Brian > Brian's Quotes

“It’s God saying, “I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

“The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

“The new pastoral style, which John XXIII intended, has much to do with what he said during his opening speech, when he spoke about the medicine of mercy. Since that time, the theme of mercy has become fundamental not only for the council, but also for the entire pastoral praxis of the postconciliar church.”
― Cardinal Walter Kasper, Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life

“This famed orphan of the storm tended to bob about as helplessly as a cork (embracing the cliché in order to maintain the metaphor) until matters happened to, through no effort of his own, land him upon safe and welcoming shores.”
― Peter David, Artful

“Isn’t the real scandal not that our religious leaders might be imagined walking across a road or talking as friends together in a bar, but rather that their followers are found speaking against one another as enemies, day after day in situation after situation?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“It is only when we live in accordance with the rule of God that our life is set in order," he declared a decade later; "apart from this ordering, there is nothing in human life but confusion.”
― William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait: A Sixteenth Century Portrait

“A few days earlier, during our time in Jerusalem, my friend George and I stumbled upon the Pool of Bethesda, which the Gospel of John names as the place where Jesus healed a paralyzed man.12 John describes it as a pool with “five porticoes.” For centuries, some scholars doubted that the pool ever existed. But archaeological excavations in the nineteenth century uncovered almost the entire complex—including the five porticoes, just as John had described. Seeing not only the site at which Jesus had performed a miracle, but also one confirmation of the Gospels’ accuracy was deeply moving. There were the five porticoes: one, two, three, four, five. There they were. And here he had been.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land

“But it was true. I was constantly surprised how the storied names of biblical locales popped up in the most familiar of circumstances: on a simple map, on a graffitied street sign, or in everyday conversations. “The traffic to Bethlehem was terrible last night!” said a Jesuit over dinner one night. Which still didn’t beat “Gehenna is lovely.”
― James Martin, Jesus: A Pilgrimage – A New York Times Bestselling Meditation on Christ, Scripture, and Faith in the Holy Land