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" I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. "
John Shelby Spong
Places
Early
Right
Related Quotes:
" 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
" I was baptized as an infant. I was confirmed as an adolescent; I was active in my church's youth group and in my university student group. I was married before the church's altar; trained at the church's seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24. "
John Shelby Spong
Age
Student
Church
" 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
" 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
" The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. "
John Shelby Spong
See
Way
Life
" I believe that is what the God experience does for us. It calls us beyond our limits into the fullness of life - into a capacity to love people we are not taught to love - and into an ability to be who we are. "
John Shelby Spong
Love
People
Experience
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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 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
" 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
" Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience. "
John Shelby Spong
Faith
People
Myself
" There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. "
John Shelby Spong
Three
Book
Over
" 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
" 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
" I can only give away the love that I have received. "
John Shelby Spong
I Can
Received
Only
" When I'm asked to define God, I'm almost wordless. "
John Shelby Spong
Define
Almost
Asked
" I am trying to understand what it means to be a Christian without being religious. "
John Shelby Spong
Trying
Christian
Am
" 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
" Mother Nature is not sweet. "
John Shelby Spong
Environmental
Mother
Nature
" Religion is a mixed blessing. "
John Shelby Spong
Blessing
Mixed
Religion
" I never really liked the Gospel of John because I never could find the humanity of Jesus in it. I thought it presented Jesus as a visitor from another planet; in addition, John's gospel is and has been interpreted as a document that fuels anti-Semitism in the church. "
John Shelby Spong
Never
Church
Find
" The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught. "
John Shelby Spong
Say
Against
Hero
" The ultimate meaning of the Bible escapes human limits and calls us to a recognition that every life is holy, every life is loved, and every life is called to be all that that life is capable of being. "
John Shelby Spong
Limits
Bible
Recognition
" I am a child of the 21st century. "
John Shelby Spong
Am
I Am
Child
" 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
" I believe that God is very real. "
John Shelby Spong
Very
God
Believe
" I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. "
John Shelby Spong
Children
Understanding
Trouble