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" I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. "
John Shelby Spong
Children
Understanding
Trouble
Related Quotes:
" The way you become divine is to become wholly human. "
John Shelby Spong
Way
Human
You
" Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. "
John Shelby Spong
Jesus
Reality
Explained
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Walk
Saying
Paths
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Tomorrow
People
New
" I spend my life studying that book, and every book I've written has in some sense been a book about the Bible, and that's what I mean by reclaiming its value and its essence for a world that no longer treats it literally and no longer reads it traditionally. "
John Shelby Spong
Value
Life
Book
" I do not live in a world where people can walk on water, or still a storm, or take five loaves of bread and feed 5000 men plus women and children. If that is a requirement of my commitment to Jesus, I find it difficult to stretch my mind outside the capacities of my world view. "
John Shelby Spong
Storm
Men
Women
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Looking
Live
Down
" Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence. "
John Shelby Spong
Among
Who
Oh
" 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
" A lot of people hear me attacking their certainty. I don't have any interest in doing that. I'm interested in penetrating the meaning of certainty. "
John Shelby Spong
People
Meaning
Me
" 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
" I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. "
John Shelby Spong
Places
Early
Right
" 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
" God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. "
John Shelby Spong
God
Define
Presence
" It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish. "
John Shelby Spong
Easy
Enough
God
" 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
" Mother Nature is not sweet. "
John Shelby Spong
Environmental
Mother
Nature
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Perfect
Sin
See
" I experience God as the power of love. "
John Shelby Spong
God
Experience
Power
" Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. "
John Shelby Spong
Lesbian
People
Church
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I am trying to understand what it means to be a Christian without being religious. "
John Shelby Spong
Trying
Christian
Am
" Religion is a mixed blessing. "
John Shelby Spong
Blessing
Mixed
Religion
" I am a child of the 21st century. "
John Shelby Spong
Am
I Am
Child
" I can only give away the love that I have received. "
John Shelby Spong
I Can
Received
Only