Esther

“When you truly believe that the racial groups are equal, then you also believe that racial disparities must be the result of racial discrimination.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“Correct thinking provides a sense of certainty. Without it, we fear that faith is on life support at best, dead and buried at worst. And who wants a dead or dying faith? So this fear of losing a handle on certainty leads to a preoccupation with correct thinking, making sure familiar beliefs are defended and supported at all costs. How strongly do we hold on to the old ways of thinking? Just recall those history courses where we read about Christians killing other Christians over all sorts of disagreements about doctrines few can even articulate today. Or perhaps just think of a skirmish you’ve had at church over a sermon, Sunday-school lesson, or which candidate to vote into public office. Preoccupation with correct thinking. That’s the deeper problem. It reduces the life of faith to sentry duty, a 24/7 task of pacing the ramparts and scanning the horizon to fend off incorrect thinking, in ourselves and others, too engrossed to come inside the halls and enjoy the banquet. A faith like that is stressful and tedious to maintain. Moving toward different ways of thinking, even just trying it on for a while to see how it fits, is perceived as a compromise to faith, or as giving up on faith altogether. But nothing could be further from the truth. Aligning faith in God and certainty about what we believe and needing to be right in order to maintain a healthy faith—these do not make for a healthy faith in God. In a nutshell, that is the problem. And that is what I mean by the “sin of certainty.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Women and girl runners, from Mary Decker to Mary Cane, have been kept small and weak and injury prone, because we have assumed that is what it means to be a woman runner in a man's world. But when we think about how much the smallness, weakness and injuries could be due to the environment women and girls live in, and not their own bodies, then the question becomes, "how can we know for sure what it means to be a woman runner at all?”
― Maggie Mertens, Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women