#heo

If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#church #nihilism #philosophy #theology #logic

For a long time, I wanted to become a theologian. Now, however, behold, how through my efforts God is being glorified through astronomy. ↗

— Johannes Kepler

#job #knowledge #minitry #science #theology

Politics is for the moment and equation is for eternity. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#theory #science

Thus her whole identity hangs in the balance of her love life. She is allowed to love herself only if a man finds her worthy of love. ↗

— Shulamith Firestone

#life

It is impossible to express the experiences you have below the surface with words, when water gently caresses your face and body, the pulse decreases and your brain relaxes. You are immediately cut off from the stress and hustle of everyday life when you are below the surface – there are no noisy telephones or SMS messages, no inboxes full of mail, no electrical bills, or other trivialities of everyday life taking up time and energy. There is nothing connecting you to the surface but the same withheld breath that connects you to life. There is only you and a growing pressure on your chest that feels like a loving hug and the vibrations from the deep quiet tone of the sea. It is quite possible that this deep quiet tone is none other than the mantra Om, the sound of the universe, trickling life into every cell of your body. ↗

— Stig Åvall Severinsen

#breatheology #om #pranayama #water #experience

Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn’t it have put fine comical expressions on the faces of the scribes and chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment He had come down in power and glory? Why didn’t He do it? Why hasn’t He done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now? I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn’t, He hasn’t, because from the moment He did, He would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. Even those who hated Him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in Him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended. And so, I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world. ↗

— Wendell Berry

#problem-of-pain #theodicy #beauty

When I realize that God makes his gifts fit each person, there's no way I can covet what you got because it just wouldn't fit me. ↗

— William P. Smith

#coveting #envy #gifts #theology #love

This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before. ↗

— Karl Barth

#universalism #love

At best we are but clay, animated dust; but viewed as sinners, we are monsters indeed. Let it be published in heaven as a miracle that the Lord Jesus should set His heart's love upon people like us. ↗

— Alistair Begg

#dust #god #monster #sinners #theology

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false. ↗

— P.D. James

#false #genuine #humor #humour #theo