The God Who Weeps Quotes

“As an inmate of a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom heard a commotion, and saw a short distance away a prison guard mercilessly beating a female prisoner. “What can we do for these people?” Corrie whispered. “Show them that love is greater,” Betsie replied. In that moment, Corrie realized her sister’s focus was on the prison guard, not the victim she was watching. Betsie saw the world through a different lens. She considered the actions of greatest moral gravity to be the ones we originate, not the ones we suffer.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The most terrifying specter that haunts the modern psyche is not death or disease or nuclear annihilation. It is loneliness.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“Those mortals who operate in the grey area between conviction and incredulity are in a position to choose most meaningfully, and with most meaningful consequences […] Perhaps only a doubter can appreciate the miracle of life without end.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The call to faith, in this light, is not some test of a coy god, waiting to see if we "get it right." It is the only summons, issued under the only conditions, which can allow us fully to reveal who we are, what we most love, and what we most devoutly desire. Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts...The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible,” he said. He then made his point with the simple example of a taste for strawberries. “There is no abstract and impersonal proof either that strawberries are good or that they are not good. To the man who likes them they are good, to the man who dislikes them they are not. But the man who likes them has a pleasure which the other does not have; to that extent his life is more enjoyable and he is better adapted to the world in which both must live. . . . The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing the reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“As surely as the dark gives meaning to the dawn, so does pain give meaning to pleasure, and sorrow to joy. All that we love, all that we strive for, all that we relish, we know only by contrast.”
― Terryl Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“...God is not exempt from emotional pain...One the contrary, God's pain is as infinite as His love.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“If we are co-eternal with God, then it is not God's creation of the human out of nothing that defines our essential relationship to him. It is His freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain loving relationships, and our choice to reciprocate, that are at the core of our relationship to the Divine.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“Our lives are more like a canvas on which we paint, than a script we need to learn – though the illusion of the latter appeals to us by its lower risk.”
― Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“Heaven is not a club we enter. Heaven is a state we attain, in accordance with our “capacity to receive” a blessed and sanctified nature.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purpose of God's master plan, which is to maximize the capacity for joy, or in other words, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. "God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“We have no way of knowing, of course, why some are born in health and affluence, while others enter broken bodies or broken homes, or emerge into a realm of war or hunger. So we cannot give definite meaning to our place in the world, or to our neighbor's. But Plato's reflections should give us pause and invite both humility and hope. Humility, because if we chose our lot in life, there is every reason to suspect merit, and not disfavor, is behind disadvantaged birth. A blighted life may have been the more courageous choice--at least it was for Plato... So how can we feel pride in our own blessedness, or condescension in another's misfortune? And Plato's reflections should give us hope, because his myth reminds us that suffering can be sanctifying, that pain is not punishment ,and that the path to virtue is fraught with opposition.”
― Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“What we are worshipping we are becoming.” Every moment of every day our choices enact our loves, our desires, and our aspirations. And we are molding ourselves into the God or gods we thereby worship.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“...our minds are driven to answer questions that far transcend the bounds of our own lives.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“But the fact is, as adults with moral awareness, we sense we are responsible for our own choices. And the reason we know we are is because we feel guilt when we do something wrong. We are not speaking here of the oppressive, destructive self-loathing or self-­hatred that masquerades as conscience; by guilt we mean the inward call to be truer to our better selves. Legitimate guilt is to the spirit what the sharp protest of a twisted ankle is to the foot: its purpose is to hurt enough to stop you from crippling yourself further. Its function is to prevent more pain, not expand it. This kind of guilt comes from the light and beckons us to follow; its”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“What is always at stake in any decision we make is what that choice turns us into. We may suffer the unfortunate consequences of other peoples’ choices. People may honor or abuse us, harm or nourish us. But for the most part, it is our own choices that shape our identity.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“What if the possibilities of Zion were already here, and its scattered elements all about us? A child’s embrace, a companion’s caress, a friend’s laughter are its materials. Our capacity to mourn another’s pain, like God’s tears for His children; our desire to lift our neighbor from his destitution, like Christ’s desire to lift us from our sin and sorrow—these are not to pass away when the elements shall melt with fervent heat. They are the stuff and substance of any Zion we build, any heaven we inherit. God is not radically Other, and neither is His heaven.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“If we linger in indecision, as does Buridan’s beast, we will not perish. We will simply miss an opportunity to act decisively in the absence of certainty, and show that our fear of error is greater than our love of truth.”
― Terryl Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“If vulnerability and pain are the price of love, then joy is it's reward.”
― Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“Maple leaves in autumn do not suddenly transform into stained glass pendants...in order to satisfy a human longing for beauty. Their scarlet, ochre, and golden colors emerge as chlorophyll production shuts down, in preparation for sacrificing the leaves that are vulnerable to winter cold, and ensuring the survival of the tree. But the tree survives, WHILE our vision is ravished. The peacock's display attracts a hen, AND it nourishes the human eye. The flower's fragrance entices a pollinator, BUT IT ALSO intoxicates the gardener. In that "while," in that "and," in that "but it also," we find the giftedness of life.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not.”
― Terryl Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“His desires are set upon the whole human family, not upon a select few. He is not predisposed to just the fast learners, the naturally inclined, or the morally gifted.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The lovely paradox of willing compliance with what an ancient prophet called “the great plan of happiness,” is that conformity to law breeds both freedom and individualism. We may think a leaping child, in the euphoria of his imagination, enjoys unfettered freedom when he tells us he is going to land on the moon. But the rocket scientist hard at work in the laboratory, enmeshed in formulae and equations she has labored to master, and slaving away in perfect conformity with the laws of physics, is the one with true freedom: for she will land on the moon; the boy will not.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“In the vision of Enoch, we find ourselves drawn to a God who prevents all the pain He can, assumes all the suffering He can, and weeps over the misery He can neither prevent nor assume.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“A God without body or parts is conceivable. But a God without passions would engender in our hearts neither love nor interest.”
― Terryl Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

“The veil of forgetfulness that divides eternity in two has its own powerful justifications. Philip Barlow, a modern religious scholar, has written eloquently of the surprising value of the veil: My impression is that, informed and animated by a thoughtful faith in a wider horizon, the veil quite properly funnels the bulk of our attention to the here and now: on the time, people, problems, and opportunities of this day, this moment. Despite glimpses of eternal purposes that come as gifts and hopes, my life unfolds in tremendous, all-but-complete ignorance of our mysterious universe. There is no proving God to others. Ultimate reality is not something we know; it is something in which we put our trust. . . . The veil is not a curse or cause for existential lament. It is necessary to our stage of progression as beings. While we search, listen, and pray for comfort and direction beyond our sphere, the veil—the necessary epistemic distance from this “beyond”—affords us freedom for independent action not possible if we could literally and readily see God smiling or frowning at each move. And freedom independently to discern and choose between good and evil (morality) and good and bad (quality) is at the core of our purpose, as the powerful mythos of Genesis suggests. The”
― Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life