Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Quotes

“As a committed Christian, I have always struggled with locked doors—doors by which we on the inside lock out "the others"—Jews, Muslims, Mormons, liberals, doubters, agnostics, gay folks, whomever. The more we insiders succeed in shutting others out, the more I tend to feel locked in, caged, trapped.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“The scarily brilliant Romantic poet and visionary William Blake dared to say what many of us have perhaps thought but kept to ourselves: “A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there’s more conversation.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“If we speak of an angry God at all, we will speak of a God angry at indifference, angry at apathy, angry at racism and violence, angry at inhumanity, angry at waste, angry at destruction, angry at injustice, angry at hostile religious clannishness. That anger is never against us (or them); it is against what is against us (and them).”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“I have no doubt that Jesus would actually practice the neighborliness he preached rather than following our example of religious supremacy, hostility, fear, isolation, misinformation, exclusion, or demonization.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“Imagine if organized religion organized billions of people and trillions of dollars to tackle the challenges that our economic and political systems are afraid or unwilling to tackle—a planet ravaged by unsustainable human behavior and an out-of-control consumptive economy, the growing gap between the rich minority and the poor majority, and the proliferation of weapons of all kinds—including weapons of mass destruction. “Wow,” people frequently say when I propose these possibilities. “If they did that, I might become religious again.” Some quickly add, “But I won’t hold my breath. It’ll never happen.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“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 the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“It turns out that the famous dictum, associated with Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov, can run both ways: yes, without God everything is theoretically permissible... but believers can find ways to use God to justify just about anything as well.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“We must not define Jesus and his kingdom by fitting them within conventional understandings of kings and kingdoms. Rather, we must judge and deconstruct those conventional definitions in light of Jesus and his example.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“Something deep in our conscience tells us that hostility is part of the problem to be overcome in the world, not the means by which problems will be overcome. Hostility is a symptom of the disease, not part of the cure.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“Why is it that the choice among churches always seems to be the choice between intelligence on ice and ignorance on fire? —as quoted by Diana Butler Bass1”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“In religion as in parenthood, uncritical loyalty to our ancestors may implicate us in an injustice against our descendants: imprisoning them in the errors of our ancestors.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“There's one thing worse than a failed old religion: a naïve and arrogant new one.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“the only viable response to religious hostility is love, empathy, compassion, understanding—not more hostility. (What could be more pathetic than a hostile fight against hostility?)”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

“Don’t we need some “secular” social space where diverse people of faith can encounter one another with some level of privacy and anonymity? 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? Questions like these have always mattered. But in the years since 9/11/01, more and more of us are realizing just how much they matter. So to imagine Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed taking a walk across a road or even getting together as friends for a meal and conversation doesn’t have to introduce a joke: it could introduce one of the most important conversations possible in today’s world.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World