#ang

This is why Paul upholds the teaching of the gospel in such a forceful way ... Seeing such an example and such a picture of man’s great weakness and fickleness, Paul states that the truth of the gospel must supersede anything that we may devise … he is showing us that we ought to know the substance of the doctrine which is brought to us in the name of God, so that our faith can be fully grounded upon it. Then we will not be tossed about with every wind, nor will we wander about aimlessly, changing our opinions a hundred times a day; we will persist in this doctrine until the end. This, in brief, is what we must remember. ↗

— Jean Calvin

#change

Is it folly to believe in something that is intangible? After all, some of the greatest intangibles are Love, Hope, and Wonder. Another is Deity. The choice to be a fool is yours. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#deity #faith #folly #god #hope

He said "cool" like I say a Spanish word when I'm not sure of the pronunciation. ↗

— Kelley Armstrong

#funny #language #spanish #funny

Sometimes life gets weird. Hang in there, it gets better. ↗

— Tanner Patrick

#believe #faith #hang-in-there #hope #it-gets-better

What we view as God’s absence or lack of quickness to change our circumstances or fix our problems is really God waiting for the proper time to act on our behalf, while simultaneously waiting for us to acknowledge our need for rescue. ↗

— Tracie Miles

#faith #god #patience #trust #change

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom," says Paul. And we are most in line with the Spirit, most faithfully obedient, when instead of trying to manipulate people into faith, we simply live in that freedom and let the Spirit do the work of transformation. ↗

— Mark Galli

#faithfulness #freedom #holy-spirit #faith

For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three “only's” should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of Christianity, they do not have to lead a person out of the Catholic Church. . . . They can call the attention of the Catholic church again and again to the fact that grace alone and faith alone really are what saves, and that with all our maneuvering through the history of dogma and the teaching office, we Catholic Christians must find our way back to the sources again and again, back to the primary origins of Holy Scripture and all the more so of the Holy Spirit. ↗

— Karl Rahner

#ecumenism #evangelicalism #faith-alone #grace-alone #salvation

I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me. ↗

— Matt Groening

#humor #language #satire #simpsons #social-commentary

Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system—learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention—may radically transform one’s life. ↗

— Sam Harris

#determinism #free-will #inspiration #philosophy #self-improvement

The verbal tool of exploring mystery together is not confrontation or preaching but dialogue. We subject ourselves to the same questions we pose to others, and as we traverse them together, we may arrive at surprising conclusions we could never have reached when simply trying to defeat one another's logic. Our questions are open ended, granting the other person the freedom to respond or not to respond. The questions stick with us, even haunt us, long after we ask them, and we await insight together. The process is more important than an immediate decision. ↗

— Adam S. McHugh

#church #evangelism #introverts #spirituality #freedom