Speaking Christian Quotes

“Christianity's goal is not escape from this world. It loves this world and seeks to change it for the better.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power―And How They Can Be Restored

“So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power―And How They Can Be Restored

“More than half described Christians as literalistic, anti-intellectual, judgmental, self-righteous, and bigoted.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“But Christian illiteracy is only the first part of the crisis. Even more seriously, even for those who think they speak “Christian” fluently, the faith itself is often misunderstood and distorted by many to whom it is seemingly very familiar. They think they are speaking the language as it has always been understood, but what they mean by the words and concepts is so different from what these things have meant historically, that they would have trouble communicating with the very authors of the past they honor.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“This book might also be seen as “a Christian primer.” A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book’s purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“Sin needs to be demoted from its status as the dominant Christian metaphor for what’s wrong among us.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“These two visions of Christianity—one emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there, the other emphasizing God’s passion for the transformation of this world—are very different. Yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same Bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood—whether within the framework of heaven-and-hell Christianity or within the framework of God’s passion for transformation in this world.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“Christians in this country (and elsewhere) are deeply divided by different understandings of a shared language. About half (maybe more) of American Christians believe that biblical language is to be understood literally within a heaven-and-hell framework that emphasizes the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus dying for our sins, and believing. The other half (maybe less) puzzle over and have problems with this. Some have moved on to another understanding of Christian language. The differences are so sharp that they virtually produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and the same language.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“The heaven-and-hell framework has four central elements: the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus’s dying for our sins, and believing.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“Righteous people are those who do what is right.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“My answer, the answer pointed to by this chapter, is that our product is salvation as the twofold transformation of ourselves and the world. Moreover, I think most people yearn for this. We yearn for the transformation of our lives—for a fuller connection to what is, from liberation to all that keeps us in bondage, for sight, for wholeness, for the healing of the wounds of existence. And most of us yearn for a world that is a better place. We may have disagreements about how that is to be brought about. But most of us yearn for that—for ourselves and our contemporaries, for our children and grandchildren, and for the people and world of the future.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“These two visions of Christianity—one emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there, the other emphasizing God’s passion for the transformation of this world—are very different. Yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same Bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood—whether within the framework of heaven-and-hell Christianity or within the framework of God’s passion for transformation in this world. The latter framework, I am convinced, is more biblical, ancient, and traditional (even as it is not conventional, but subversive). It takes seriously the ancient meanings of Christian language in ancient context. The former is the product of a process that began when Christianity became allied with dominant culture, initially in the Roman Empire in the fourth century and then gradually in all of Europe and parts of the Middle East. The result was that Christianity became largely a religion of the afterlife and the postmortem fate of us as individuals. It was no longer about changing the way the world is, for the world was now ruled by Christian authorities. Heaven-and-hell Christianity domesticates—indeed, commonly eliminates—the political passion of the Bible.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“Faithfulness leads us to pay attention to our relationship to God—through such attention, we become even more deeply centered in God. Trust is the fruit of that deeper centering. It grows as we center more and more in God.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope

“These questions can be used by individual readers and also in reading groups in which participants are invited to share their memories and thoughts. Many of them invite reflection on previous or current understandings and are best used before treating the content of the relevant chapter. Some invite reflection about material in a particular chapter.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored – A Guide to Language, Beliefs, Truth, and Hope