Christianity Religion Quotes

The fool has said in his heart: pass me another Everlasting God-Stopper, please. ~ M.J. McGuire

All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen it long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity that he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton has more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete -- Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire -- all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called "tinny". It wasn't that I didn't like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books. ~ C.S. Lewis

The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium and the centres of learning were eliminated, their vestiges effaced and the edifice of Greek learning was obliterated. Everything the ancient Greeks had brought to light vanished, and the discoveries of the ancients were altered out of recognition. ~ Mas'udi

I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them, church is on Sundays, and we have an awesome band...if the found out 1/6th of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess...

But listen, early church, we have a monthly event called 'Mocha chicks', we have choir practice every Wednesday, we organize retreats with door prizes, we're raising $3 million for an outdoor amphitheater, we have catchy t-shirts, we don't smoke or say the f-word, we go to bible study every semester...

the local church would be the heartbeat of the city. ~ Jen Hatmaker

That Christ has from the beginning been intending to point His hearers to Himself as the source of all spiritual life is plain from the language He uses. The hunger and thirst that He satisfies is not physical hunger or physical thirst. Instead, the one who "hungers after righteousness" is the one who finds satisfaction in Christ Jesus. There is no limit to the supply of spiritual food that can be provided by Christ the Lord. His is a never-ending store of satisfaction for all who hunger and thirst for truth and righteousness. ~ James R. White

Only the sixth sense can expose what the other five have hidden. ~ Matthew A. Petti

The greatest trick Christianity ever pulled was convincing the world that Satan exists. ~ Aaron B. Powell

Not only is this not love; I think it is the most diabolical unfairness that was ever taught or devised. ~ Ruth Hurmence Green

Tony the Beat Poet says the church is like a wounded animal these days. He says we used to have power and influence, but now we don't, and so many of our leaders are upset about this and acting like spoiled children, mad because they can't have their way. They disguise their actions to look as though they are standing on principle, but it isn't that, Tony says, it's bitterness. They want to take their ball and go home because they have to sit the bench. Tony and I agree that what God wants to do is sit the bench in humility and turn the other cheek like Gandhi, like Jesus. We decided that the correct place to share our faith was from a place of humility and love, not from a desire for power. ~ Donald Miller

God may sometimes laugh at our plans. But if they are based on a Heavenly and eternal perspective, He will always support us. On His timetable, not ours. ~ Paul Turk

I just cannot help but feel as though [Christianity] cheapens life. After all, what we must conclude at the end of the day is this disheartening and somewhat debilitating possibility: everything you think, feel, hope for, long for, experience, taste, smell, touch, learn, comprehend, discover, create, work toward, work on, and do, means absolutely nothing to the Christian God if you do not have faith in Jesus. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

They know they dare not have their stuff stripped down to plain words. These Bishops and parsons with their beloved Christianity are like a man who has poisoned his wife and says her body's too sacred for a post-mortem. Nowadays, by the light we have, any ecclesiastic must be born blind or an intellectual rascal. Don't tell me. The world's had this apostolic succession of oily old humbugs from early Egypt onwards, trying to come it over people. Antiquity's no excuse. A sham is no better for being six thousand years stale. Christianity's no more use to us now than
the Pyramids. ~ H.G.Wells

Her total intellectual association was the Bible, except the talk of Samuel and her children, and to them she did not listen. In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her salvation. She never studied the Bible or inspected it; she just read it. The many places where it seems to refute itself did not confuse her in the least. And finally she came to a point where she knew it so well that she went right on reading it without listening. ~ John Steinbeck

If Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times and not in thee thyself; then art thou lost eternally. ~ Angelus Silesius

Christianity is a way of life - not a dogma! ~ Stefan Emunds

The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are. ~ Sam Harris

No one who believes that Jesus died for man can doubt the validity and efficacy of vicarious ministration. ~ James E. Talmage

Christian thought, from the outset, denies that (in themselves) suffering, death, and evil have any ultimate value or spiritual meaning at all. It claims that they are cosmic contingencies, ontological shadows, intrinsically devoid of substance or purpose, however much God may - under the conditions of a fallen order - make them the occasions for accomplishing his good ends. ~ David Bentley Hart

Real decisions are not something we can pick up without taking time to hunt for them. ~ Jason E. Royle

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. [ ... ] If something is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us. I could see it so clearly, and I could see it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did. ~ Donald Miller

We don't need the gospels, we need the fiery men who wrote them! ~ Rudolfo Anaya

Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn't come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called Christianity. ~ Rob Bell

Why would you accept the Jesus of the Bible, if you have rejected the Bible of Jesus? ~ Wes Moore

The disobedience if Eve in the Genesis story has been used to justify women's inequality and suffering in many Christian traditions. Thus, what is understood as women's complicity in evil leads much traditional theological reflection on suffering to offer the "consequent admonition to 'grin and bear it' because such is the deserved place of women." Similarly, when Jesus is seen as a divine co-sufferer, the potentially liberating narratives of Jesus as a revolutionary leader who takes the side of the poor and dispossessed can be ignored in favor of religious beliefs more interested in Jesus as a stoic victim. Christ's suffering is inverted and used to justify women's continued suffering in systems of injustice by framing it as redemptive. ~ Melissa V. Harris-Perry

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest ~ Alfred De Musset

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. ~ Thomas Paine

We trust that God is the loving Creator of all that is and that every individual is made in God's picture and similarity. ~ Whatdoyouknowaboutgod

When we lose our spiritual vocabulary, we lose much more than words. We lose the power of speaking grace, forgiveness, love, and justice over others. ~ Jonathan Merritt

In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Deity, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.
Religion's first lesson is humility; its fruit, charity. In the great and sublime ends of Providence, little things are lost, and least of all is he imbued with a right spirit who believes that insignificant observances, subtleties of doctrine, and minor distinctions, enter into the great essentials of the Christian character. The wisest thing for him who is disposed to cavil at the immaterial habits of his neighbor, to split straws on doctrine, to fancy trifles of importance, and to place the man before principles, would be to distrust himself. ~ James Fenimore Cooper

Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid. ~ Richard Rohr

I want Jesus to come back and say 'THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT' - ~ Margaret Cho

I studied every page of this book, and I didn't find enough love to fill a salt shaker. God is not love in the Bible; God is vengeance, from Alpha to Omega. ~ Ruth Hurmence Green

Conservative Christians take every word of the Bible literally except for the part about Loving Thy Neighbor. ~ J.Adam Snyder

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Archdeacon Peter's face was like stone. He was the worst kind of Christian, Philip realized: he embraced all of the negatives, enforced every proscription, insisted on all forms of denial, and demanded strict punishment for every offense; yet he ignored all the compassion of Christianity, denied its mercy, flagrantly disobeyed its ethic of love, and openly flouted the gentle laws of Jesus. That's what the Pharisees were like, Philip thought; no wonder the Lord preferred to eat with publicans and sinners. ~ Ken Follett

The early Christians built a small shrine over his tomb. As Christianity spread, the shrine got bigger, layer upon layer, culminating in this collosal basilica. The entire Catholic faith had been built, quite literally, upon St Peter. The rock. ~ Dan Brown

But it was never actually that big a deal. Jenkins didn't really disbelieve in the Resurrection: he merely questioned the historical veracity of the New Testament narratives. It was mildly interesting: one side saying "I really believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and that the Bible gives a journalistically accurate account of the circumstances surrounding his birth," and the other saying "I also really believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but I think that the story of Mary and Gabriel may be a legend." A real disagreement, an important one, but not a fundamental fault line along which a church can split. The people who think that the stone really was rolled away, and the people who think that it was rolled away in a very real sense are clearly part of the same religion. But it is hard to see how people who think that it doesn't particularly matter whether or not the stone was rolled away, provided we live in the way that Jesus would have wanted us to, are part of the same religion; or, indeed, of any religion at all.
I think that this is what some evangelicals think some liberals think. I think they may be right. ~ Andrew Rilstone

When our institutions lack movement to propel them forward, the Spirit, I believe, simply moves around them, like a current flowing around a rock in a stream...without that soul work that teaches us to open our deepest selves to God and ground our souls in love, no movement will succeed and no institution will stand...it is the linking of action and contemplation, great work and deep spirituality, that keeps goodness, rightness, beauty, and aliveness flowing...as Pope Francis has said, this moment calls for social poets: sincere and creative people who will rise on the wings of faith to catch the wind of the Spirit, the wind of justice, joy, and peace. (p. 180) ~ Brian McLaren

Besides, these box-checking Christians having such a majority is largely in our favor. Their ubiquity is inversely proportional to their efficacy. ~ Geoffrey Wood

The world is not composed of religious and non-religious people. It is composed rather of religious people who have differing ultimate concerns, different gods, and who respond to the Living God in different ways. ~ Ronald H. Nash

Oppression theology and supremacist spirituality developed in the belief ecosystem of an angry God who needed appeasement in order to dispense grace, who favored some and disfavored others, and who welcomed the favored into religious institutions that accumulated and hoarded privilege and protected the status quo. ~ Brian McLaren

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. ~ Thomas Paine

The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn to the suffering and death of Christ - the blood of Christ. This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death. ~ John Piper

I would sooner read five lines of the Bible than hear five masses in the "Church". ~ Anne Askew

We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings of Christ. ~ John Piper

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither. ~ C.S. Lewis

Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code. ~ Bertrand Russell

These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died. ~ James W. Loewen

We feel like acting like a Christian, following the steps of Christ, is much more important than following a doctrine. ~ Isabel Ruiz Lucero

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. ~ John Fante

One of the most important elements in the evolution of human institutions is the emergence of the difficult customer within the system itself, the radical who starts to question its very being, the reformer who calls for changes in the way it runs. ~ Richard Holloway

Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be "scriptural." I could select Sartre's "Existentialism and Humanism" off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his "word" at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Don't fight a battle that Jesus has already won the victory for! ~ Kathy McClary

But you must still know to respect other people's faith.'
'Why? We don't respect any other delusion. We lock up people who believe they're Christ, yet we're supposed to humour those who believe in him.'
'By definition, faith is irrational: a belief you hold against the normal rules of evidence.'
'In which case I believe in Jedi ~ Michael Arditti

The church I mentioned will be established, but its foundation, in order to be truly solid, will be dug in flesh, its walls made from the cement of renunciation, tears, agony, anguish, every conceivable form of death. ~ Jose Saramago

You always have a place to run to, always. The place is GOD. ~ Armor Of God

Yet Jesus Christ says he is standing knocking at the door of our lives, waiting. Notice that he is standing at the door, not pushing it; speaking to us, not shouting. This is all the more remarkable when we reflect that the house is his in any case. He is the architect; he designed it. He is the builder; he made it. He is the landlord; he bought it with his own blood. So it is his by right of plan, construction, and purchase. We are only tenants in a house that does not belong to us. He could put his shoulder to the door; he prefers to put his hand on the knocker. He could command us to open to him; instead, he merely invites us to do so. He will not force an entry to anybody's life. He says (verse 18) 'I counsel you.' He could issue orders; he is content to give advice. This is the nature of his humility and the extent of the freedom he has given us. ~ John R.W. Stott

The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion ~ Anthony Trollope

Christianity is a religion in a rush. ~ Yann Martel

Spiritual awakening is not ultimately the work of invisible cultural forces. Instead, it is the work of learning to see differently, of prayer, and of conversion. It is something people do. ~ Diana Butler Bass

Don't follow a defeated foe. Follow Christ. It is costly. You will be an exile in this age. But you will be free. ~ John Piper

You have learned that it is impossible to divide things neatly, and that the second you begin to define something, you limit it. There is no such thing as "cut and dried" in a world of broken humanity. Gray bleeds into gray bleeds into gray, no matter how you slice it. ~ Addie Zierman

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. ~ Thomas Paine

If the Bible is accurate in its assertions (a generous statement on our part), then we must also observe that anyone who ultimately comes to God does so because God made it happen. But this seems to imply that God makes it happen for some but doesn't make it happen for others. Why? Is this fair? Is this good? Is this justice? Is this love? ~ Michael Vito Tosto

Christianity rejects tolerance and demands choice, wherein lies its greatest flaw - one of a multitude of contradictions found throughout the Bible and the historical doctrine of the Church. ~ Aaron B. Powell

I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained, and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul. ~ Donald Miller

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects
with their Christianity latent. ~ C.S. Lewis

The world will brin its condemnation. They may even put their sword behind it. But we know that the highest courst has already ruled in our favor. 'If God is for us, who can be against us?' (Romans 8:31) No one successfully If they reject us, he accepts us. If they hate us, he loves us. If they imprison us, he sets our spirits free. If they afflict us, he refines us by the fire. If they kill us, he makes it a passage to paradise. They cannot defeat us. Christ has died. Christ has risen. We are alive in him. And in him there is no condemnation. We are forgiven, and we are righteous. 'And the righteous are bold as a lion.' (Proverbs 28:1) ~ John Piper

The church must change, Brother,' Gheorg had said one day long ago, back when they were still theology students at the University of Leipzig. Christian faith cannot be the tool of a monarch who sells God's pardon in exchange for money and power. Our Lord speaks to ALL men, Mathias. The Church must be a place where all men can meet and pray, not a place where they must submit to the power of other men. God's word must reach everyone equally. ~ Riccardo Bruni

I always tell my Western friends that it is best to keep your own tradition. Changing religion is not easy and sometimes causes confusion. You must value your tradition and honor your own religion. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God. ~ Bob Pierce

I honestly don't know whether I am describing something essential about the way we know God or merely my own weakness of mind. ~ Christian Wiman

Peruse all the sermons of Jesus and you will be sure to find parables, and sometimes allegory. What you will always find, however, is something of keeping our hearts in order. ~ Jerome Strong

The world will not change by our position in the Universe. Actions change when beliefs change; collective actions and beliefs change the world. ~ Matthew A. Petti

If I had said that I didn't want to know if Christianity was true, David would not have pursued our conversations any further. He had long before realized that people who want to avoid the truth usually succeeded. ~ Nabeel Qureshi

I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so. ~ Adolf Hitler

It was ... the Great White God de-throned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw that we weren't the measure of all things, but that there was no measure. ~ Pat Barker

When our passion for the Great Commission, becomes our search for the Great Politician, we know we're lost. ~ Wes Moore

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. ~ C.S. Lewis

Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious
defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking
after himself. ~ Richard Dawkins

Sin is when you turn away from God - or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that's authentic, the self that contains the potential to be fully human, fully fulfilled and fully alive. ~ Susan Howatch

Did you realize that much of the original Bible included chapters of Gnostic wisdom?" Ambrose said. "They were purged from the King James Version, many of them lost and destroyed. Lost wisdom destroyed out of fear and narrow-mindedness. They were misunderstood, reviled, much like your own Mormon texts, as not fitting with the clockwork view of the universe as presented by the lying god's groveling servants. ~ R.S. Belcher

...no matter how liberal a church may seem, Christian dogma still revolves around an ancient, paternalistic image of God the Father, who quite frankly isn't much more believable than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

I believe above the storm, the smallest prayer will still be heard. I believe that someone in that great somewhere hears every word. ~ LeAnn Rimes

The doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture. ~ Pope Paul V

One religion is as true as another. ~ Robert Burton

I confess that there is nothing to teach: no religion, no science, no writings which will lead your mind back to Spirit. Today I speak this way, tomorrow that, but always the Path is beyond words and beyond mind. ~ Laozi

While just government protects all in their religious rites, true religion affords government its surest support. ~ George Washington

Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. ~ Richard Dawkins

One may sigh for all that one loses in giving up the old religion ... but the new irreligion is the manlier, honester and simpler thing, and affords a better throry of life and a more solid basis for morality. ~ Charles Eliot Norton

I concede to my atheist opponents that belief or unbelief is a choice. As a choice, it is based upon desire. I desire, and therefore choose to believe in, one kind of universe, one that has laws and purpose with justice woven into its very fabric. The unbeliever desires, and therefore chooses to believe in, a chaotic universe where the dead remain dead and actions have no effect beyond their immediately observable consequences. ~ Peter Hitchens

I was raised religious. I was raised Christian. And there's a lot of edgy topics and things that go on with religion, but to me the most important thing, is that the first thing is that you're supposed to love everyone the same and not judge anyone ... Technically, we're all the same. And everybody makes mistakes. So no one is better than another person. ~ Tyler Hoechlin

After being raised as an evangelical Christian, I for years assumed that Christianity was the default - there were Christians, and then there were weirdos. I was shocked when, in college, I found that some people get offended when you tell them, for instance, that their recovery from surgery was a 'miracle.' ~ David Wong

The attitude that psychologists call inflation and the traditional lore of Cabalistic magic, borrowing a term from religion, calls spiritual pride is one of the most serious dangers of this work.

Those who enter the path of magic with too great an appetite for flattery or too strong a need for ego reinforcement will very likely find these things, but they are also rather too likely to find fanaticism, megalomania and mental breakdown along the same route. The thing has happened far too often in the history of magic in the West. ~ John Michael Greer

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What is morality? It is not the following of enjoined rules of conduct. It is not a question of standing above temptations, or of conquering hate, anger, greed, lust and violence.
Questioning your actions before and after creates the moral problem. What is responsible for this situation is the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong and influencing your actions accordingly.Life is action. Unquestioned action is morality. Questioning your actions is destroying the expression of life. A person who lets life act in its own way without the protective movement of thought has no self to defend. What need will he have to lie or cheat or pretend or to commit any other act which his society considers immoral? ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

I often wonder what kind of person I would be, had I been born in another country, century, or culture. Would I be the same person at heart, or is the heart I know merely the product of a lifetime of circumstances, experiences and relationships? Understanding the 'why' when it comes to human nature is immensely important, particularly when it comes to the villains in our lives. Knowing the subtle differences between hero and villain is to understand the tiny threads which hold the villain back from redemption, and which prevent the hero's own descent into darkness. ~ J. Swann

The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you. ~ Foundation For Inner Peace