#bible

The Bible is teh means through which we are introduced to Jesus and invited to follow Him in the life of humility and service. Secured by the knowledge that in Christ, our origin... and destination is God, we will yield the fruit of service to God. This is the "so what" of our Bible reading. Does it shape our spirits in love and humility? Does it lead us more fully into life with God? (Life with God, p. 34-35) ↗

— Richard Foster

#devotions #disciplines #life-with-god #spiritual-formation #life

The Bible is still the only dirty book I've ever read, at least in its current incarnation as a weapon of the homophobes. Bible scholarship keeps trying to catch up, proving that all the hatred of gay is just stupid translation, though the snake-oil preachers don't want to hear it. ↗

— Paul Monette

#glbt #hate #homophobia #life

He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB). ↗

— Ann Voskamp

#bible #plans #purpose #secret #love

The astonishment soon passed off, the scales seemed to drop from his eyes, and the book became at once and for ever to him the great human and divine book, and the men and women, whom he had looked upon as something quite different from himself, became his friends and counsellors. ↗

— Thomas Hughes

#men

It is rare to find an established community of Christians that encourages radical expressions of following Jesus. The natural conservatism of institutions is deeply rooted in the desire to survive, and that desire colors and limits the way they read the Bible and how they see God functioning in the world. ↗

— Michael Spencer

#conservatism #internet-monk #jesus #spirituality #nature

It is not enough just to read the Bible; it is even just as important to understand it. As to living it- that is accomplished in and through us by the Holy Spirit." ~R. Alan Woods [2013] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#bible-interpretation #bible-study #holy-spirit #icarnationally #r-alan-woods

Each heart knows its own bitterness and no one else can share its joy. ↗

— Anonymous

#joy #pain #scripture #scripture

He can't go five minutes without quoting scripture. It's like biblical Tourettes. ↗

— Dawn Jayne

#religion #scripture #tourettes #religion

To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#organized-religion #religion #religion

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎The mind of God is greater than all the minds of men, so let all men leave the gospel just as God has delivered it unto us. ↗

— Charles H. Spurgeon

#organized-religion #religion #men