Quotes About Understanding

Genius, it is said, is the ability to scrutinize the obvious.

And where people do not want to know God, he usually allows them to be without him—at least for a while. When desire conflicts with reality, sooner or later reality wins.

knowledge is the basis of belief, and, when it is, it gives the belief a very different bearing upon life.

We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds, and our actions are based on the understanding that results from the fullness of that contact. There is nothing mysterious here. This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

This is seen in his well-known use of the parable—which, from its origin in the Greek word paraballein, literally means to throw one thing down alongside another. Parables are not just pretty stories that are easy to remember; rather, they help us understand something difficult by comparing it to, placing it beside, something with which we are very familiar, and always something concrete, specific.

have always replied that I will be glad to enter a joint inquiry with so and so, but I will not debate. We will seek the truth together.

I believe one reason why so many people do in fact fail to immerse themselves in the words of the New Testament, and neglect or even avoid them, is that the life they see there is so unlike what they know from their own experience.

Faith is not opposed to evidence that we might gain from perception as well as from reason.

Theology" is a stuffy word, but it should be an everyday one.

We forgive someone of a wrong they have done us when we decide that we will not make them suffer for it in any way. This

To say that "the righteous (or just) shall live by faith" does not mean that they live by blind and irresponsible leaps in total absence, or even in defiance, of knowledge. It does not mean that the "just" live in a state of ignorance or stupidity.1 They do on occasion act in specific ways beyond what they know, but only within a framework of knowledge that makes such action reasonable.

Develop the habit of seeing the world through God's eyes.

An act of faith in the biblical tradition is always undertaken in an environment of knowledge and is inseparable from it.

God does not delight in having to always explain what his will is; he enjoys it when we understand

What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of given facts or assumptions. It extends the information we have and enables us to see the "larger picture"—to see it clearly and to see it wholly. And it undermines false or misleading ideas and images as well. It reveals their falseness to those who wish to know.

Jesus and his words have never belonged to the categories of dogma or law, and to read them as if they did is simply to miss them.

no known religions are the same; they teach and practice radically different things. You only have to look at them to see that. To say they are all the "same" is to disrespect them. It is a way of claiming that none really matter, that their distinctives are of no human significance.

Too often our "love" for family members is domination in disguise.

The powerful though vague and unsubstantiated presumption is that something has been found out that renders a spiritual understanding of reality in the manner of Jesus simply foolish to those who are "in the know." But when it comes time to say exactly what it is that has been found out, nothing of substance is forthcoming.

We grow in our knowledge of God in the same way. We bring the reality of God into our lives by making contact with him through our minds, and our actions are based on the understanding that results from the fullness of that contact. There is nothing mysterious here. This is why the mind, and what we turn our minds to, is the key to our lives.

We have a terrible time understanding love, because we confuse it with desire. Desire and love are two utterly different kinds of things. Not only is desire not love; it is often opposed to love. Right action is the act of love, regardless of the desires of anyone involved.

What he sensed more than anything else was kindness – a kindness of a human and immediate sort. It was surprising how very radical this simple emotion could be.

There were some, naturally, who would understand, and he wrote for them, or for himself. Anyhow, some idealised reader who would accept everything, and forgive.

The issues that are found in all our lives are more intensely and dramatically present in the struggles of those who have been sexually abused. An understanding of sexual abuse, therefore, will help make clear what happens to anyone's soul when he or she is sinned against; whether normally and inevitably, or severely--when abuse occurs.