The Ghost of Perfection Quotes

“All that grows is not necessarily good...”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“...in a world defined by productivity and success, a reality we created, humanity find themselves defined and valued in the very same way. People are part of a seemingly never-ending system whereby their worth is determined by their usefulness or success; they have become “a thing among things” struggling to give meaning to their existence.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“When church is about numbers, people become a target, stripped of their identity and humanness and forced into arbitrary categories of “in-ness” and “out-ness.” Mission becomes goal-oriented rather than the people of God seeking to show the effervescent display of how God is in christ reconciling the world to himself.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“...we have become obsessed with numbers and have dehumanized the very people we desire to become more human.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“May the Light of the World rouse us from our slumber, from the ghostly dreams that strip away our humanity, leaving us shivering in fear, and may the warmth of his resurrection life bring us to ourselves as we are brought to him.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“A community of disciples seeks to express this Trinitarian love faithfully, not through “rule keeping” but through our common life together, following the Way of Jesus, participants in this peculiar way of life with God, instruments used by God, in the power of the Spirit, to be a people of grace, a people of the cross, a people of God.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“The love of God is non-coercive, non- manipulative, non-violent, and unconditional.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“The Way of Jesus is relational...”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“When christianity becomes a code of morality, an ethic of “right or wrong,” then you can be sure that we have ceased following Jesus faithfully, have abandoned relationship with God and each other, and have begun the futile search for “the ghost of perfection.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity

“...in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, we encounter humanity as we should be, and in that humanity we discover our true selves.”
― Joseph Haward, The Ghost of Perfection: Searching for Humanity