Quotes from Robin R. Meyers

Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don't need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God. (p. 21)

Contemporary Christians have declared war on individual immorality but seem remarkably silent about the evil of systems, especially corporate greed and malfeasance. (p. 176)

Let your children see you kiss. Let them see you embrace. Let them overhear your teasing, your gentle rebukes, even your well-intentioned jealousy. Domestic courtship reinforces the notion that people are together because they want to be together, not because it is the decent, practical thing to do.

Condemnation feels good and it is now a staple of religion, politics, and the media (both left and right), but it changes nothing. Compassion, on the other hand, changes everything. (p. 121)

If the church is to survive as a place where head and heart are equal partners in faith, then we will need to commit ourselves once again not to the worship of Christ, but to the imitation of Jesus. His invitation was not to believe, but to follow. (p. 145)

Faith is always supposed to make it harder, not easier, to ignore the plight of our sisters and brothers. (p. 165)

Count calories if you like, but go ahead and gorge yourself on books. What have you got to lose but a small mind?

Anti-intellectualism remains strongly entrenched in many parts of the church, but it is grounded in fear, not in faith. (p. 19)

the ongoing suspicion that scientific discoveries or rigorous biblical scholarship will undermine faith is a tacit admission that faith is threatened by knowledge, because it is ultimately constructed on weak or faulty assumptions and, like the proverbial house of cards, needs to be "protected" from collapsing. (p. 21)

No matter what our age, we ought to never stop eating books, for books are the feast of the imagination.

It is easier and much more satisfying to rail against the Right than to suggest that we go back to Genesis 1 and study together. Liberals can be just as intolerant as fundamentalists, and we have arrived at a moment in human history when intolerance and hope are mutually exclusive. (p. 6)

As long as Christianity is the dominant belief system in America, we cannot afford to be biblically or theologically illiterate, regardless of our personal beliefs. (p. 8)

In the beginning, the call of God was not propositional. It was experiential. (p. 10)

Books -- they come home hot in your hands and then by increments they warm your life, like heated bricks in a New England bed.

The most twisted but perennial of American myths is that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. (p. 174)

you cannot set the captive free if you are not willing to confront those who hold the keys. Without confrontation compassion becomes merely commiseration, fruitless and sentimental.

Churches are political even when they refuse to act politically, because silence is a form of complicity and thus an endorsement of the status quo.

Where there is denial there is dysfunction, and the more one's faith resembles a fairy tale the sooner the clock strikes midnight.

The church can no longer afford preachers who fail to take a stand when they know that the church is facilitating evil, whether it's a war based on lies, cruelty toward gays based on fear, or a distortion of the wisdom of Jesus as fantastic as the prosperity gospel.

the most common model for ministry now is someone who is well married (preferably with children), respected, pious, and doesn't "cause trouble.

the church has made an It out of the ministry—turning it into a profession demanding decorum, rather than recognizing it as a divine calling with disturbing consequences.

We know that those who challenge the status quo and do so with both conviction and charisma are at risk of being killed.

The American home has become the noisiest place of utter silence on earth.

Resolve to talk more and be entertained less.