#chris

It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christ #christianity #cross #crucifixion #jesus

Looking at Great-Great Grandpa Baldwin's photograph, I think to myself: You've finally done it. It took four generations, but you've finally goddamned done it. Gotten that war against reason and uppity secularists you always wanted. Gotten even for the Scopes trial, which they say was one of many burrs under your saddle until your last breath. Well, rejoice, old man, because your tribes have gathered around America's oldest magical hairball of ignorance and superstition, Christian fundamentalism, and their numbers have enabled them to suck so much oxygen out of the political atmosphere that they are now acknowledged as a mainstream force in politics. Episcopalians, Jews, and affluent suburban Methodists and Catholics, they are all now scratching their heads, sweating, and swearing loudly that this pack of lower-class zealots cannot possibly represent the mainstream--not the mainstream they learned about in their fancy sociology classes or were so comfortably reassured about by media commentators who were people like themselves. Goodnight, Grandpa Baldwin. I'll toast you from hell. ↗

— Joe Bageant

#christian #extremism #fundamentalism #ignorance #politics

God did not create you to fail! ↗

— Tommy Coletta

#self-empowerment #self-esteem #self-help #spiritual #empowerment

He was alone in his wonderment, amoung creatures incapable of wonder --for them it was enough to exist and go their way. ↗

— John Paul II

#christianity #catholicism

Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar. ↗

— John Waters

#catholics #cross #crucifix #jesus #jesus-christ

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #god #jesus-shock #protestantism #sacraments

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #crazy #god #jesus-shock #philosophy

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christianity #deism #deist #god

Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #god #jesus-shock #ontological-oxymoron #ontology

God defines himself as "I am who I am", which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christianity #eternal-father #god #god-father #spirituality