Quotes About Perspective

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

You believe what you must in order to stave off the conviction that it's all a tale told by an idiot

I've had lots of troubles in my life, but most of 'em never happened.

writing stories, scenes, and portraits is a very inductive process and will lead you to new insights and new points of view you couldn't reach by reasoning alone.

When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in, really? And why?

Ours is a historical faith, and to uproot the Bible from its historical contexts is self-contradictory.

When you read the Bible on its own terms, you discover that it doesn't behave itself like a holy rulebook should.

The first question we should ask about what we are reading is not "How does this apply to me?" Rather, it is "What is this passage saying in the context of the book I am reading, and how would it have been heard in the ancient world?

Readers who come to the Bible expecting something more like an accurate textbook, a more-or-less objective recalling of the past—because, surely, God wouldn't have it any other way—are in for an uncomfortable read. But if they take seriously the words in front of them, they will quickly find that the Bible doesn't deliver on that expectation. Not remotely.

The Bible—from back to front—is the story of God told from the limited point of view of real people living at a certain place and time.

It is wholly incomprehensible to think that thousands of years ago God would have felt constrained to speak in a way that would be meaningful only to Westerners several thousand years later. To do so borders on modern, Western arrogance.

Who we are and when and where we exist affect how we imagine God.

getting the Bible right and getting Jesus right are not the same thing.

We have practically been conditioned to expect God to be our helicopter parent. And if for some reason we don't run to God to solve every little problem, from finding our car keys to deciding on color schemes for the nursery, we are told there is something deeply wrong with us spiritually. Phooey.

All attempts to put the past into words are interpretations of the past, not "straight history." There is no such thing. Anywhere. Including the Bible.

I mean, if we try to explain Jesus's handling of his Bible in terms of how many Christians today feel the Bible "ought" to be read, Jesus will look like one of my college Bible students, playing free association with the Bible. Or worse, we may try to find some way of taking Jesus out of his ancient Jewish world and making him look more like a suburban Protestant, an urban hipster, a tea party spokesman, and so on.

Doubt is what being cornered by our thinking looks like. Doubt happens when needing to be certain has run its course.

Walking the path of faith means trusting God enough to let our uh-oh moments expose how we create God to fit in our thinking.

The broader we cast our net, the deeper we wind up owning our own thoughts.

The Bible looks the way it does because "God lets his children tell the story," so to speak.

We should not be surprised when we find ourselves in a similar spot, experiencing a God who is not beholden to our thinking, a God who doesn't act according to our sense of certainty, even if we can find a Bible verse or two to back it up. God can't be proof-texted. God will not be backed into a corner.

There's an irony: the passionate defense of the Bible as a "history book" among the more conservative wings of Christianity, despite intentions, isn't really an act of submission to God; it is making God submit to us. In

I hear Aslan's words to Shasta: "'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story. . . . I tell no one any story but his own.

followers of Jesus always have and always will meet Jesus and see him from where they are and they will experience Jesus differently as a result.