Patrik Olterman Rodhe > Patrik's Quotes

“When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation...”
― Dylan Morrison, The Prodigal Prophet

“The message of the Nazarene had been turned into a weapon in some religious power game. 'Look how they love one another' just didn't seem an apt description of the bizarre religious theatre I'd just witnessed.”
― Dylan Morrison, The Prodigal Prophet

“In retrospect, I now believe this expected donation of ten percent of income to the Fellowship was based on bad exegesis of an old Jewish taxation law that Jesus Himself seemed to completely ignore.”
― Dylan Morrison, The Prodigal Prophet

“Surely God loves to get out of church buildings and go visit people where they hunger for reality.”
― Dylan Morrison, The Prodigal Prophet

“This is a book about getting naked—not physically, but spiritually. It’s about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion—the Sunday-dress version people often call “organized religion.” And it’s about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin.”
― Brian D. McLaren

“There’s a lot of dirty theology out there, the religious counterpart to dirty politics and dirty business, I suppose. You might call it spiritual pornography—a kind of for-profit exploitative nakedness. It’s found in many of the same places as physical pornography (the Internet and cable TV for starters), and it promises similar things: instant intimacy, fantasy and make-believe, private voyeurism and vicarious experience, communion without commitment. That’s certainly not what we’re after in these pages. No, we’re after a lost treasure as old as the story of the Garden of Eden: the...”
― Brian D. McLaren

“They'll either want to kill you, kiss you, or be you.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“What have you been reading, The Gospel according to St. Bastard?!”
― Eddie Izzard

“Cake or death?”
― Eddie Izzard

“At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.”
― Brian D. McLaren

“You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking.1 You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you’ve found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You’ve been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you’ve lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you.”
― Brian D. McLaren

“In the previous few minutes, I had seen the most beautiful thing that eyes can see: the glory of God shining in the radiance of creation. I had heard the most beautiful thing that ears can hear: friends telling friends that they love one another. And I had felt the most beautiful thing that any heart can ever feel: the love of God and the love of others.”
― Brian D. McLaren

“an unknown and forgotten treasure of the earliest Christians, a manual for living used by the generation of Jesus followers immediately after the apostles.”
― Tony Jones

“What the Didache doesn’t say is that the community should shun or excommunicate those who commit the forbidden sins. In fact, “correct some, pray for others, and some you should love more than your own life” makes plain that the worst sinners should be showered with the most love.”
― Tony Jones

“One of our group said that a lot of people in church spend a lot of time correcting each other these days, but in order to correct another person in love, you really have to know that person. Only then, she told us, can you practice the kind of community that the Didache teaches.”
― Tony Jones

“There are two ways,” he told me, “and they are love and not love. I choose love.”
― Tony Jones

“I think people get excited about their perspective on sexuality because it gives them the feeling that, their failures notwithstanding, if they take a hard stand on what they consider to be godly, maybe God will be more merciful to them.”
― Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions Of Conscience For The Churches

“So many people, if the truth were known, live their lives on two levels. The principles they fight about are often at odds with the complicated and often frustrated lives they live. This is why there is so much intensity.”
― Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions Of Conscience For The Churches

“The polarization is such that the conservatives on this side have their prayer meeting and their choir meeting. And the liberals on this side have their prayer meeting and their choir meeting, and the two sides never get together and talk about it. The result is the tearing apart of the fabric of the body of Christ.”
― Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions Of Conscience For The Churches

“The practical consequence of both of the teachings noted is to encourage homosexual promiscuity. Church members can engage in many short-term liaisons without raising questions about their standing in the church. We tend not to pry into one another's private lives. But if a man brings another man to church with him regularly, if they give the same address and show signs of mutual affection, then there is likely to be a scandal. The dominant effect of church teaching is to encourage secret, temporary liaisons without commitment and to discourage long-term fidelity.”
― Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions Of Conscience For The Churches

“for God's sake, let's be done with the hypocrisy of claiming "I am a biblical literalist" when everyone is a selective literalist, especially those who swear by the antihomosexual laws in the Book of Leviticus and then feast on barbecued ribs and delight in Monday-night football, for it is toevali, an abomination, not only to eat pork but merely to touch the skin of a dead pig.”
― Walter Wink, Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions Of Conscience For The Churches

“This book might also be seen as “a Christian primer.” A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book’s purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak “Christian” fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus’s dying for our sins, and believing.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“In the end, it doesn’t matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without heart is not worth living.”
― John Eldredge

“Men as a class appear to be "at risk," maybe even at high risk.”
― Richard Rohr

“If we don't learn to mythologize our lives, inevitably we will pathologize them.”
― Richard Rohr