Biblical Psychology Quotes

To the extent that we are trapped by the overvaluing, idealizing tendency, we are not free fully to celebrate the limited but real goods of creation. Idolatry by definition is not an accurate assessment of creaturely goods, but an overvaluing of them so as to miss the richness of their actual, limited values. If I worship my tennis trophies, my Mondrian, my family tree, my Kawasaki, or my bank account, then I do not really receive those goods for what they actually are - limited, historical, and finite - goods which are vulnerable to being taken away by time and death. When I pretend that a value is something more than it is, ironically I value it less appropriately than it deserves. Biblical psychology invites us to relate ourselves absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative. ~ Thomas C. Oden

To be truly biblical, as well as truly effective, the growth process must include the Body of Christ. ~ Henry Cloud

Money is just something you need in case you do not die tomorrow. Let this is a reminder for you not to obsess over profits and losses. In whatever you do, strive for enjoyment, focus, contentment, humility, openness... Paradoxically (and as an unintended consequence) your trading performance will improve significantly. ~ Yvan Byeajee

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ~ Carl Jung

The insane human mind is the greatest scientific instrument known to mankind. ~ Steven Magee

Throughout the biblical story, from Genesis to Revelation, every radical challenge from the biblical God is both asserted and then subverted by its receiving communities - be they earliest Israelites or latest Christians. That pattern of assertion-and-subversion, that rhythm of expansion-and-contraction, is like the systole-and-diastole cycle of the human heart.

In other words, the heartbeat of the Christian Bible is a recurrent cardiac cycle in which the asserted radicality of God's nonviolent distributive justice is subverted by the normalcy of civilization's violent retributive justice. And, of course, the most profound annulment is that both assertion and subversion are attributed to the same God or the same Christ.

Think of this example. In the Bible, prophets are those who speak for God. On one hand, the prophets Isaiah and Micah agree on this as God's vision: "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, / and their spears into pruning hooks; / nation shall not lift up sword against nation, / neither shall they learn war any more" (Isa. 2:4 = Mic. 4:3). On the other hand, the prophet Joel suggests the opposite vision: "Beat your plowshares into swords, / and your pruning hooks into spears; / let the weakling say, 'I am a warrior'" (3:10). Is this simply an example of assertion-and-subversion between prophets, or between God's radicality and civilization's normalcy?

That proposal might also answer how, as noted in Chapter 1, Jesus the ~ John Dominic Crossan

The afflicted pray for healing--just as hungry people pray for bread, but when has God ever sent bread? In my recollection of the scriptures, God has always sent a woman. A woman like Eve and the unnamed woman that preceded her. A woman like Moses's mother, Jochebed, and the woman who raised him to be a king, Bithia. A woman like Deborah and her skull-piercing homegirl, Jael. Maybe some manna, but when has God ever sent bread? ~ DaMaris B. Hill

Never mess with a woman in PMS and a man on Testosterone. ~ Abhijit Naskar

It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one. ~ William Sloane Coffin

Within Inspirational Psychology, health doesn't refer to just the state of the body, but also the state of the mind, which affects the body. ~ Lee L Jampolsky

Creator and Sustainer. Men are to make their own mistakes and successes. Each man is to work out his salvation (or damnation) in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Other men are to sit in judgment over him only when he commits public evil. They are not to command him as imitation gods. They are not to issue comprehensive commands and monitor him constantly. That is God's job, not man's. Thus, God's hierarchy produces social freedom. It relieves mankind from any pretended autonomy from God's total sovereignty. Men are not to seek to create predestinating hierarchies. They can leave their fellow men alone, so long as God's institutional laws are obeyed in public. ~ Gary North

Don't fool yourself by thinking you can talk ugly about somebody and then act lovingly toward them. You can't. Your actions are going to fall right in line with your words. That's a biblical principle. ~ Kenneth Copeland

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you - when there's a loss that will alter your life forever - you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you've touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are. ~ Tara Brach

One thing I've learned about grief: it's like a creditor's bill. You can put off paying, but it eventually falls due, and exacts usurious interest. ~ Rachel Hartman

Mating has been programmed into our DNA. And that programming always influences our interaction with the opposite sex, whether we like to admit it or not. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

The DSM-IV-TR is a 943-page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for $99 ... There are currently 374 mental disorders. I bought the book ... and leafed through it ... I closed the manual. "I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders," I thought. I opened the manual again. And instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones. ~ Jon Ronson

We are conscious of ourselves because we are conscious of others; and in an analogous manner, we are conscious of others because in our relationship to ourselves we are the same as others in their relationship to us. I am aware of myself only to the extent that I am as another for myself. ~ Lev S. Vygotsky

A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkey ~ Idries Shah

Twelve dead?" I said. "Jesus. ~ Dennis Lehane

The commonest error of the gifted scholar, inexperienced in teaching, is to expect pupils to know what they have been told. But telling is not teaching. The expression of facts that are in one's mind is a natural impulse when one wishes others to know these facts, just as to cuddle and pat a sick child is a natural impulse. But telling a fact to a child may not cure his ignorance of it any more than patting him will cure his scarlet fever. (p. 61) ~ Edward Lee Thorndike

As part of our interpretive task, then, we must distinguish between kingdom values and cultural values within the biblical text. With every change in our culture we have to reevaluate our interpretation of Scripture to determine what our perspective should be. At ~ William J. Webb

Psychology narrows the cause for personal unhappiness down to the person himself, and then he is stuck with himself. But we know that the universal and general cause for personal badness, guilt, and inferiority is the natural world and the person's relationship to it as a symbolic animal who must find a secure place in it. All the analysis in the world doesn't allow the person to find out who he is and why he is here on earth, why he has to die, and how he can make his life a triumph. It is when psychology pretends to do this, when it offers itself as a full explanation of human unhappiness, that it becomes a fraud that makes the situation of modern man on impasse from which he cannot escape. ~ Ernest Becker

You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something...I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That's what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look down on that sea of lights that is New Jersey and say, `Hey, I did that!' ~ David Keirsey

There is reason to fear that men love better to investigate how muslins, hay-rakes, and, above all and inclusive of all, money may be made, than how their own minds are constructed ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Breathe out unwanted thoughts with your exhale and re-focus your attention directly on what is important right now, at this moment. ~ Amit Ray

Many Christians ... find themselves defeated by the most psychological weapon that Satan uses against them. This weapon has the effectiveness of a deadly missile. Its name? Low self-esteem. Satan's greatest psychological weapon is a gut level feeling of inferiority, inadequacy, and low self-worth This feeling shackles many Christians, in spite of wonderful spiritual experiences and knowledge of God's Word. Although they understand their position as sons and daughters of God, they are tied up in knots, bound by a terrible feeling inferiority, and chained to a deep sense of worthlessness. ~ David A. Seamands

We must stop using the Bible as though it were a potpourri of inerrant proof-texts by which we can bring people into bondage to our religious traditions ... We must no longer use the Bible as the Pharisees used the Torah when they gave it absolute and final status. Christian biblicism is no different from Jewish legalism. It is the old way of the letter, not the new way of the Spirit. ~ Robert D. Brinsmead

What happens when you speak colloquial Hebrew is you switch between registers all the time. So in a typical sentence, three words are biblical, one word is Russian, and one word is Yiddish. This kind of connection between very high language and very low language is very natural, people use it all the time. ~ Etgar Keret

We know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object ... At times the attention turns towards the object most intensely, and at times the energy flags. ~ Wilhelm Wundt

Betrayal clearly has its own reward: the small deep human satisfaction of having one up on someone else. It is the psychology of the mistress, and this regime used it as fuel. ~ Anna Funder

My mom is the type of mom who wonders why I haven't used my psychology degree to become a successful clinical psychologist. ~ Autre Ne Veut

Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision. ~ Criss Jami

It is presumptuous, personally and historically, to assume that one is a part of a "saving remnant." One had better doubt that one deserves such a distinction, and had better understand that there may, after all, be nothing left to save. Even so, if one wishes to save anything not protected by the present economy - topsoil, groves of old trees, the possibility of the goodness or health of anything, even the economic relevance of the biblical tradition - one is a part of a remnant, and a dwindling remnant too, though not without hope, and not without the necessary instructions, the most pertinent of which, perhaps, is this, also from Revelation: "Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die. ~ Wendell Berry

Family doesn't mean they are like the Waltons. No contact is for you and it makes you stronger then you know. The hardest thing for an empath is walking away from family, we always hoped for the best. ~ Tracy Malone

It is understandable if you are struggling to reconcile images of a smooth moving Justin Timberlake singing, "I'm bringing sexy back…" with the experience of working in aged care! Sexy is often everything that aged care is not. But by using the word "sexy" I am not referring to the high octane experience of being intimate with someone. Who knows though, your older adult clients may well want to talk about such things! How senior friendly to encourage this? What I am referring to is bringing the spice or pizzazz associated with respect back to our Western society that appears to have lost its way in valuing seniors. ~ Felicity Chapman