Quotes About Power

Caesar's messengers didn't go round the world saying, 'Caesar is lord, so if you feel you need to have a Roman-empire kind of experience, you might want to submit to him'.

In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.

Evil then consists not in being created but in the rebellious idolatry by which humans worship and honour elements of the natural world rather than the God who made them. The result is that the cosmos is out of joint. Instead of humans being God's wise vice-regents over creation, they ignore the creator and try to worship something less demanding, something that will give them a short-term fix of power or pleasure.

When people with power see things happen of which they disapprove, they drop bombs and send in tanks. When people without power see things happen of which they disapprove, they smash store windows, blow themselves up in crowded places, and fly planes into buildings. The fact that both methods have proved remarkably unsuccessful at changing things doesn't stop people from going on in the same way.

Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it.

The author extols the power of having significant portions of God's Word read in public worship with the following analogy. He says that by reading a few short verses, we are like someone glimpsing nature through window from across the room. But by taking in more lengthy passages of Scripture, we are like someone who, intrigue, gets right next to the window to take in more of the view that it offers, basking in more of the arc of the whole the whole narrative.

Death is the last weapon of the tyrant; the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated.

A piety that sees death as the moment of "going home at last," the time when we are "called to God's eternal peace," has no quarrel with power-mongers who want to carve up the world to suit their own ends. Resurrection, by contrast, has always gone with a strong view of God's justice and of God as the good creator. Those twin beliefs give rise not to a meek acquiescence to injustice in the world but to a robust determination to oppose it.

The point of trying to understand the cross better is not so that we can congratulate ourselves for having solved an intellectual crossword puzzle, but so that God's power and wisdom may work in us, through us, and out into the world that still regards Jesus's crucifixion as weakness and folly.

think about the way God rules. He doesn't do it by sending in the tanks. He does it by calling servants.

The power of the bleeding love of God is stronger than the power of Caesar, of the law, of Mars, Mammon, Aphrodite and the rest. This is the point that Paul grasped. And that is the reason for the Colossians' gratitude. The battle has been won.

A tectonic plate's got to do what a tectonic plate's got to do.

Being saved' doesn't just mean, as it does for many today, 'going to heaven when they die'. It means 'knowing God's rescuing power, the power revealed in Jesus, which anticipates, in the present, God's final great act of deliverance'.

When God does the big things, the little people get drawn in too. Human systems often forget that, but God doesn't.

Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice, and greed.

Those who belong to Jesus are called, here and now, in the power of the Spirit, to be agents of that putting-to-rights purpose.

the story the Psalms tell is the story Jesus came to complete. It is the story of the creator God taking his power and reigning, ruling on earth as in heaven, delighting the whole creation by sorting out its messes and muddles, its injuries and injustices, once and for all.

The Christian role, as part of naming the name of the crucified and risen Jesus on territory presently occupied by idols, is to speak the truth to power and especially to speak up for those with no power at all.

And it left, and leaves, the way open for the Nietzschean response that has once more come to the fore in our own day: who needs love when you can have power?

This is typical of what the New Testament declares: God is king, and the kingdoms of the world are thereby demoted.

But the demonstration of the power of Jesus' name took place, not in the Temple, but outside the gate. God is on the move, not confined

Think of Oscar Wilde's wonderful scene in his play Salome, when Herod hears reports that Jesus of Nazareth has been raising the dead. "I do not wish him to do that," says Herod. "I forbid him to do that. I allow no man to raise the dead. This man must be found and told that

within the institution, breaking out into new worlds, leaving behind the shrine which had become a place of worldly power and resistance to his purposes.

Paul is talking about the present body, which is animated by the normal human psych? (the life force we all possess here and now, which gets us through the present life but is ultimately powerless against illness, injury, decay, and death), and the future body, which is animated by God's pneuma, God's breath of new life, the energizing power of God's new creation. This