Aaron Munro > Aaron's Quotes

“That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking.”
― Peter Rollins

“What we see taking place in the church today is the reduction of God to an idol.”
― Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction

“Faith, then, is not a set of beliefs about the world. It is rather found in the loving embrace of the world. Because the actual existing church has reduced the Crucifixion and Resurrection to religious affirmations held by a certain tribe, rather than expressions of a type of life, the event they testify to has been almost completely eclipsed.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The problem with so much religious communication is that it aims at changing our minds. The result is that we can hear the message of the preacher without necessarily heeding the message; we can listen to the “truth” and agree with it, yet not change in response to it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic And Other Impossible Tales

“In other words, the claim I believe in God is nothing but a lie if it is not manifest in our lives, because one only believes in God insofar as one loves.”
― Peter Rollins, Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine

“There is an old anecdote in which a mystic, an evangelical pastor and a fundamentalist preacher die on the same day and awake to find themselves by the pearly gates. Upon reaching the gates they are promptly greeted by Peter, who informs them that before entering heaven they must be interviewed by Jesus concerning the state of their doctrine. The first to be called forward is the mystic, who is quietly ushered into a room. Five hours later the mystic reappears with a smile, saying, ‘I thought I had got it all wrong.’ Then Peter signals to the evangelical pastor, who stands up and enters the room. After a full day has passed the pastor reappears with a frown and says to himself, ‘How could I have been so foolish!’ Finally Peter asks the fundamentalist to follow him. The fundamentalist picks up his well-worn Bible and walks into the room. A few days pass with no sign of the preacher, then finally the door swings open and Jesus himself appears, exclaiming, ‘How could I have got it all so wrong!”
― Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God: Marks of the Emerging Church

“this is not about the mere extension of life along a horizontal plane, but about the deepening of life along a vertical plane. Mere longevity cannot render life meaningful any more than brevity has the power to make it meaningless.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“The point then is to help break the false distinction between the idea that there are those who are whole and those who have a lack. For the true distinction is between those who hide their lack under the fiction of wholeness and those who are able to embrace it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith

“What if Jesus was not offering his followers an ethical system to follow, but rather was inviting them to enter into a life of love that transcends ethics, a life of liberty that dwells beyond religious laws? The difference between following an ethical system and being consumed by love can be seen in the way that ethical systems seek to provide a way to work out what needs to be done so that it can be carried out. In contrast, love is never constrained, it never sits back, it always seeks to do more than what is demanded of it.”
― Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic And Other Impossible Tales

“When someone in vulnerability tells you everything they’ve known has fallen apart, the correct response is not to quote scripture, the correct response is not biblical apologetics, the correct response is a hug. The correct response is to say, I love you. They have to encounter an impossible love. It’s the only way the gospel comes to life.”
― Mike McHargue

“What I've learned to do is be certain that I am uncertain. To revel in the fuzziness of my understanding of the world. And to look with great anticipation toward the next moment I'll figure out that I'm wrong about something. And that lets you get on this trajectory where you just become more and more and more open.”
― Mike McHargue

“People grow when they are loved well. If you want to help others heal, love them without an agenda.”
― Mike McHargue

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.”
― Cornel West