Quotes About Religion

I don't have to believe," the voice drifted back. "I know gods exist. I simply hate them.

Assassinating the Lord Ruler?" Wax asked. "Isn't that a little violent for a children's book?" "Mate," Wayne said, "it ain't violence if it's religion. Don't you know anythin'?

Oh, hell," Kelsier said. "There's actually a God?" "Yes." Kelsier decked him.

How did men believe in something that preached love on one hand, yet taught destruction of unbelievers on the other?

How can she believe?" Vivenna said. Denth shrugged. "Seems like a good enough religion to me. I mean, you can go and see her gods. Talk to them, watch them shine. It isn't all that tough to understand.

It seemed so odd that faith should so be sacrificed in the name of religion.

That's the credit she had given to religion: lies that made people feel better.

Neither one of us could really articulate how we felt until I heard Lamott referencing Paul Tillich and telling the audience, "The opposite of faith is not doubt—it's certainty." Steve and I didn't leave religion because we stopped believing in God. Religion left us when it started putting politics and certainty before love and mystery.

I love this from theologians Richard Rohr " My scientist friends have come up with things like ' principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypothesis and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite

Steve and I didn't leave religion because we stopped believing in God. Religion left us when it started putting politics and certainty before love and mystery.

I love this from theologian Richard Rohr: "My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite.

Unfortunately, it's been an easy formula throughout history—in politics, religion, and business—that if you can keep people afraid, and give them an enemy who is responsible for their fear, you can get people to do just about anything. This is the playbook for authoritarian leaders here and around the globe.

The opposite of faith is not doubt--it's certainty. Paul Tillich. I didn't leave religion because we stopped believing in God. Religion left us when it started putting politics and certainty before love and mystery.

Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games or pop psychology. IT IS AN ACT OF FAITH in the God of grace.

Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.

Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.

The religion of cheerfulness, as Father Brown reminds us, is a cruel religion, and maybe the best way not to go mad is not to mind too much if you do go mad."2

The tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and consequently, to mistrust ourselves.

His consistent banging on the drums of God's unconditional love sounded at a time when many of us had about "had it up to here" with religion and church and, probably most importantly, ourselves. We were the tired, poor, self-hating huddled masses yearning to be free, and along came a patchwork preacher who grinned and said, "You already are. Abba loves you. Let's go get some chocolate ice cream.

From that moment on, no Christian can ever say one form of prayer is as good as another or one religion is as good as another.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.

We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.

Não são prostitutas e cobradores de impostos as pessoas que encontram maior dificuldade em se arrepender; são os religiosos que julgam não ter motivos de arrependimento, tranquilos porque não quebraram nenhuma lei no sábado.

Instead of expanding our capacity for life, joy, and mystery, religion often contracts it. As systematic theology advances, the sense of wonder declines. The paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of life are codified, cabined, and confined within the pages of a leather-bound book. Instead of a love story the Bible is viewed as a detailed manual of directions.