Universal Priesthood Quotes

The assembly (ekklesia) is the family -- the household -- of God. The Lord Jesus is the only one with absolute authority, and He is the chief feeder of all the saints. Therefore, as brothers and sisters in the same family, everyone is equal in status, but some may be relatively ahead of others in life experiences and knowledge ~ Henry Hon

Every believer is called to teach and each needs to exercise toward this function. Otherwise, they will remain a babe and never mature. Sharing what the believer has learned should begin as soon as a person comes to know the Lord. ~ Henry Hon

In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the capacity to read, understand, and apply the teachings of the Bible. Yet one of the contributions of the sacred philology of the biblical humanists to the Reformation was an insistence that, in practice, often contradicted the notion of the universal priesthood: the Bible had to be understood on the basis of the authentic original text, written in Hebrew and Greek which, most of the time, only clergy and theologians could comprehend properly. Thus the scholarly authority of the Reformation clergy replaced the priestly authority of the medieval clergy. ~ Jaroslav Pelikan

The radical Christian Right calls for exclusion, cruelty and intolerance in the name of God. Its members do not commit evil for evil's sake. They commit evil to make a better world. To attain this better world, they believe, some must suffer and be silenced, and at the end of time all those who oppose them must be destroyed. The worst suffering in human history has been carried out by those who preach such grand, utopian visions, those who seek to implant by force their narrow, particular version of goodness. This is true for all doctrines of personal salvation, from Christianity to ethnic nationalism to communism to fascism. Dreams of a universal good create hells of persecution, suffering and slaughter. No human being could ever be virtuous enough to attain such dreams, and the Earth has swallowed millions of hapless victims in the vain pursuit of a new heaven and a new Earth. Ironically, it is idealism that leads radical fundamentalists to strip human beings of their dignity and their sanctity and turn them into abstractions. Yet it is only by holding on to the sanctity of each individual, each human life, only by placing our faith in tiny, unheroic acts of compassion and kindness, that we survive as a community and as individual human beings. These small acts of kindness are deeply feared and subversive to these idealists. ~ Chris Hedges

This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society. ~ David Hume

Perhaps the immense Milky Way which on clear nights we behold stretching across the heavens, this vast encircling ring in which our planetary system is itself but a molecule, is in its turn but a cell in the Universe, in the Body of God. All the cells of our body combine and co-operate in maintaining and kindling by their activity our consciousness, our soul; and if the consciousness or the souls of all these cells entered completely into our consciousness, into the composite whole, if I possessed consciousness of all that happens in my bodily organism, I should feel the universe happening within myself, and perhaps the painful sense of my limitedness would disappear. And if all the consciousness of all beings unite in their entirety in the universal consciousness, this consciousness - that is to say, God - is all.
In every instant obscure consciousnesses, elementary souls, are born and die within us, and their birth and death constitute our life. And their sudden and violent death constitutes our pain. And in like manner, in the heart of God consciousnesses are born and die - but do they die? - and their births and deaths constitute His life.
If there is a Universal and Supreme Consciousness, I am an idea in it; and is it possible for any idea in this Supreme Consciousness to be completely blotted out? After I have died, God will go on remembering me, and to be remembered by God, to have my consciousness sustained by the Supreme Consciousness, is not that, perhap ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Ultimately, the decision to save the environment must come from the human heart. The key point is a call for a genuine sense of universal responsibility that is based on love, compassion and clear awareness. ~ Dalai Lama

The blessings of the priesthood are available to every righteous man and woman. We may all receive the Holy Ghost, obtain personal revelation, and be endowed in the temple, from which we emerge 'armed' with power. ~ Sheri L. Dew

If Only We Had Taller Been

The fence we walked between the years
Did bounce us serene.
It was a place half in the sky where
In the green of leaf and promising of peach
We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky,
If we could reach and touch, we said,
'Twould teach us, not to ,never to, be dead.

We ached and almost touched that stuff;
Our reach was never quite enough.
If only we had taller been,
And touched God's cuff, His hem,
We would not have to go with them
Who've gone before,
Who, short as us, stood tall as they could stand
And hoped by stretching, tall, that they might keep their land,
Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.
But they, like us, were standing in a hole.

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measured out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam's finger forth
As on the Sistene Ceiling,
And God's hand come down the other way
To measure man and find him Good,
And Gift him with Forever's Day?
I work for that.

Short man, Large dream, I send my rockets forth
between my ears,
Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years.
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall:
We've reached Alpha Centauri!
We're tall, O God, we're tall! ~ Ray Bradbury

Next morning, Emma had more of unusual impressions, from the nightdream she saw before the moment she woke up:

The girl flew inside some darkness, feeling really tired; soon, she decided to have a nap laying onto… some Galaxy! She was herself as big as the Universe… Or was it she the part of that macrocosm? ~ Sahara Sanders

There will never be a universal way of cooking, but information will always be universally useful. ~ Wylie Dufresne

Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time. ~ Jennifer Egan

We have raised an issue that is already in the Bolivian constitution, that water is a universal human right. And we asked the United Nations to recognize water as a human right. ~ Evo Morales

I don't think it has to be one religious structure, one church. I think the issues of faith and redemption are much more universal than any one religion. ~ Kathleen Turner

The egoist ... destroys the universal importance accorded to moral law by showing that life independent of it is possible. Secondly, and even more intolerably to the pious, he manages to do so with shameless enjoyment. ~ John Carroll

Patriarchy is a fundamental imbalance underlying society And it's one we rarely address because it's so universal. But as I get older, I see that peace is a product of balance. ~ Ani DiFranco

Darwinism has become our culture's official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia. ~ Nancy Pearcey

A wisdom as constant as the North Star shines within all of us. It is always present. waiting to be tapped, waiting to guide us, to advise us. We need only use it to prevent its atrophy. No matter what our background, profession, color, or religion, employing this universal compass, this innate sense of what we know to be true, will help us establish a lifelong foundation - a place we go to recover our sanity and to regain our balance. ~ Nancy Cobb

It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such conclusion. ~ Sigmund Freud

A belief in God's universal love to all his creatures, and that he will finally restore all of them that are miserable to happiness, is a polar truth ... It establishes the equality of [humanity] ... ~ Benjamin Rush

It's important for American soldiers to be culturally sensitive when deployed in foreign countries. But it's just as important for the U.S. never to renounce the most fundamental American values, which, after all, are also universal values. ~ Gary Bauer

What matters is the need to move from the rigidity of national stereotypes towards something more truly human; what matters is to discover the riches of human hearts and souls; what matters is the human content of poetry and science, the universal charm and beauty of architecture; what matters is the magnanimity of a nation's leaders and historical figures. only by exalting what is truly human, only by fusing the national with what is universally human, can try dignity - and true freedom - be achieved.
It is the struggle for freedom of thought and expression, the struggle for a peasant's freedom to sow what he wants to sow, for everyone's freedom to enjoy the fruits of their own work - this is the true struggle for national dignity.
The only real triumph of national freedom is one that brings about the triumph of all human freedom.
For small nations and large nations alike, this is the only way forward.
And it goes without saying that the Russians too - as well as Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kalmyks and Uzbeks - must understand that it is precisely through renouncing the idea of their own national superiority that they can truly affirm the grandeur and dignity of their own people, of their own literature and science. ~ Vasily Grossman

The single most important way to encourage women and girls to stand up for their rights is education, and we can do far more to promote universal education in poor countries. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

I wonder now how we got by when you weren't here."
"I have no doubt the devastation was widespread, the suffering universal."
"Indeed, it was the Dark Ages in the annals of Mrs. Dawlish's house. Ignorance was thick on the ground, and unenlkghtenment befogged all the windows. ~ Sherry Thomas

Newness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness. ~ Theodor Adorno

Yellowstone, of all the national parks, is the wildest and most universal in its appeal... Daily new, always strange, ever full of change, it is Nature's wonder park. It is the most human and the most popular of all parks. -Yellowstone Park for Your Vacation (circa 1920s) ~ Susan Rugh

ANOINT, v.t.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood, So pigs to lead the populace are greased good. ~ Liu Shaoqi

We must remember that man is not an island, totally isolated and disconnected from others. We are all part of a universal chain, or the universal consciousness. What happens to one happens to all. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. ~ Blaise Pascal

The priesthood of all believers did not make everyone into church workers; rather, it turned every kind of work into a sacred calling. ~ Gene Edward Veith Jr.

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and by that right, he has forged chains around his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. ~ Emma Goldman

[Large countries'] patriotism is different: they are buoyed by their glory, their importance, their universal mission. The Czechs loved their country not because it was glorious but because it was unknown; not because it was big but because it was small and in constant danger. Their patriotism was an enormous compassion for their country. ~ Milan Kundera

At this point, godless materialists might be cheering. If humans evolved strictly by mutation and natural selection, who needs God to explain us? To this, I reply: I do. The comparison of chimp and human sequences, interesting as it is, does not tell us what it means to be human. In my views, DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God. Freeing God from the burden of special acts of creation does not remove Him as the source of the things that make humanity special, and of the universe itself. It merely shows us something of how He operates. ~ Francis S. Collins

Man-centeredness is the universal religion of fallen man, and we are all dull fools to deny this. ~ Michael John Beasley

I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession. ~ Aleister Crowley

We cannot enjoy power in the priesthood until we learn to act by faith. ~ Robert L. Millet

Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world. ~ John Ortberg

I think there are universal principles that we should want to understand, but that are not necessarily good for us. We could recognise universal propensities which current cultures can't fully eradicate, which we would want to eradicate if we could. Let's say, a tendency for tribal violence. Or racism. ~ Sam Harris

The religious way is the deep way, the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles of the heart of every phenomenon. The religious way is the way that touches universal relationships; that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feelings of kinship. ~ Sophia Lyon Fahs

I've actually heard people protesting furiously about straight male costume people as well. It's not universal and there are examples that break the mould all over the place. In my experience, it's more prevalent in the UK than in America. ~ Colin Firth

Through radio I look forward to a United States of the World. Radio is standardizing the peoples of the Earth, English will become the universal language because it is predominantly the language of the ether. The most important aspect of radio is its sociological influence. (1926) ~ Arthur E. Kennelly

SDT, by contrast, begins with a notion of universal human needs. It argues that we have three innate psychological needs - competence, autonomy, and relatedness. ~ Daniel H. Pink

Although the American Standard Version (1901) had used "Jehovah" to render the tetragrammaton (the sound of y being represented by j and the sound of w by v, as in Latin), for two reasons the Committees that produced the RSV and the NRSV returned to the more familiar usage of the King James Version. (1) The word "Jehovah" does not accurately represent any form of the divine name ever used in Hebrew. (2) The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom the true God had to be distinguished, began to be discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian church. ~ Anonymous

For American families, Universal pre-K is an essential piece of the puzzle that not only allows their kids to get a good start, but it also allows mothers to remain on the job earning a paycheck and helping our economy grow. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand

Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

O miracle - thus to be able to give [peace] we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands! ~ Georges Bernanos