Stranger God Quotes

“Hospitality isn’t just about welcoming sinners; it’s also about welcoming people we think are idiots.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“The walls we have to tear down to make room for each other are rarely physical. The walls that separate us are mostly psychological. Feelings are what exclude people from our friendship and dinner table: ignoring versus noticing, suspicion versus trust, exclusion versus embrace.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“Before hospitality can make space in the world or around your table, it has to begin closer to home, with an inward, emotional revolution. Hospitality begins as an affectional capacity, cultivating the ability to make room in our hearts for others. Hospitality starts with the 'will to embrace, ' the spontaneous and unconditional welcome we extend toward others.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“You know' he said, 'it's better to make a mess in your pants than a mess in your heart.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“American culture is characterized by the 'denial of death,' an avoidance to see, think, or talk about death. This has been described as the 'pornography of death.' Death is an illicit topic. You're morbid for talking about death in polite conversation. In the fantasyland that is the American dream - where bright, shiny people smile at us with perfect teeth from screens, magazine covers, and worship stages - death is our dirty little secret.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“American culture is characterized by the 'denial of death,' an avoidance to see, think, or talk about death. This has been described as the 'pornography of death.' Death is an illicit topic. You're morbid for talking about death in polite conversation. In the fantasyland that is the American dream - where bright, shiny people sile at us with perfect teeth from screens, magazine covers, and worship stages - death is our dirty little secret.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“Disgust helps us pretend we're immortal.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“Psychologically, we treat sin as if it were cooties, a moral contaminant that is passed via physical contact, which becomes another source of interpersonal revulsion. If we emotionally treat sin as if it were cooties, we naturally keep our distance from sinners. It doesn't make rational sense, but it's where our emotions lead us if we don't check them.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“We lead with embrace, unconditionally accepting the humanity of all - sinner and saint, oppressor and oppressed. But the yes is followed by an and. Conversations and decisions about holiness, truth telling, justice, and boundaries follow the will to embrace.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“The distinction in 'love sinners, hate sin,' is ultimately impossible to maintain because it excludes the will to embrace. People are seen first as 'sinners.' That's the fatal mistake that happens right out of the gate, and it dooms the whole project. Order is everything. When we start by viewing people through their sins - or any other label - we lose track of their humanity. We've expelled them from the circle of our affections, and the process of dehumanization has already begun.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“We welcome people into the circle of our affections when we unconditionally embrace their humanity before we sort, judge, or evaluate them by any other criteria or standards.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“We exist because God makes room for us. Creation is the hospitality of God.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“Ponder a curious fact about the witness of the early Christians in light of our tendency to focus on electoral politics as the weapon of choice to “change the world.” Following the example of Jesus, the early Christians ignored the state. Instead, they extended care and aid to those in their community who were destitute and in need. The early Christians sold their land and possessions, sharing them with each other so that “there were no needy persons among them”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise

“All our social-media feeds produce is a one-sided sympathetic stress reaction, day after day.”
― Richard Beck, Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise