Eric Scot > Eric's Quotes

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
― Augustine

“To say on the authority of the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man would do, is to lie against God; to say that it is therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of God.”
― George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons - Series I, II, and III

“Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power―And How They Can Be Restored

“Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues.”
― Frederick Buechner

“The “Word of God” is not simply the Christian Bible but exists in a threefold form: “The Word” incarnate (Jesus Followers’ King), the word prophesied and proclaimed (Prophets), and the word in scripture (Bible). All three are the self-disclosure of God, The One & Only ...in three, distinct & unique Persons, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit.”
― Gary F. Patton

“But believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“And I — my head oppressed by horror — said:
"Master, what is it that I hear? Who are
those people so defeated by their pain?"
      And he to me: "This miserable way
is taken by the sorry souls of those
who lived without disgrace and without praise.
      They now commingle with the coward angels,
the company of those who were not rebels
nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.
      The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,
have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them —
even the wicked cannot glory in them.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think…”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Following Jesus does not mean that we become slaves to rules and regulations that lead to an ordinary life. Just the opposite. Following Jesus means that we become free to reinvent ourselves through the revelation of our true identities as beloved children of God. Through Jesus, we encounter what it really means to be human.”
― Eric Scot English