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" I believe God is real, but I believe God calls me beyond myself to take responsibility for my life and to try top work to allow other people to be themselves and to take responsibility for their lives. "

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" Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. What I'm trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism. "

John Shelby Spong

You

God

Language

" When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. "

" If you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterday's terrorists become tomorrow's elected officials and they're part of the system. "

" Many of the characters who appear in the pages of the Fourth Gospel are literary creations of its author and were never intended to be understood as real people, who actually lived in history. "

" I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication. "

" I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth. "

" Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order. "

" Jesus represents the possibilities of a new dimension of existence that transcends all the boundaries that restrict us from opening ourselves to God and allowing this source of love to flow through us. "

" I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the sky, looking down and keeping record books. "

" The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. "

" I believe that God is very real. "

" If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I'd walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don't mind saying that I don't invalidate any of those paths. "

" When I'm asked to define God, I'm almost wordless. "

" God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. "

" Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies. "

" The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world. "

" In the first gospel, Mark, the risen Christ appears physically to no one, but by the time we come to the last gospel, John, Thomas is invited to feel the nail prints in Christ's hands and feet and the spear wound in his side. "

" Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. "

" The Bible tells me that every life is holy; the Bible tells me that every life is loved; the Bible tells me that every life is called to be all that it can be. "

" My basis of morality is this: does this action enhance life, or does it denigrate life? Does it build up or does it tear down? "

John Shelby Spong

Life

Build

" Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark's gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all. "

" Mother Nature is not sweet. "

" Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. "

" I experience God as the power of love. "

" The church is not going to survive if they are going to tell people that they have to twist their minds into 1st century pretzels. "

" I can only give away the love that I have received. "

" I am a child of the 21st century. "

John Shelby Spong

I Am

Child

" I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates. "

" I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. "

" In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches. "