Mark Wendland

“Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

“None of us actually lives as though there were no truth. Our problem is more with the notion of a single, unchanging truth.
The word 'true' suggest a relationship between things: being true to someone or something, truth as loyalty, or something that fits, as two surfaces may be said to be 'true.' It is related to 'trust,' and is fundamentally a matter of what one believes to be the case. The Latin word verum (true) is cognate with a Sanskrit word meaning to choose or believe: the option one chooses, the situation in which one places one's trust. Such a situation is not an absolute - it tells us not only about the chosen thing, but also about the chooser. It cannot be certain: it involves an act of faith and it involves being faithful to one's intentions.”
― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

“The cross is the assurance that effective prophetic criticism is done not by an outsider but always by one who must embrace the grief, enter into the death, and know the pain of the criticized one.”
― Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

“Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead