Jenni

“[The gospels] are not merely antiquarian documents telling a strange story about a powerful but now long-gone moment of history. They are the moment of sunrise on a new morning, casting a strange glory over the landscape and inviting all readers to wake up, rub the sleep from their eyes, and come out to enjoy the fully dawned day and give themselves to its tasks.”
― N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels

“My culture gives me no categories to view suffering—especially suffering at the hands of an oppressor—as victory. My culture sees suffering only as defeat, as evil. It never sees suffering as a means of victory. This is why I need to read John’s vision about what’s really going on from God’s perspective to correct my American, self-serving, “I will defend my rights at all costs” mind-set. I need to follow the slaughtered Lamb wherever He goes, so that I can reign with Him in victory. THE”
― Preston Sprinkle, Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence

“We are scripted to believe that reality is zero-based and that we live in a closed system. This paradigm of scarcity and insufficiency is the philosophy that undergirds our structures of systemic sin. We fear there won't be enough land, water, food, oil, money, labor to go around, so we build evil structures of sinful force to guarantee that those we call 'us' will have what we call 'ours.' We call it security. We call it defense. We call it freedom. What we don't call it is what it is — fear.”
― Brian Zahnd, Water To Wine: Some of My Story

“The point about truth, and about Jesus and his followers bearing witness to it, is that truth is what happens when humans use words to reflect God's wise ordering of the world and so shine light into its dark corners, bringing judgment and mercy where it is badly needed. Empires can't cope with this. They make their own 'truth,' creating 'facts on the ground' in the depressingly normal way of violence and injustice.”
― N.T. Wright, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels