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" I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people. "
John Shelby Spong
Other
Family
Want
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" 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
" I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. "
John Shelby Spong
Children
Understanding
Trouble
" 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
" 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
" 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
" God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. "
John Shelby Spong
God
Define
Presence
" 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
" Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them. "
John Shelby Spong
Moon
Devil
Bible
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
God
Women
Nature
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence. "
John Shelby Spong
Among
Who
Oh
" 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 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
" 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
" I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. "
John Shelby Spong
Boots
Universe
Think
" 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
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Who
Never
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. "
John Shelby Spong
Walk
Saying
Paths
" 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. "
John Shelby Spong
Very
God
Believe
" 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
" In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches. "
John Shelby Spong
Controversial
Issues
Even
" 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
" 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