Strange Gods Quotes

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image,” she wrote, “when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“...it shames me to admit that I can bring all of my self-reflective idols with me into Mass, line them up like trophies before the altar, bow to them through the monkey-chatter of the brain, and then pack them up (along with a few newly minted ones) to take home with me.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“your”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“Our blinders cut off our peripheral vision until mercy becomes invisible; there is only room for battle.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“them), reminded me of something the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote: “As long as I assume that the world is something I discover by turning on the radio . . . I am deceived from the start.”1”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“During that time, the word love—a deep word communicating all kinds of messages about permanence, commitment, self-abnegation, and sacrifice—began to be used to describe situations and encounters that were shallow, short-lived, casual, and self-serving. Simultaneously, the word peace, an equally deep word that, especially when partnered with love, gets to the heart of contentment, serenity, gratitude, and joy, was hauled into the shallows, where it came to mean mostly an “absence of war” and nonjudgmental permissiveness. The irony escapes many, but peace and love were the pretty-but-empty, wallpapery buzzwords that framed an era of riot and social revolution that is still resonating within our society. Cultural and religious disorder has reigned ever since.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“When something is true, there is no point in arguing. We cannot make anyone believe anything, which is why I did not argue with my family and why God does not argue, plead, cajole or negotiate with us. He simply tells us, “I am who am” (Ex 3:14) and—”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“I love my opinions so much I must hate you for having your own.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“Every evil screams out only one message: “I am good!” And not only does it scream, but it demands that the people cry out tirelessly in response: “You are good, you are freedom, you are happiness!” Alexander Schmemann”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“I look at our modern mania for educational credentials as a kind of idol—a thing so burnished and glittery that sometimes the perfect candidate for a position is never seen because the required credential is hovering between him and Human Resources; and the idol—the thing that reflects our self-imaginings back to us—must be served. If a company sees itself as a bastion of certified intellectuals, it will seek out credentials that validate that idea, even if it means missing out on acquiring an autodidact in the process.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life

“We are in a place of deep cynicism, but that is rarely acknowledged, because so many of us residing within this disordered idol's shadow confuse cynicism with cleverness.”
― Elizabeth Scalia, Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life