#chris

God did not create you to fail! ↗

— Tommy Coletta

#self-empowerment #self-esteem #self-help #spiritual #empowerment

He was alone in his wonderment, amoung creatures incapable of wonder --for them it was enough to exist and go their way. ↗

— John Paul II

#christianity #catholicism

Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar. ↗

— John Waters

#catholics #cross #crucifix #jesus #jesus-christ

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #god #jesus-shock #protestantism #sacraments

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #crazy #god #jesus-shock #philosophy

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christianity #deism #deist #god

Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #god #jesus-shock #ontological-oxymoron #ontology

God defines himself as "I am who I am", which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christianity #eternal-father #god #god-father #spirituality

One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary. ↗

— Bart D. Ehrman

#church #god #ministry #pastor #religion

I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with the particular things I have done as with the aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be. ↗

— John Ortberg Jr.

#vida