Quotes About Humanness

Religion and philosophy have their value, but in the end all we can do is open to mystery and live a path with heart, not idealistically, not without difficulties, but as a Buddha did, in the very midst of our humanness in our life on this earth. It is worth asking ourselves: What is it that we can see and know directly for ourselves? Are these simple truths not enough?

The church's task in the world is to model genuine humanness as a sign and an invitation to those around.

Sin," for Paul, is therefore not simply the breaking of moral codes, though it can be recognized in that way. It is, far more deeply, the missing of the mark of genuine humanness through the failure of worship or rather through worshipping idols rather than the true God.

Humans are designed to worship God and exercise responsibility in his world. But when humans worship idols instead, so that their image-bearing humanness corrupts itself into sin, missing the mark of the human vocation, they hand over their power to those same idols. The idols then use this power to tyrannize and ultimately to destroy their devotees and the wider world. But when sins are forgiven, the idols lose their power.

Nonviolence presupposes a level of humanness--however low it may be, in every human being.

I am not interested in a spirituality that cannot encompass my humanness.

Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness. DAVID AUGSBURGER

how much less man, who is but a maggot, and the son of man, who is but a worm!”