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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #god
My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was af if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things coming our way, only I thought she said "fate" because she couldn't pronounce the "th" sound in "faith". And later I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control. I found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I wasn't denying any possibility, good or bad. I was just saying, If there is a choice, dear God or whatever you are, here's where the odds should be placed. I remember the day I started thinking this, it was such a revelation to me. It was the day my mother lost her faith in God. She found that things of unquestioned certainty could never be trusted again. We had gone to the beach, to a secluded spot south of the city near Devil's Slide. My father had read in Sunset magazine that this was a good place to catch ocean perch. And although my father was not a fisherman but a pharmacist's assistant who had once been a doctor in China, he believed in his nenkan, his ability to do anything he put his mind to. My mother believed she had nenkan to cook anything my father had a mind to catch. It was this belief in their nenkan that had brought my parents to America. It had enabled them to have seven children and buy a house in Sunset district with very little money. It had given them the confidence to believe their luck would never run out, that God was on their side, that house gods had only benevolent things to report and our ancestors were pleased, that lifetime warranties meant our lucky streak would never break, that all the elements were now in balance, the right amount of wind and water. ↗
The avoiding, in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place it is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully, but you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or snobbish appeal. ↗
Religious Jews believe that all things come from God, as God owns everything. The Tanakh says, “The Lord makes some poor and others rich; he brings some down and lifts others up” (NLT, 1 Samuel 2:7). “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it” (NIV, Proverbs 10:22). ↗
As we understand it, everything is in the Bible for one reason – to teach us a lesson. Thus, in the beginning of the Bible, we see how God budgets His time for labor, and He saves the seventh day for rest, or retirement. The concept of budgeting was created by God to give us a life of prosperity in the world He created for us, so we should learn to budget as a way to emulate God in our financial life. ↗
This person sees not her own hand depositing the next dollar in a slot machine, but the hand of fate, or God. It’s her true conviction that there are forces at work for her to win a large jackpot— or at least to win back the money lost. After all, the only-for-show pictures of fruit had almost aligned with one another the last couple spins. ↗
When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch. ↗
#idolatry #idols #image-of-god #money #power
