Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiples hate, violence multiplies violence, and tough-ness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”

“Light has come into the world. A voice crying through the vista of time calls men to walk in the light. Man's earthly life will become a tragic cosmic elegy if he fails to heed this call. "This is the condemnation," says John, "that light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than light." ”

“One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart–intelligence and goodness–shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature. ”

“They know not what they do," said Jesus. Blindness was their besetting trouble. And the crux of the matter lies here: we do need to be blind. Unlike physical blindness that is usually inflicted upon individuals as a result of natural forces beyond their control, intellectual and moral blindness is a dilemma which man inflicts upon himself...”

“Modern man is presently having a rendezvous with chaos, not merely because of human badness, but also because of human stupidity. If Western civilization continues to degenerate until it, like twenty-four of its predecessors, falls hopelessly into a bottomless void, the cause will be not only its undeniable sinful-ness, but also its appalling blindness.”

“Must we not admit that the church has often overlooked this moral demand for enlightenment? At times it has talked as though ignorance were a virtue and intelligence a crime. Through its ... closed-mindedness, and obstinacy to new truth, the church has often unconsciously encouraged its worshipers to look askance upon intelligence.”

“Must we not admit that the church has often overlooked this moral demand for enlightenment? At times it has talked as though ignorance were a virtue and intelligence a crime. Through its observation, closed-mindedness, and obstinancy to new truth, the church has often unconsciously encouraged its worshipers to look askance upon intelligence.

“if we are to call ourselves Christians, we... avoid intellectual and moral blindness. Throughout the New Testament we are reminded of the need for enlightenment. We are commanded to love God, not only with our hearts and souls, but also with our minds. When the Apostle Paul noticed the blindness of many of his opponents, he said, "I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." ”

“As the chief moral guardian of the community, the church must implore men to be good and well-intentioned and must extol the virtues of kind heartedness and conscientiousness. But somewhere along the way the church must remind men that, devoid of intelligence, goodness and conscientiousness will become brutal forces leading to shameful crucifixions. ”

“So men conveniently twisted the insights of religion, science, and philosophy to give sanction to the doctrine of white supremacy. Soon this idea was imbedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structured part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth.”

“A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment. A world war-God forbid!-will leave only smouldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to untimely death.”

“Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good.”

“A second lesson comes to us from Jesus' prayer on the cross. It is an expression of Jesus' awareness of man's intellectual and spiritual blindness. "They know not what they do," said Jesus. Blindness was their trouble; enlightenment was their need. We must recognize that Jesus was nailed to the cross not simply by sin but also by blindness. The men who cried, "Crucify him," were not bad men but rather blind men.”

“Capital punishment is society's final assertion that it will not forgive.”

““But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."”

“The price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro is the price of its own destruction.”

“A vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws will bring an end to segregated public facilities which are barriers to a truly desegregated society, but it cannot bring an end to fears, prejudice, pride, and irrationality, which are the barriers to a truly integrated society.”

“And so this is the distinction that I want you to see this morning. And on all other levels we have a need love, but when we come to agape, we have a gift love. And so it is the love that includes everybody. And the only testing point for you to know whether you have real genuine love is that you love your enemy.”

“There are four evidences of divine mercy here below: the favours of God to beings capable of contemplation (these states exist and form part of their experience as creatures); the radiance of these beings and their compassion, which is the divine compassion in them; the beauty of the world. The fourth evidence is the complete absence of mercy here below.”

“mysticism is the only source of virtue for humanity. Because when men do not believe that there is infinite mercy behind the curtain of the world, or when they think that this mercy is in front of the curtain, they become cruel”

“God can only be present in creation under the form of absence. Evil is the innocence of God. ... This world, in so far as it is completely empty of God, is God himself.”

“Dostoyevsky, the great Russian novelist, said once in one of his novels, "I love humanity in general so much that I don't love anybody in particular." So many people get to this point. It's so easy to love an abstraction called humanity and not love individual human beings.”

“"I talked with a white man in Albany, Georgia, the other day, and...he said, 'I used to love the Negro, but I don't have the kind of love for them that I used to have.'... And I said to myself, 'You never did love Negroes because your love was a conditional love. It was conditioned upon the Negro staying in his place, and the minute he stood up as a man and as somebody, you didn't love him anymore..."

“we are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, where what affects one directly affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, you can never be totally rich… As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than thirty years, you can never be totally healthy…”

“we spend millions of dollars a day to store surplus food, and I started thinking to myself, I know where we can store this food free of charge—in the wrinkled stomachs of the hundreds and thousands and millions of people all over the world who are hungry. Maybe in America we spend too much of our money establishing military bases around the world rather than establishing bases of genuine concern and understanding.”

“not only does this text have bearing on our struggle in America in the area of race relations, but it has a great deal of bearing on the crisis in the world in international relations. This text says to us, in substance, that every nation must be concerned about every other nation. No nation can live in isolation today. We live in a world that is geographically one now. We have the job of mak ing it spiritually one”

“...the first question that the Levite raised was this: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" Then the Good Samaritan came by, and in the very nature of his concern reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ”

“If an individual is not concerned about himself, he cannot really be concerned about other selves.... that before we can love other selves adequately, we must love our own selves properly. And many people have been plunged into the abyss of emotional fatalism because they didn't love themselves properly.”

“The length of life, as we shall use it here, is not its longevity, its duration, not how long it lasts, but it is a push, the push of a life forward to achieve its personal ends and ambitions. It is the inward concern for one's own welfare. The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others. The height of life is the upward reach for God. So these are the three dimensions.”