John > John's Quotes

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of
humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one
can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without
overcoming this double exclusion — without transposing the enemy from the
sphere of the monstrous… into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from
the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When
one knows [as the cross demonstrates] that the torturer will not eternally
triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person’s humanity and
imitate God’s love for him. And when one knows [as the cross demonstrates]
that God’s love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of
God’s justice and so rediscover one’s own sinfulness.”
― Miroslav Volf

“...nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable.”
― Fritz Perls

“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.”
― Friedrich von Logau

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The heart, like the mind, has a memory.
And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“A Psalm of Life

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints
on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Voices of the Night

“Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.”
― Miroslav Volf

“The difference between justice and forgiveness: To be just is to condemn the fault and, because of the fault, to condemn the doer as well. To forgive is to condemn the fault but to spare the doer. That's what the forgiving God does.”
― Miroslav Volf

“Whatever the reasons, when forgiveness happens it is always a miracle of grace. The obstacles in its way are immense”
― Miroslav Volf

“We know it is good to receive, and we have been blessed by receiving not only as children, but also as adults. Yet Jesus taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), and part of growing up is learning the art of giving. If we fail to learn this art, we will live unfulfilled lives, and in the end, chains of bondage will replace the bonds that keep our communities together. If we just keep taking or even trading, we will squander ourselves. If we give, we will regain ourselves as fulfilled individuals and flourishing communities.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“Two false images of God are particularly irresistible to many of us – mostly unconsciously. The first I’ll designate as God the negotiator and the other, God the Santa Claus. Though we have fashioned both to serve our interests, they are each other’s opposites. With one, we want to make advantageous deals. From the other, we want to get warm smiles and bagfuls of goodies. We run from one to the other. Some of their features are reminiscent of the God of Jesus Christ. But we’ve drawn these images of God mostly from two currents of the culture in which we swim – the current of hard and unforgiving economic realities, in which we exchange goods to maximize benefits, and the current of soft, even infantile, desires, in which we long to be showered with gifts simply because we exist.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“the true God gives so we can become joyful givers and not just self-absorbed receivers.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“In the minds of most people, Christianity is supposed to be about love of God and neighbor (even though it is true that at the heart of Christianity does not lie human love at all, but God’s love for humanity24”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“If it is true that the dual command of love is the common ground of the two faiths, the consequences are momentous. We no longer have to say, “The deeper your faith, the more you will be at odds with others!” To the contrary, we must say, “The deeper your faith, the more you will live in harmony with others!” A deep faith no longer leads to clashes; it fosters peaceful coexistence.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Engagement is not a matter of either speaking or doing; not a matter of either offering a compelling intellectual vision or embodying a set of alternative practices; not a matter of either merely making manifest the richness and depth of interior life or merely working to change the institutions of society; not a matter of either only displaying alternative politics as gathered in Eucharistic celebrations or merely working for change as the dispersed people of God. It is all these things and more. The whole person in all aspects of her life is engaged in fostering human flourishing and serving the common good.”
― Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith, How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good

“This is a book about worshiping the true God and letting the true God act in us. It tells us as plainly as possible that the true God is a God who cannot stop giving and forgiving, and that our knowledge of this true God is utterly bound up with our willingness to receive from the hand of God the liberty to give and forgive.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“Impartiality of the state toward all religions. The only adequate option open to Muslims and Christians as citizens of the same state is to advocate the impartiality of the state toward all religions; no religion is preferred by the state, and all religions are impartially supported. This allows Christians and Muslims to be faithful to two fundamental impulses of monotheism simultaneously—to (1) honor the conviction that God is the God of all people and (2) obey God’s command to act justly and practice neighborly love toward all people.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Many would have excommunicated her as well, for in Christian circles the reigning consensus over the years has been that one cannot be simultaneously a Christian and a Muslim. This consensus has been recently unsettled, however. Now a spirited debate rages around it, especially in evangelical circles. It centers primarily on Muslims who insist that they can be followers of Christ without abandoning Islam. In an article on Muslim-background believers, Joseph Cumming tells of such a person: Ibrahim was a well-respected scholar of the Qur’an, a hafiz [a person who has memorized the entire Qur’an]. When he decided to follow Jesus, he closely examined the Qur’anic verses commonly understood as denying the Trinity, denying Jesus’ divine Sonship, denying Jesus’ atoning death, and denying the textual integrity of the Bible. He concluded that each of these verses was open to alternate interpretations, and that he could therefore follow Jesus as a Muslim.18 Again, 100 percent Muslim and 100 percent Christian—or so Ibrahim would claim.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“The principle cannot be denied: the fiercer the struggle against the injustice you suffer, the blinder you will be to the injustice you inflict. We tend to translate the presumed wrongness of our enemies into an unfaltering conviction of our own rightness.”
― Miroslav Volf

“God doesn’t give in order to acquire. God loves without self-seeking; that’s at the heart of who God is. God gives for the benefit of others.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“Faith is an expression of the fact that we exist so that the infinite God can dwell in us and work through us for the well-being of the whole creation. If faith denies anything, it denies that we are tiny, self-obsessed specks of matter who are reaching for the stars but remain hopelessly nailed to the earth stuck in our own self-absorption. Faith is the first part of the bridge from self-centeredness to generosity.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“When we forget that, we unwittingly reduce God’s ways to our ways and God’s thoughts to our thoughts. Our hearts become factories of idols in which we fashion and refashion God to fit our needs and desires.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“Slowly and imperceptibly, the one true God begins acquiring the features of the gods of this world. For instance, our God simply gratifies our desires rather than reshaping them in accordance with the beauty of God’s own character. Our God then kills enemies rather than dying on their behalf as God did in Jesus Christ.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“Christ has not come with a blueprint for political arrangements; many kinds of political arrangements are compatible with the Christian faith, from monarchy to democracy. But in a pluralistic context, Christ’s command “in everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12) entails that Christians grant to other religious communities the same religious and political freedoms that they claim for themselves.”
― Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith, How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good

“G. K. Chesterton famously quipped that “those who marry the spirit of the age will find themselves widows in the next.”
― Miroslav Volf, A Public Faith, How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good

“To live in sync with who we truly are means to recognize that we are dependent on God for our very breath and are graced with many good things; it means to be grateful to the giver and attentive to the purpose for which the gifts are given.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace

“God’s gifts aim at making us into generous givers, not just fortunate receivers. God gives so that we, in human measure, can be givers too.”
― Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace