Genesis Quotes

“Since all people are in the image of God, all deserve to be treated with the dignity the image affords.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“We must be cautious that as we accept by faith that nothing is too hard for God, we do not begin to dictate to him which hard thing he must do. He tends to have things in mind that go far beyond what we are able to ask or even think.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“But our God is a God of grace. If we desire to be like him, we need to go beyond being people who are saved by grace to be people who are characterized by grace.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“Our world does not reduce God by distributing his power to other deities. Rather, we reduce God by making him a figurehead. We too often portray him as standing back from a world that runs on its own. We banish him to the hidden corners of our lives while we amble through life, pursuing our own ambitious goals driven by narcissism, hedonism, and materialism and refusing to allow God to bridle our self-sufficiency.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“The Bible is not a book of rules. The Bible reveals the God whom we serve, and we serve him gladly.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“It is not unusual for the question to be raised, “Is the Sabbath a law that we Christians have to keep?” The answer is that if we have to be reminded, commanded, or coerced to observe it, it ceases to serve its function. The Sabbath is not the sort of thing that should have to be regulated by rules. It is the way we acknowledge that God is on the throne, that this world is his world, that our time is his gift to us.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“We live in a world of rights that has no sense of purpose; we live in a world of tolerance that has no sense of dignity for those tolerated or conscience concerning what is to be tolerated; we live in a world of leisure and squander it on empty pursuit; we live in a world of comfort and convenience where we can accumulate anything we want except that which matters most.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“Mesopotamian literature is concerned about the jurisdiction of the various gods in the cosmos with humankind at the bottom of the heap, the Genesis account is interested in the jurisdiction of humankind over the rest of creation as a result of the image of God in which people were created.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“BY nature we are all pagans caught in the Babel syndrome. When we think we can manipulate God by praying in Jesus’ name to achieve selfish purposes, our paganism is showing. When we “claim promises” as a means of making God do what we want him to do, our paganism is showing. When we come to think we are indispensable to God because of the money we donate, the talents we have, the ministries we engage in, or the worship we offer, our paganism is showing. When we treat God as a child to be cajoled or a tyrant to be appeased, the Babel syndrome is surging in our veins. We want a manageable “God-lite.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“To say that God acts, therefore, means that it makes sense to use the words before and after when we talk about him. God makes decisions, and then he acts. He decides before he acts, he acts after he decides. This is so simple that it sounds trivial, but it points to a fundamental truth about God. Not only does he bring about change, but in a significant sense God himself experiences change. After God acts, the universe is different and God’s experience of the universe is different. The concept of divine action thus involves divine temporality. Time is real for God.105”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“With God there are no dead ends, only training grounds.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“I suggest that we must be defined not by our salvation but by our faith. The “Lordship Salvation” debate is frustrating because sometimes proponents on both sides make it sound as if “salvation” is the reason for our faith.43 That cannot be right. Salvation is a benefit of our faith gained by the grace of God; God is the reason for our faith.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“While the Bible has nothing to say about how ethnic distinctions came to be, it does have definitive statements about how we are to regard them: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“The point is that all of the known nations and peoples resulted from the blessing God had established from the beginning. National and ethnic diversity was not an aberration. There is no room for the concept that there is one pure race while others are tainted, somehow the result of sin or corruption.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“Identity of the Sons of God THIS ISSUE IS one of the thorniest in Old Testament interpretation.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“The protection of rights is inevitable if preservation of dignity is valued.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis

“In the foreword of Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he compares the apocalyptic visions of George Orwell (1984) to those of Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). One of the comparisons speaks to the issue at hand: “In 1984 . . . people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”
― John H. Walton, Genesis