#ai

The way I see Jesus has not changed much at all since I was a child, but my imprisonment and all that followed made me love Him even more. His being the Son of God makes sense to me, because I believe God to be loving, just, forgiving, and merciful. I also believe that He respects free will. After all, He has given it to us so that we can choose to love or hate Him, do good or evil. But is it fair for a loving God to sit on His throne in Heaven and let us struggle and suffer on our own? Would any good father abandon His children this way? It makes perfect sense to me that God decided to come among us, live like us, and die a horribly painful death after being tortured. This is a God I can love with all my heart. A God who sets an example. A God who has bled and whose heart has been broken. This is who Jesus is to me. I don't pretend that I understand the Holy Trinity. But I understand love and sacrifice. I understand faithfulness. ↗

— Marina Nemat

#god #holy-trinity #jesus-christ #marina-nemat #sacrifice

I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for... Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom. ↗

— Edward W. Said

#edward-said #freedom #politics #freedom

Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning. ↗

— Pablo Neruda

#painted-a-picture #sun #broken

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#best #earth #eat #grow #i

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases. ↗

— Robert Anton Wilson

#philosophy #brain

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#pain #remember

Good fighting with you, Seaweed Brain." Ditto. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#percy-jackson #brain

I will tell the stork-man. ↗

— Tamora Pierce

#immortals #numair #immortality

When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#brain

Although it is very easy to marry a wife, it is very difficult to support her along with the children and the household. Accordingly, no one notices this faith of Jacob. Indeed, many hate fertility in a wife for the sole reason that the offspring must be supported and brought up. For this is what they commonly say: ‘Why should I marry a wife when I am a pauper and a beggar? I would rather bear the burden of poverty alone and not load myself with misery and want.’ But this blame is unjustly fastened on marriage and fruitfulness. Indeed, you are indicting your unbelief by distrusting God’s goodness, and you are bringing greater misery upon yourself by disparaging God’s blessing. For if you had trust in God’s grace and promises, you would undoubtedly be supported. But because you do not hope in the Lord, you will never prosper. ↗

— Martin Luther

#faith #god #marriage #money #parenthood