The Story of God Quotes

“Creator invites an open future in which, because of the agency and responsibility entrusted to us, perhaps even God’s own heart can be broken.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Genesis 6 suggests that God’s Story is, in a sense, an “open book”; even for God, the future is not a series of preprogrammed inevitabilities, but an open horizon in which each of us plays a role.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“God has no fear of losing control, but can hold creation lovingly yet loosely, allowing us room to be people, room to make our choices and live with them.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“divine power is fundamentally an empowering of the creature to be and to love, then presumably God is not threatened by such agency even if it signifies an open, uncertain future for the world.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Having taken the risk of creating and sustaining free beings, and having called us humans to function as images of the divine in creation, God could never be the same.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“human faith in God is a living relationship that must find expression in this world through human decisions and actions.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“because God has created a world in which freedom and contingency play roles, unpredictability and perhaps even chance are factors with which the Maker of heaven and earth is willing to work.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Genesis 6 suggests that things had gotten much worse than even God had anticipated.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“And the Scriptures say that God was sorry even to have created the human—and grieved.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Sin, by which we mean the human rejection of God’s sovereign love, has spread like a dreaded virus throughout humanity and all its relationships: from Eve to Adam, to their offspring Cain and Abel, down to the Tower of Babel.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“prevenient grace much like the narrative of Cain with which we began this chapter: that God is ever-present in our lives, enabling us, if we will, to desire and even choose the divine will.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“human responsibility and the biblical call to human beings to cooperate willfully with God’s intentions for human life.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“We are members of one another, and thus the sin of our ancestors continues profoundly to affect, even to infect, us all.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“we can, through our rejection of Love Divine, estrange ourselves from the One who made us,”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“But if God creates us for, and toward, a life of self-giving and other-receiving love, it becomes clear that sin is not essentially an aspect of human nature as created and willed by our Maker. Sin is an intruder.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Sin is, accordingly, an abuse of our God-bestowed freedom;”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“we have made it difficult for ourselves to hear God’s voice or to be receptive to the Holy Spirit,”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“it is only God’s own Holy Spirit laboring in our lives (or prevenient grace) that enables us to move against the weighty momentum of sin’s power.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“compulsion is not God’s way of working.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“God refuses to redeem creation “by force.” God instead redeems us “by persuasion,”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“God is with Cain, whispering to him, questioning him, attempting to draw him away from hatred and murder. But God will not coerce Cain”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“We would like to be able to blame someone other than ourselves when our choices go badly.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“You, God, are the Almighty! You come here and ask me where Abel is, when you know full well you could have stopped me before I did this horrible thing! Where were you when I killed my own brother? You could have stopped me, but you didn’t lift a finger! Maybe it’s your fault that Abel is dead!”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“rivalry giving way to jealousy, jealousy to hatred, hatred to violence and murder, and all followed by a casual and cavalier denial of the whole thing.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Cain and Abel (Gen. 4). In this story we find the rawest of human emotions laid bare: sibling”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“To be sure, these observations are far from exhaustive, but they should nonetheless help us see how story and theology are often woven together in the Bible to reveal profound truths about ourselves, our temptations and sins, and the probing presence and grace of God who never lets us go.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“No relationship, whether to God, to one another, or to the natural environment, goes unaffected by human sin.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“alienating and destructive effects of sin upon the broader environment in which humanity dwells.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“We have seen already that it plants the seeds of alienation in our relationships to fellow human beings”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology

“Finally, sin becomes a destructive factor in all our relationships.”
― Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: A Narrative Theology