Convictions Quotes

“the Bible is a human product: it tells us how our religious ancestors saw things, not how God sees things.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“But believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Salvation Is More About This Life than an Afterlife”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Taking the Bible seriously should mean taking politics seriously. The major voices in the Bible from beginning to end are passionate advocates of a different kind of world here on earth and here and now. Many American Christians are wary of doing this, for more than one reason. Some are so appalled by the politics of the Christian Right that they have rejected the notion that Christianity has anything to do with politics. Moreover, the word “politics” has negative associations in our time. Many think of narrowly partisan politics, as if politics is merely about party affiliation. Many also dismiss politics as petty bickering, as ego-driven struggles for power, even as basically corrupt. But there is a broader meaning of the word that is essential. This broader meaning is expressed by the linguistic root of the English word. It comes from the Greek word polis, which means “city.” Politics is about the shape and shaping of “the city” and by extension of large-scale human communities: kingdoms, nations, empires, the world. In this sense, politics matters greatly: it is about the structures of a society. Who rules? In whose benefit? What is the economic system like?—fair, or skewed toward the wealthy and powerful? What are the laws and conventions of the society like? Hierarchical? Patriarchal? Racist? Xenophobic? Homophobic? For Christians, especially in a democratic society in which they are a majority, these questions matter. To abandon politics means leaving the structuring of society to those who are most concerned to serve their own interests. It means letting the Pharaohs and monarchs and Caesars and domination systems, ancient and modern, put the world together as they will. In a democracy, politics in the broad sense does include how we vote. But it also includes more: what we support in our conversations, our contributions, monetary and otherwise, our actions. Not every Christian is called to be an activist. But all are called to take seriously God’s dream for a more just and nonviolent world.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“The book of Proverbs makes the same point: Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him. (14.31)”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“a worldwide flood destroyed all life on earth about five thousand years ago requires denying an immense amount of generally accepted knowledge—from astronomy, physics, geology, paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, cave paintings, and more.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“By the time I began college, anxiety about hell had disappeared—not because I was confident that I was “saved,” but because the whole package had become sufficiently uncertain that I didn’t worry about it.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“What’s it all about, Alfie?” Its lyrics are not particularly profound, but the question has stayed with me. What’s it all about? What’s life all about? What’s Christianity all about? What’s salvation all about? My answer to that question now, my conviction now: “it”—Christianity and salvation—is about transformation this side of death. The natural effect of growing up, beginning in childhood, is that we fall into bondage to cultural messages and conventions; experience separation and exile from the one in whom we live and move and have our being; become blinded by habituated ways of seeing and live in the dark, even dead in the midst of life; and hunger and thirst for something more. Salvation is about liberation, reconnection, seeing anew, acceptance, and the satisfaction of our deepest yearnings. Christianity at its best—like all of the enduring religions of the world at their best—is a path of transformation.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Faith does not mean believing in the literal-factuality of the stories regardless of how improbable they seem. Rather, faith is about something far more important. It is about our relationship with God—about centering in God, being loyal (faithful) to God, and about trusting in God. Faith is the opposite of hubris and anxiety.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“The point: only a small minority of Christians and for only a brief period of time have taught biblical inerrancy and the sole authority of the Bible. So how and why has it become “orthodox” Christianity for about half of American Protestants?”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“But “having dominion over” meant something very different from what it has often been understood to mean. It refers to the relationship between shepherd and sheep.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“In the Bible, the political issues—which are also religious—are about economic justice and fairness, peace and nonviolence.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“theological objections to an emphasis on an afterlife are about how such an emphasis affects Christianity. Note the word emphasis. My claim is not that believing in an afterlife intrinsically produces these results. Rather, I am describing what happens when the afterlife is emphasized in Christian preaching, teaching, and evangelism. It seriously distorts what Christianity is about and what it means to be Christian. It does this in several ways. First, it turns Christianity into a religion of requirements and rewards. The reward, of course, is heaven (or, in some forms of Christianity today, prosperity and a happy life). The requirement is what we must do to reap the reward. This understanding strikes many people as common sense. If there is a blessed afterlife, it doesn’t seem fair that everybody gets one, regardless of how they act in this life. Hitler? Stalin? Genghis Khan? And too many more to mention. So there must be something that distinguishes those who do go to heaven from those who don’t.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“recognize that labels risk becoming stereotypes and caricatures; indeed, the difference between “label” and “libel” is a single letter. Yet they can be useful and even necessary shorthand for naming differences. Aware of this danger, I suggest five categories for naming the divisions in American Christianity today: conservative, conventional, uncertain, former, and progressive Christians. In somewhat different forms, these kinds of Christians are found among both Protestants and Catholics. And there are good people in all of the categories; none of them has a monopoly on goodness. The categories are not watertight compartments. It is possible to be a conservative conventional Christian, a conventional uncertain Christian, a conventional former Christian, and so forth. But two categories strike me as antithetical and incompatible. The”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Theological controversies over the centuries have sometimes been treated as if they were really important even though they were also often arcane. For instance, a Trinitarian conflict split the Western and Eastern churches in 1054: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, or from the Father only? In the 1600s, “supralapsarianism” versus “infralapsarianism” almost divided the Reformed tradition. At issue was whether God decided to send a messiah (Jesus) before the first sin (because God knew it would happen) or only after it had happened (because only then was it necessary). More familiarly: infant baptism or adult baptism? Christians have often thought it is important to believe the right things. In a broader sense, theology refers to “what Christians think.” In this sense, all Christians have a theology—a basic, even if often simple, understanding—whether they are aware of it or not. In this broader sense, theology does matter. There is “bad” theology, by which I mean an understanding of Christianity that is seriously misleading, with unfortunate and sometimes cruel consequences. But the task of theology is not primarily to construct an intellectually satisfying set of correct beliefs. Its”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“an introduction to Christian pluralism and the intellectual riches of the Christian tradition, but also to intellectual pluralism. I realized that there were no definitely settled ways of seeing life—of what is, what is real, and how, then, we should live. The notion that there was one “right” way of seeing things disappeared. This was enormously liberating, even if a bit alarming. But my curiosity was greater than my fear.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Progressive Christianity is about both negation and affirmation. It rejects biblical inerrancy, literal interpretation, and the beliefs that Jesus died to pay for our sins and that Christianity is the only way of salvation. Thus progressive Christians are often better known for what they do not believe than for what they do affirm. This is not surprising: to a large extent, progressive Christianity has emerged as a “no” to the conventional Christianity of the recent past and the conservative Christianity of the present. But”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“So when Paul and other early Christians proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” (and the Son of God and the savior who brings true peace on earth), he and they were directly challenging Roman imperial theology and the imperial domination system that it legitimated.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“about? What’s salvation all about? My answer to that question now, my conviction now: “it”—Christianity and salvation—is about transformation this side of death. The natural effect of growing up, beginning in childhood, is that we fall into bondage to cultural messages and conventions; experience separation and exile from the one in whom we live and move and have our being; become blinded by habituated ways of seeing and live in the dark, even dead in the midst of life; and hunger and thirst for something more. Salvation”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Biblical inerrancy and the absolute authority of the Bible are thus a post-Reformation Protestant development. The first time the Bible was described as “inerrant” and “infallible” was in a book of Protestant theology written in the second half of the 1600s. Widespread affirmation of biblical inerrancy is even more recent, largely the product of the past one hundred years.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Because modern critical thinking is corrosive of conventional religious beliefs, some Christians reject applying it to the Bible and Christianity. The result is fundamentalism and much of conservative Christianity, which holds that regardless of the claims of modern knowledge, the Bible and Christianity are true—and not just true, but factually true.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Many of us have experienced a loss of our childhood faith because of conflict between what we learned as children and what we learned later, not just in school and college, but from life.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Whether we are conscious of it or not, I think the triad of memories, conversions, and convictions shapes all of our lives.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“They are soon gone, and we fly away. . . . So teach us to count our days / that we may gain a wise heart” (90.12).”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“It never occurred to me that spiritual practices might not be requirements for salvation, a “to do” list, but practical means for loving God. But that’s what they are.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Modern biblical literalism with its emphasis on factuality is not only very different from what “the literal meaning of a text” has meant for most of Christian history; it also has consequences that minimally are unfortunate and unnecessary and more seriously obscure and distort what the Bible and being Christian are about. Indeed, it discredits the Bible and Christianity in the minds of many people.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Seeing them as sacred underlines their decisive status for Christians: these are the most important documents we know. Their status is also their function: they are foundational for Christian understanding and identity. To be Christian means being in an unending conversation with this collection of documents. If that conversation becomes sporadic or ceases, then we cease to be Christian. The Bible is our foundational document. But it is not sacred in its origin, even as it is sacred in its status and function.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Because believing in the inerrancy and absolute authority of the Bible is so widespread today, it is important to realize that this is a Protestant phenomenon. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians (together the vast majority of Christians who have ever lived) have never taught it.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“Critical thinking is an unavoidable part of growing up. We do not become adults without it. But in the modern world, this stage often corrodes religious belief. Modern Western ways of thinking are very much shaped by the identification of truth with factuality. And generally accepted modern knowledge calls into question the factuality of much of the Bible and of religions more generally.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most

“The Politics of the Bible The key to seeing the political passion of the Bible is hearing and understanding its primary voices in their ancient historical contexts. These contexts are not only literary, but also political. The political context of the Bible is “the ancient domination system,” sometimes also called “the premodern domination system.” Both phrases are used in historical scholarship for the way “this world”—the humanly created world of societies, nations, and empires—was structured until the democratic and industrial revolutions of the past few centuries. Ancient Domination Systems Ancient domination systems began in the 3000s BCE. Two developments account for their emergence. The first was large-scale agriculture and the production of agricultural surpluses, made possible by the invention of metal and metal farm instruments, especially the plow, and the domestication of large animals. The second was the direct result of the first: cities—large concentrations of settled population—became possible. Before large-scale agriculture that produced surpluses, humans lived as nomads or in small settlements that depended on horticulture—gardening—for their sustenance. Cities created the need for a ruling class. One need was a protector class because many people lived outside of cities and knew that cities had food and wealth and were thus apt to attack them. A second need was to order the life of cities. People cannot live in concentrations of thousands without organization. Thus a ruling class of power and wealth emerged. Cities were quickly followed by kingdoms and empires, small and large, all in the same millennium.”
― Marcus J. Borg, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most