing to allow God to bridle our self-sufficiency.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“But our God is a God of grace. If we desire to be like him, we need to go beyond being people who are saved by grace to be people who are characterized by grace.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“Mesopotamian literature is concerned about the jurisdiction of the various gods in the cosmos with humankind at the bottom of the heap, the Genesis account is interested in the jurisdiction of humankind over the rest of creation as a result of the image of God in which people were created.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“To a timeless being, time means nothing. But timing is everything.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Façade

“We are created to image God, to be his imagers. It is what we are by definition. The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives on earth. To be human is to image God.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“All suffering is worth it to follow Jesus. He is that amazing.”
― Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity

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

“Jesus said his disciples would be known for their love, not for their placards of protest and angry letters to the editor.”
― Brian Zahnd, Radical Forgiveness: God's Call to Unconditional Love

“If God can become human, then we must reconsider how we treat our fellow humans.”
― 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

“The lost beauty of God’s good creation is what is recovered in the Incarnation.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“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

“It’s not enough to believe in Jesus; we also have to believe in the Jesus way!”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“I pledge no allegiance to elephants or donkeys, only to the Lamb.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“It is through the Incarnation that glory and beauty save the world.”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“Jesus overturned money-changing tables in the temple, but set up banqueting tables in his Father’s house.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“Believing in the divinity of Jesus is the heart of Christian orthodoxy. But believing in the viability of Jesus’s ideas makes Christianity truly radical.”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“Christian faith is more about connecting our lives with Christ than it is about gaining spiritual information.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
― G.K. Chesterton