William Sloane Coffin Famous Quotes
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Too many religious people make faith their aim. They think 'the greatest of these' is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine. These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart. If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive.
We are not loved because we are valued; we are valued because we are loved.
We must guard against being too individualistic.... Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people--the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced.
And if we exalt freedom as Christians, we must remember that freedom is grounded in love.
To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.
Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.
A spiritual person tries less to be godly than to be deeply human.
Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word - to science, to history, to what reason and our own experience tell us. We do not honor the higher truth we find in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere.
Joy is the most important Christian emotion. Duty calls only when gratitude fails to prompt.
In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia.
We are not slaves but children of our Father, free to do good, free to sin. So when in anguish over any human violence done to innocent victims, we ask of God, 'How could you let that happen?' it's well to remember that God at that very moment is asking the exact same question of us.
Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.
Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality.
The cause of violence is not ignorance. It is self-interest. Only reverance can restrain violence - reverance for human life and the environment.
I'm delighted that the future is unsure. That's the way it should be.
When a man is drowning, it may be better for him to try to swim than to thrash around waiting for divine intervention.
The woman most in need of liberation is the woman in every man and the man in every woman.
If we misconceive God as Father Protector,...then each disappointment reduces what may confidently be affirmed about God. And this is how most people lose their faith.
If your heart is full of fear, you won't seek truth; you'll seek security. If a heart is full of love, it will have a limbering effect on the mind.
A friend...risks her friendship for the sake of her friend.
Compassion and justice are companions, not choices.
And if God is a suffering God, if this whole universe is borne on a heart infinite in compassion, then the more we suffer in his name the closer we come to him.
There are two ways to be powerful. One is to seek and acquire power, the other is not to need it. There are also two ways to be rich. One is to gain riches, and the other is not to need them.
We want God to be strong, so that we can be weak. But He wants to be weak so that we can be strong.
People who fear disorder more than injustice will only produce more of both.
It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, for all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly.
The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than the flaws in the system.
Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom ... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one
neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.
Jesus is both a mirror to our humanity and a window to divinity, a window revealing as much of God as is given mortal eyes to see. When Christians see Christ empowering the weak, scorning the powerful, healing the wounded, and judging their tormentors, we are seeing transparently the power of God at work.
Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race ... Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. Let us love our country, but pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora and fauna and human life that it supports - one planet indivisible, with clean air, ... soil and water; with liberty, justice and peace for all.
Isn't that what growing up is all about - learning to outlast despair?
It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one.
For Christians, the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.
The consequences of the past are always with us, and half the hostilities tearing the world apart could be resolved today were we to allow the forgiveness of sins to alter these consequences ... if we were to say of ourselves, 'The hostility stops here.
In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent.
But what I am beginning to suspect is that most guilty people reject the possibility of forgiveness not because it is too good to believe, but because they fear the responsibility forgiveness entails. It's hell to be guilty, but its worse to be responsible.
Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.
And if we are not yet one in live at least we are one in sin, which is no mean bond because it preludes the possibility of separation through judgment.
No sermon on love can fail to mention love's most difficult problem in our time--how to find effective ways to alleviate the massive suffering of humanity at home and abroad. What we need to realize is that to love effectively we must act collectively...
As all of us who strive to be good parents know, love is self-restricting when it comes to power.... Likewise God has left his servants freedom of choice.
The joy that is of God is not opposed to earthly pleasures. Rather it infuses them with a foundation of meaning.
But if we hate evil more than we love the good, we become damn good haters.... However deep, our anger, like that of Christ, must always and only measure our love.
Truth is always in danger of being sacrificed on the altars of good taste and social stability.
As for loneliness, it too has deep roots in selfishness, for its anguish stems less from having no one with whom to share one's burdens, more from having only one's burdens to share.
To love is surely to support and to encourage
but not necessarily to approve. Quite the contrary! If we love one another we will help one another fight against our evil dreams.
To be avoided at all costs is the solace of opinion without the pain of thought.
The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history ... Our military men and women ... were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters ... ?
Learning, and especially unlearning, can take place only in the absence of defensiveness.... [W]e can drop our defenses only when we love and are loved.
Unity is not something we are called to create; it's something we are called to recognize.
We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.
Love is to make us more human, and that demands that we care so much for each other that we have not to be nice but to be honest. We have to be honest, for most real faults are hidden and therefore demand an outside revealer.
Remember also that scars of all sorts are all right. Scars are wounds that have healed, not without a trace, but have healed nonetheless. Think of all the scar tissue around Christ's heart, Jesus our wounded healer.
Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words.
We have sold our birthright of freedom and justice for a mess of national security.
...there is more mercy in God than sin in us.
Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.
For finally, we are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.
The banality of guilt is that it is such a convenient substitute for responsibility. It's so much easier to beat your breast than to stick your neck out.
[When things go badly] Instead of becoming alienated from their faith in God, wouldn't it make more sense for them to become alienated from their mislaid hopes in human beings, alienated from shallow notions of automatic progress, from sentimental notions about the 'nobility of man'?
The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. The more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die.