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" I experience God as the power of love. "
John Shelby Spong
God
Experience
Power
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" I believe that God is very real. "
John Shelby Spong
Very
God
Believe
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
God
World
Religion
" I don't think much about my physical body going off into the long, green fairways of Heaven to play golf. "
John Shelby Spong
Long
Golf
Green
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Responsibility
Myself
Life
" Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? I do not think so. There is no mention of him in any source before the 8th decade. "
John Shelby Spong
History
Him
Any
" It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. "
John Shelby Spong
Religion
Nature
Against
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Minds
Tell
Survive
" The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures. "
John Shelby Spong
God
Name
Speak
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Believe
Experience
God
" I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates. "
John Shelby Spong
Human
Think
Look
" I can only give away the love that I have received. "
John Shelby Spong
I Can
Received
Only
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Side
Feel
Feet
" We've got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. We've murdered them; we've burned them at the stake; we've run them out of town for something over which they have no control. And that's immoral. "
John Shelby Spong
Church
People
Run
" The cross reveals that we're called to a deeper, fuller experience of what it means to be alive and open to new dimensions of life which our religious boundaries - creeds, atonement theologies - have kept us from experiencing. "
John Shelby Spong
Life
Alive
New
" The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go. "
John Shelby Spong
Reason
Want
Path
" 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
Up
Life
Build
" All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake. "
John Shelby Spong
Religion
Only
Need
" I am a child of the 21st century. "
John Shelby Spong
Am
I Am
Child
" Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. "
John Shelby Spong
Lesbian
People
Church
" You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.' "
John Shelby Spong
Create
You
World
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Divine
Shift
Much
" The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. "
John Shelby Spong
Life
Journey
History
" I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it. "
John Shelby Spong
Way
Universe
Sun
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Loved
Life
Holy
" Mother Nature is not sweet. "
John Shelby Spong
Environmental
Mother
Nature
" Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals. "
John Shelby Spong
Will
Used
New
" I believe that God is very real. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. I call this God by different words. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being. "
John Shelby Spong
Live
God
Day
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Narrative
Gospel
History
" The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church. "
John Shelby Spong
Christian
Used
Church
" 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