Scott

“...Jesus did not send his students out to start governments or even churches as we know them today... They were, instead, to establish beachheads of his person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity.”
― Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“The Bible is an ancient book and we shouldn’t be surprised to see it act like one. So seeing God portrayed as a violent, tribal warrior is not how God is but how he was understood to be by the ancient Israelites communing with God in their time and place. The biblical writers were storytellers. Writing about the past was never simply about understanding the past for its own sake, but about shaping, molding, and creating the past to speak to the present. “Getting the past right” wasn’t the driving issue. “Who are we now?” was. The Bible presents a variety of points of view about God and what it means to walk in his ways. This stands to reason, since the biblical writers lived at different times, in different places, and wrote for different reasons. In reading the Bible we are watching the spiritual journeys of people long ago. Jesus, like other Jews of the first century, read his Bible creatively, seeking deeper meaning that transcended or simply bypassed the boundaries of the words of scripture. Where Jesus ran afoul of the official interpreters of the Bible of his day was not in his creative handling of the Bible, but in drawing attention to his own authority and status in doing so. A crucified and resurrected messiah was a surprise ending to Israel’s story. To spread the word of this messiah, the earliest Christian writers both respected Israel’s story while also going beyond that story. They transformed it from a story of Israel centered on Torah to a story of humanity centered on Jesus.”
― Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

“I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“When things get personal, we need to resist the natural male instinct to run for cover, man the defenses, or--worst of all--reach for the big guns. Much better to set aside our natural defensiveness and focus on listening well even though we feel under attack. Because we're probably not.”
― Jeff Feldhahn, For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women