Quotes

"To serve God means to act with justice.  One cannot pray and offer sacrifice while ignoring the poor, the beggars at the gates.  But more radical still: if you have more than you need, you are a thief, for what you 'own' is stolen from those who do not have enough.  You are a murderer, who lives on the abundance that has been taken from the mouths of the starving.  You are an idolater, for what you worship is not the true God.  You are a whore, for you have bedded down with other gods, the gods of your own comfort and self-delusion, you who 'cram [your] palaces with violence and extortion,' who have 'sold the upright for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals [from Gucci, no doubt],' who 'have crushed the heads of the weak into the dust and thrust the rights of the oppressed to one side."

-- Thomas Cahill, in his book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels.  Page 214 in the paperback edition.

"The casual cruelty of other ancient law codes -- the cutting off of nose, ears, tongue, lower lip (for kissing another man's wife), breasts, and testicles -- is seldom matched in the Torah.  Rather, in the prescriptions of Jewish law we cannot but note a presumption that all people, even slaves, are human and that all human lives are sacred. The constant bias is in favor not of the powerful and their possessions but of the powerless and their poverty; and there is even a frequent enjoinder to sympathy:

"'A sojourner you are not to oppress:
"you yourselves know (well) the feelings of the sojourner,
"for sojourners were you in the land of Egypt.'

"This bias toward the underdog is unique not only in ancient law but in the whole history of law.  However faint our sense of justice may be, insofar as it operates at all it is still a Jewish sense of justice."

-- Thomas Cahill, in his book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Pages 154-155 in the paperback edition.

"We can take comfort in the certain knowledge that God is a verb, not a noun or adjective.  His self-description is not static but active, appropriate to the God of Journeys.  YHWH is an archaic form of the verb to be; and when all the commentaries are taken into account, there remain but three outstanding possibilities of interpretation, none of them mutually exclusive.  First, I am who am: this is the interpretation of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which because of its age and its links to the ancients bears great authority.  It was this translation that Thomas Aquinas used in the thirteenth century to build his theology of God as the only being whose essence is Existence, all other beings being contingent on God, who is Being (or Is-ness) itself.  A more precise translation of this idea could be: "I am he who causes (things) to be" -- that is, "I am the Creator."  Second, I am who I am -- in other words, "None of your business" or "You cannot control me by invoking my name (and therefore my essence) as if I were one of your household gods." Third, I will be-there with you: this is Fox's translation, following Martin Buber and Franz Rosenweig, which emphasizes God's continuing presence in his creation, his being-there with us.

"How should we pronounce the Name when we come upon it?   One may, of course, substitute "the Lord" for the tetragrammaton YHWH.  Others will boldly attempt a pronunciation, "Yahweh" (as English speakers usually say it) or "Yahvé" (after the French and Germans) or even "Jehovah" (a mispronunciation, much in evidence in Protestant hymnody and based on an inadequate understanding of the conventions of medieval manuscripts).  But for me, when I attempt to say the consonants without resort to vowels, I find myself just breathing in, then out, with emphasis, in which case God becomes the breath of life."

-- Thomas Cahill, in his book The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the WAy Everyone Thinks and Feels.  Pages 109 -110 in the paperback version.

"Who is YHWH?  However we interpret it, the Name of God means ultimate dominion: He-Whom-There-Is-No-Escaping."

-- Thomas Cahill, in The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. Page 113 of the paperback edition.

... because God is on the side of the little people, the people who have no worldly power.  This is a lesson that will be repeated again and again in the story of Israel.

-- Thomas Cahill, in The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, page 117 in the paperback ediiton.

If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me 

-- Jimmy Buffett, song title

OK, so you believe in free will. Where does free will come from? What we know about science leaves no room for free will. According to science, our decisions are merely chemicals and electrical signals. As things stand, we can't scientifically account for free will. By verifying free will, you've proved the existence of something "supernatural".

-- niteprincess in a discussion on Jesus Camp.

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.

-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan speaking after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, November 1963

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad.
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

-- G. K. Chesteron (quoted in How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill)

I think everyone recognizes -- as you have said and the scientific community agrees -- that there is global warming caused by human activity.

-- Representative Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, speaking to Al Gore when he testified about climate change on Capital Hill (March 2007)

The power of God is present at all places, even in the tiniest leaf... God is currently and personally present in the wilderness, in the garden, and in the field.

-- Martin Luther, quoted in Tri Robinson's book, Saving God's Green Earth

God has given us his creation as a way of providing for people. Plants and trees produce fruits, vegetables, and herbs which are all healthy sources of nourishment for people and animals. Properly managed land is what sustains these plants to grow. Then the fruit of the land sustains human existence. It's a way God shows care for us through what He has created. Our day-to-day choices -- how we manage the land with our crops, how we treat animals, and how we take care of our natural resources such as water and air is important because they are part of God's great plan for resourcing and providing for his creation.

-- Tri Robinson, in Saving God's Green Earth, p. 20 (ampelon publishing, ©2006)

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of government.

-- James Madison

Once when I was in the Himalayas, I was sitting upon the bank of a river; I drew out of the water a beautiful, hard, round stone and smashed it. The inside was quite dry. The stone had been lying a long time in the water, but the water had not penetrated the stone. It is just like that with the "Christian" people of the West. They have for centuries been surrounded by Christianity, entirely steeped in its blessings, but the Master's truth has not penetrated them. Christianity is not at fault; the reason lies rather in the hardness of their hearts. Materialism and intellectualism have made their hearts hard. So I am not surprised that many people in the West do not understand what Christianity really is.

-- Sadhu Sundar Singh

The followers of Jesus are to be different -- different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships -- all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian Counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.

-- John Stott

Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics...Although Peter cannot achieve his own conversion, he can leave his nets.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

What a pity, that so hard on the heels of Christ come the Christians.

-- Annie Dillard, in The Book of Luke

It contributes greatly to a man's moral or intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter

If you really belong to the work that has been entrusted to you, then you must do it with your whole heart. ... It is not how much we are doing but how much love, how much honesty, how much faith is put into doing it. It makes no difference what we are doing. What you are doing, I cannot do, and what I am doing, you cannot do. Only sometimes we forget and we spend more time looking at somebody else and wishing we were doing something else. We waste our time thinking of tomorrow and today we let the day pass and yesterday is gone.

-- Mother Theresa

A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of humanity lies in the acceptance of our insignificance, our human condition and our earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of people is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.

-- Jean Vanier