Quotes from Frank Schaeffer

Labels don't mean anything. Who cares about labels when someone is slapping you in the face? Who cares about labels when someone is saving you from drowning?

I'd be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty." Yes, and perhaps that's the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, "I could be wrong.

What's the point of quoting the Bible to people who don't believe it's true" Dad would say.

evangelicalism is not not so much a religion as a series of fast-moving personality cults.

People are not as one-dimensional as the stories about them.

Maybe we need a new category other than theism, atheism or agnosticism that takes paradox and unknowing into account.

As an ultimate fuck you to rule-keeping scripture zealots everywhere, Jesus hung out with whores.

We're living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We'd rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other.

Somewhere between the sterile, absolute, and empty formulae of reductionist, totalitarian science and the earnest, hostile, excessively certain make-believe of religious fundamentalism, there is a beautiful place. There is room in this place for honesty. For tenderness. For fury. For wonder. For hope. For mistakes. For paradox. For grace.

we must renounce reading the Bible to find arguments to justify our behavior or that of our group.

You don't choose anything important. It just happens. The only choice you have is if you'll make life's accidents work.

Scientists and theologians can't offer better than circular arguments, because there are no other kinds of arguments. Bible believers quote the Bible, and scientists quote other scientists. How do either scientists or theologians answer this question about the accuracy of their conclusions: "In reference to what?

Faith is certainly not theology to me. Church is just one of the places I look for answers to the only real question I have: Why do we long for meaning? For

We now send our books, our music and even our memories into a cloud. We may or may not believe in God but we do once again believe in meaningful consciousness residing outside of ourselves.

God's only in your head!" my answer is, "Yeah, whatever. What isn't?

Fewer than 5 percent of Danes attend church. In godless Denmark, the national government funds a high quality education for all children, rich and poor alike, while in God-fearing America, education is funded through local property taxes, so neighborhood and income dictate a child's educational opportunities. Add in race and ethnicity factors to create a perfectly stratified school system segregated by educational opportunity.

every time Jesus mentioned the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: "The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…" I should have said, "Jesus undermined the inerrancy of the scriptures in favor of his version of pragmatic empathy!" or "Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures it was to err on the side of nonjudgmental co-suffering love. So up yours

Mean People Suck!" And that goes especially for people who are mean in the name of love.

Our best hope is not found in correct theology, the Bible or any other book, but in the love we express through action rather than words. Our best hope is that love predates creation and thus that the Creator sees us as ever young. Our hope is that when we look at God through the eyes of the loving Christ we will see who God really is. Our ultimate hope is that God will be looking back at us as we'd like to be seen.

Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book.

On all levels and in every aspect of our society, the poor are rejected, mistreated, and forced more deeply into their poverty. Christianity should have taken up the cause of the poor; better yet, it should have identified with the poor. Instead, during almost the entire course of its history, the Church has served as a prop of the powerful and has been on the side of exploiters and states

If we wait for correct ideas to save us—theological or otherwise—we'll never be saved, even from ourselves.

Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to choose to either see God in Jesus or to continue to let the Bible define God. Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit that we are compelled to either become blinded ideologues or we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible. Most Christians do that anyway, many just don't admit it.

In the prologue, I said that the only answer to "Who are you?" is "When?" What was true for prologue is doubly true of epilogue. We never arrive. There are no final answers, only a series of snapshots taken along the path of "frenetic desperation."   Movies