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“Your vote should not be cast in fear. A fearful vote will lead to harm in two ways. First, it will ensure that your vote is made selfishly; from a desire to protect yourself and your interests rather than a desire to serve and bless others. Second, a fearful vote is usually won by a candidate that employed fear to gain support. Where the fires of fear are stoked, the warm glow of Christian love will not long endure. Those who think making people afraid will result in flourishing are deluded. They are not on a path paved by Christ that leads toward his kingdom, no matter how many Bibles they display or Christian endorsements they secure. A fearful vote is a vote for demagoguery not divinity.”
― Skye Jethani, The Voting Booth: A new vision for Christian engagement in a post-Christian culture

“Exodus and Exile are motivated by fear, as we’ve already established. Their paths require you to clearly identify the enemy your are fleeing or fighting. In fact, those who’ve dedicated themselves to one of those paths will often fixate far more on their cultural enemies than on Jesus Christ. They will define themselves and their communities by what or who they are against. That is why I say they must have a devil, but the presence of God on their paths is entirely optional and often ignored.”
― Skye Jethani, The Voting Booth: A new vision for Christian engagement in a post-Christian culture

“You can complain and lament your culture as Exodus and Exile advise, or you can learn to choose it. You can accept this time and this place as what God has assigned to you for a reason. You can embrace the heavy beam of your culture and under its weight find a blessing you did not expect. True joy comes when we learn to choose what we did not choose.”
― Skye Jethani, The Voting Booth: A new vision for Christian engagement in a post-Christian culture

“The tendency to view the holistic work of the church as the action of the privileged toward the marginalized often derails the work of true community healing.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“In difficult times or times of great challenge, the people of God are tempted to believe solutions that are easy to follow because they aligns with what they desire.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“The funeral dirge opening of Lamentations and the first three verses of Lamentations 1 reminds us that grief that emerges from a very real and painful history must be acknowledged.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“We have yet to engage in a proper funeral dirge for our tainted racial history and continue to deny the deep spiritual stronghold of a nation that sought to justify slavery.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“Lament leads to petition which leads to praise Gods' response to the petition.”
― Soong-Chan Rah

“The evangelical culture moves too quickly to praise from lament. We do not hear from all of the voices in the North American evangelical context. Instead, we opt for quick and easy answers to complex issues.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“An important aspect of Lamentations is the challenge to accept historical reality and to embrace God's sovereignty over history. We are called to lament over suffering and pain, but also to recognize God's larger work.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“The language of lament is the language of humility.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“The difficult topic of racial reconciliation requires the intersection of celebration and suffering.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“The term justice is too casually thrown about without the corresponding sacrifice. We want the popularity associated with being justice activists, but we don't want to lament alongside those who suffer. | The city lament calls us to remember to ongoing pain that is very real on the streets of the city. The funeral dirge calls us to not ignore the painful history. The communal lament reminds us that while sin is personal, it must never be seen as individualistic.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“Consumerism and materialism have so successfully infiltrated American Christianity to the extent that we no longer question or even notice them.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“Just reach a hand across. Let's be equals and partners. I don't need you to rescue me, just like you don't think you need rescuing by me. My rescuer is a Jewish carpenter. I want to be a colaborer in Christ with you, not your reclamation project.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“American exceptionalism embraces a work-centered soteriology, believing that the United States of American has earned a special status before God, attaining favor through her exceptional actions. This assumption stands in stark contrast to the humility and dependence on God revealed in the book of Lamentations.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“We cannot "solve" the problem of race in America while ignoring our deep and painful history. Our tendency to ignore our tainted history may arise from a warped self-perception. We do not need to deal with our tainted past because we have risen above that problematic history and moved to a postracial, colorblind America. An assumed exceptionalism belies the belief that we do not have to deal with our history because through our exceptional status we have overcome the past. The destruction of black bodes and black minds can be justified because their sacrifice helped to build our exceptional nation.”
― Soong-Chan Rah

“Listening to the suffering community does not imply that one party is completely innocent while the other party is completely guilty. Instead, it acknowledges that the the dead body in the street is once again the body of a black male.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“Lament will not allow us to revert to easy answers. There is no triumphalistic and exceptionalistic narrative of the American church that can cover up justice. There are no easy answers to unabated suffering. Lament continues.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

“From a Christian perspective, justice must have a real objective existence, because justice derives from God, and God exists apart form human speculation. Justice is real because God is real. But our capacity to know God's universal justice is unavoidably conditioned by the ways of looking at life and the world which we receive from the particular historical and religious traditions to which we belong. This is where the Bible comes in.”
― Chris Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach To The Bible's Teachings On Justice

“Justice is the objective foundation of all reality. This justice is known, not primarily through philosophical speculation, but through observing God's actions to liberate the oppressed and through heeding God's word in the Low and the Prophets to protect an care for the weak. This means that our knowledge of justice spring ultimately from our knowledge of God, and that there can be no true knowledge of God without an appreciation of God's own unfailing dedication to justice.”
― Chris Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach To The Bible's Teachings On Justice

“Emulating God's justice is, according to the Biblical prophets, the evidence of what it means to know God. True knowledge of God entails both an appreciation of God's own unswerving devotion to justice and a commitment to live one's personal life in conformity to God's justice [see Hosea 4:1-2, 5:3, 6:6; Jeremiah 2:8; 4:22; 9:2-6, 24, 22:16; Isaiah 58:2. Titus 1:16; 1 John 4:8]”
― Chris Marshall, Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach To The Bible's Teachings On Justice

“From a Christian perspective, justice must have a real objective existence, because justice derives from God, and God exists apart form human speculation. Justice is real because God is real. But our capacity to know God's universal justice is unavoidably conditioned by the ways of looking at life and the world which we receive from the particular historical and religious traditions to which we belong. This is where the Bible comes in.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Biblical hope - that confident expectation of a better future - is rooted in the knowledge of God's justice and faithfulness. Because God is the source and champion of justice, and because God is utterly reliable, there is always hope for positive change.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“No political system or economic order can ever be regarded as the full, or even as an adequate, realization of justice. All human social structures and centers of power are denied ultimate significance. Every human attempt to create justice, when measured against the perfect justice of God's coming kingdom, is inescapably partial and limited.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Present injustices must never simply be tolerated or accepted as inevitable. We are not meant to resign ourselves to the evils of the world, while waiting passively for God's coming to sweep them away. Instead, we are to work tirelessly in partnership with God for the greater attainment of justice her and now, knowing that God shall ultimately bring our efforts to fruition in the renewal of creation. God's coming justice is the culmination of no a substitute for, human string for greater justice here and now.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Justice is not a static ideal; it is not the maintenance of some steady state in society. The accent in biblical justice falls on positive action, the exercising of power to resist the oppressor and set the oppressed free. This is why Amos pictures justice as a thundering river that than as in the Western tradition, a neatly balanced set of scales [Amos 5:21-24].”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“Contrary to what many people think today, punishment as such is not what satisfies the demands of justice. Justice is satisfied by repentance, restoration, and renewal. Punishment serves as a mechanism for helping to promote such restoration.”
― Christopher D. Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice: A Fresh Approach to the Bible's Teaching on Justice

“We're supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get legal assistance they need - all so we can kill them we less resistance.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy