Quotes Tagged "orthodoxy"

(About changing faith) At our best, Christians embrace it, leaving enough space within orthodoxy for God to surprise us every now and then.

What is the basic difference between saying 'I know that God exists' and saying 'I know that love exists'?

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Orthodoxy is idolatry if it means holding the 'correct opinions about God' - 'fundamentalism' is the most extreme and salient example of such idolatry - but not if it means holding faith in the right way, that is, not holding it at all but being held by God, in love and service. Theology is idolatry if it means what we say about God instead of letting ourselves be addressed by what God has to say to us. Faith is idolatrous if it is rigidly self-certain but not if it is softened in the waters of 'doubt.

Could a body broken and blood spilled two thousand years ago restore my own damaged life?

As I ponder my pilgrim’s progress to Orthodoxy, however, I realize that I didn’t make the trip alone, but in a two-seater. And I wasn’t the one driving.

Atheism, true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.

Everything in this life passes away — only God remains, only He is worth struggling towards. We have a choice: to follow the way of this world, of the society that surrounds us, and thereby find ourselves outside of God; or to choose the way of life, to choose God Who calls us and for Whom our heart is searching.

Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed, it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the ‘truth’ with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us … that will cost us everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it.

Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.

Heresy is the life of a mythology and orthodoxy is the death.

Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.

I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.

One century's saint is the next century's heretic ... and one century's heretic is the next century's saint. It is as well to think long and calmly before affixing either name to any man.

Extreme orthodoxy betrays by its very frenzy that the poison of skepticism has entered the soul of the church; for men insist most vehemently upon their certainties when their hold upon them has been shaken. Frantic orthodoxy is a method for obscuring doubt.

To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance)really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being.

mystics” and so on, end up bound in yet another form of orthodoxy or extremism, replete with the primal psychological germs of supernaturalism.

I am the wind, when I flow among the Christians, I am Christian, when among the Muslims, I am Muslim, when among the Jews, I am Jew, when among the Hindus, I am Hindu, when among the Atheists, I am Atheist, but when among the fundamentalists, I am a purifying tornado.

Abandon the ceremonies and become an Awakened Soul – a soul that sees no color but the color of joy – no religion but the religion of love – no language but the language of compassion. Become compassionate my friend – become brave my friend! That is true religion. There is nothing else.

Destroy such shining altars that spread bigotry - demolish such glorious churches and temples that proclaim divine supremacy - burn such glistening crucifixes, scriptures and idols that are used to preach weakness and segregation - obliterate every single trace of orthodoxy from the face of this planet, not with violence, but with awareness - and work - work to uplift the downtrodden - work to elevate the impoverished - work to raise those abandoned by fortune and opportunity - only then you shall have the rightful place under the sun as a holy human being.