Peter

“Since, for most centuries since Jesus died, the majority of the population couldn’t read or had limited access to books, why would an all-knowing God think self-revelation through a book was a good idea? For 1,500 years or so after the death of Jesus, God’s holy book remained inaccessible to most everybody except Christian priests who did the reading and interpretation of the book. Does this sound like a plan designed by the “God of the Universe”?”
― David Madison, GUESSING ABOUT GOD

“For many, losing god feels like losing a parent, and that loss has the potential to be devastating (Winell 4). The loss of god is an extremely complicated grief. People feel shame for their grief, believing they should be able to get over the loss of god quickly or they should not feel so devastated. They may feel that their devotion was simply a set of cognitive beliefs, when in reality their belief had deep emotional and relational impact.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“Rounding out our list of early Christian writers is Augustine (354–430), especially his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, where he shows, among other things, how much intellectual effort is required to handle Genesis well, and how ill-advised it is to read the creation stories literally. It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these [cosmological] topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.[ 16]”
― Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

“People must be able to reconstruct their own pattern of meaning, regardless of what it looks like or how long it takes—it simply must be all their own. Experiencing depression or numbness is normal during this phase of recovery (Winell 23). I have had clients who have even gone so far as to describe it by saying, “I don’t feel alive.” Losing a former faith story means losing the meaning-making method by which a person made sense of their life and the world around them.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity