No subscription or hidden extras
Read through the most famous quotes by topic #eli
Generosity is to help a deserving person without his request, and if you help him after his request, then it is either out of self-respect or to avoid rebuke. ↗
One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses—'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'—along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them. ↗
Even though people about us choose the path of hate and violence and warfare and greed and prejudice, we who are Christ's body must throw off these poisons and let love permeate and cleanse every tissue and cell. Nor are we to allow ourselves to become easily discouraged when love is not always obviously successful or pleasant. Love never quits, even when an enemy has hit you on the right cheek and you have turned the other, and he's also hit that. ↗
My reading of American religious history is that religion always functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. Once you identify the faith with a particular candidate or party or with the quest for political influence, ultimately it is the faith that suffers. Compromise may work in politics. It's less appropriate to the realm of faith and belief. ↗
Faith is either something that informs one at all times or it isn’t anything at all, really. When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They’ve substituted a toothless “freedom of worship” for “freedom of religion”. ↗
He asked me if I ever prayed-- and I lied. Then he asked me if I ever got an answer, or a sign that my prayer was heard-- and I told him the truth. "Yeah... me neither." His hands sounded like leather as he slowly rubbed some warmth into his knotted knuckles. "So what happens to all of those lost prayers?" I didn't know if I should tell him the truth of what I really believed... or not. I put my hand on his slumping shoulder, smiled and told him the truth of what I believe, "Don't worry... ↗
